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> No european politican in power is that altruistic. It's not about personal altruism, it's about creating the right institutions that encourages politicians t
by mcv 6y ago
> No european politican in power is that altruistic.
It's not about personal altruism, it's about creating the right institutions that encourages politicians to do the right thing, and to hold them accountable when they don't. In the US, these systems don't work very well. I remember when Congress had an approval rating in the single digits, yet 90% of all incumbents got re-elected. That's a pretty clear sign that the very basis of your democracy doesn't work right.
> Political systems are always eventually captured by the powerful and they prevent any real change because they benefit from the status quo
And yet political systems change. Absolute rulers decide to share their power, write liberal constitutions and hold fair elections, politicians in district systems decide to change to proportional representation, men vote to allow women to vote.
Of course these changes often require protests by the people who used to be excluded, but those protests happened, and the people in power listened and changed the rules.
It's mostly the US where a large number of people insist that the rules of two and a half century ago are sacred and should never be changed. Few other countries hold to that sort of idiocy. (Though the UK might be as bad or worse than the US in that regard.)
> We also have very little VC money going around.
That is absolutely true. The US is great for money. It's great for rich people and for investors. And many European startups end up moving to the US.
But that doesn't change the fact that regular people aren't benefitting all that much from it. Warehouse workers for Amazon often work in atrocious circumstances that would not be allowed in the EU. How does their country's high GDP or Amazon's high market value benefit them if their job is destroying them?
- rapsey 6y ago> Few other countries hold to that sort of idiocy. I disagree. Politicians change when they are forced to. People in power listening and changing the rules is in my opinion a pipe dream. They only change when their positions are threatened (i.e. being voted out of office in the civilized case). What the EU had is two world wars fought on its soil. The old systems were cleansed out with blood and fire. So while culturally European countries are old, politically they are generally not. The US has never had this, so the old system has been kept and unfortunately has rotten to its core and will collapse in our lifetimes in my opinion. This is why I tried to make the point that politicians are no better over here. They are selfish cunts like all politicians are and they sure as hell don't give the slightest damn about making sure "wealth benefits everybody to some degree". They are just operating in a setting that is not a rotten corpse and act more civilized.
- mcv 6y ago> "They only change when their positions are threatened (i.e. being voted out of office in the civilized case)." This is only true in some cases, not in all. The first Dutch king, Willem I, was originally made an absolute king and liked it that way, but later decided to have Thorbecke write a liberal constitution that would severely limit his power. Of course there were plenty calls in the country to do that, but he wasn't facing a revolution, and couldn't be voted out. Unless you count the Belgian independence from a couple of years earlier, but that had already happened and wasn't prevented by this decision. There are plenty of other cases where people decided to do the right thing because they saw it was the reasonable thing to do without being forced to. But the US refusing to change the broken electoral system from 250 years ago is also on the voters themselves, who keep voting for parties that don't want to improve the system. Keep voting out all incumbents until they fix the problem.
- rapsey 6y agoPeople are not robots. Obviously there will be some selfless individuals. But the discussion was on general terms and politicians as a class. As for blaming voters, that is entirely useless and simplistic.
- mcv 6y agoIs defeatism the only option here? Politicians are (almost) all selfish, and you can't blame the voters for voting for them? I strongly disagree on both points. There are politicians who take their responsibility seriously, and voters have a responsibility to vote for better politicians. Ultimately, voters get the government they choose, and if they choose corrupt politicians, that's what they get. The corrupt politicians aren't going to change as long as people keep voting for them. But better people exist, and it's up to voters to elect them.
- rapsey 6y agoSociety is a system not a collection of individuals. You are talking about some idealistic system that does not exist anywhere. People are easily mislead by corrupt media spreading lies and doubt about anyone. Powerful interests can derail any threat to them. This is why things seldom change in any real way. Take US presidential candidates Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard. Completely reasonable politicians who had to deal with constant lies about them being spread by the media.