5 ms·

Slow government is sort of only a feature of you don't think government should act. Really we should want deliberate and democratic/cooperative to decide but fa

by dv_dt 6y ago

Slow government is sort of only a feature of you don't think government should act. Really we should want deliberate and democratic/cooperative to decide but fast to act on settled matters.

mc32 6y ago
That presumes a democratic polity always settles on good matters.
- dv_dt 6y ago
  In general, to have a government at all, it should act by the processes by which it is validated by it's citizens - democratically ideally. But to have a government and pretend you don't want one to actually act seems silly. If you're worried about it acting in the wrong way, then focus on strengthening the democracy, transparency, and collaboration aspect of it. An ineffective government is a long term path to instability often leading to a risk of non-democratic rule.
  - mc32 6y ago
    You’re fundamentally betting on both people AND government to make the “good” decision even in trying times. That’s just not the case. Under duress both people, even in a healthy democracy, can reach for the easy solution to a threat which might not be the good of right solution. Time delay usually blunts that initial urge.
    - dv_dt 6y ago
      That's why I say "we should want deliberate and democratic/cooperative to decide"...
- paulmd 6y ago
  Inertia is only that - inertia. It doesn't affect the overall trend, by definition no democratic system can withstand a popular-but-harmful idea that remains popular over a sustained period of time (Brexit might be an example). If a system doesn't manifest that public opinion then it is no longer democratic. In other words what you're arguing against here isn't rapid change, it's democracy as a whole. You can't prevent people from having stupid ideas, and on a long enough timescale any democratic system will eventually implement those ideas. The idea of gridlock as a design objective is very harmful. The "inability to form a government" is considered a failure states in most government systems, having a government that is actually able to enact policy is a good thing. In practice however, this gridlock does not produce any incentive to pass "things everyone really agrees on" at all, as you can see by various topics that have 90% public support (eg cannabis legalization) that have been ignored for decades. It just produces gridlock and nothing gets done at all, not even the stuff that "everyone" agrees on. This, too, is a form of un-democracy. A lot of the "gridlock = good" comes back to people blindly falling back on the fetishism they were taught about the US constitution in grade schools - checks and balances are a good thing, who could be against checks and balances? But if there are too many checks and balances that drags the whole system to a halt - again, having a government that is able to actually enact policy without a supermajority control of all branches of government is a good thing. They only work when everyone has a "gentleman's agreement" to play nice and actually do the things that help constituents - when everyone starts playing hardball to the maximal extent permitted by law, the systems drags to a halt and stops working. And once that becomes a matter of routine as opposed to a last resort due to extremity, the systems begins to fail. That's a design flaw, that gets brushed under the rug because we're all taught "checks and balances are automatically good!" as children. Having some checks and balances is good, but too many can also be bad. With inertia taken to an extreme you get the Polish Sejm and the liberum veto - where any single member could object and veto not just the current legislation but every bit of legislation that had been passed in that session. That certainly "slowed government down", and eventually led to the collapse of the polish government. So there clearly exists some configurations where there can be too much inertia and it leads to an inability of the state to respond to a changing world and eventual collapse. Where does the US fall? Compared to most other countries, far far on the side of too much inertia, and we are also failing to a much greater extent then most other states at the moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto In particular I think the election of the US president separately from the legislature is very harmful. The executive and legislative agenda largely should be aligned, the cases where it's adversarial have been largely periods of "failed government" where nothing really gets passed. Of course that is also tied up with representative-level gerrymandering and state-size mismatches in the senate. The fixed 2-4-6 year cycles of the US government is also harmful compared to the (potentially) more frequent election cycles in other countries, as those countries can respond to losses in public confidence much more quickly. As such - the best solution to an unpopular president/legislature is likely a variable election cycle to get them back out quicker once they lose a mandate. I am completely willing to trade the other party being able to accomplish more of their agenda while they're in office, for me being able to accomplish more of my agenda while I'm in office. Elections should result in a mandate to enact policy, that is a good thing. It is better to have frequent elections that result in a mandate to lead, with changes in control when the party no longer reflects the will of the people, than to have nobody able to do anything all of the time.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    > Inertia is only that - inertia. It doesn't affect the overall trend, by definition no democratic system can withstand a popular-but-harmful idea that remains popular over a sustained period of time (Brexit might be an example). If a system doesn't manifest that public opinion then it is no longer democratic. This is a spherical-cow version of politics that doesnt reflect reality. There are plenty of path- and timing-dependent effects that shape public opinion and policy, especially given the powerful status quo bias most people use as the core of their cognition about policy. > what you're arguing against here isn't rapid change, it's democracy as a whole. There are two senses of the word democracy that you're conflating. One is democracy as a pure platonic concept, and one is the much more universal colloquial use to refer to a polity that meets a certain threshold of being democratic. The maximal case of the former word sense would be something like direct democracy with no constitutional protections. Very few people would argue for this form of "pure" democracy, and a marginal directional move away from that end of the spectrum doesn't suggest one is opposed to a country being democratic in the colloquial sense. (The distinction of the senses is important enough that explicitly anti-democratic phrases like "tyranny [of the majority]" are often used to refer to the "pure democracy" perspective). A second assumption you're making is that the distribution of the "goodness" of a policy is completely neutral with respect to policies that the masses are whimsical about vs have sustained support for. This is quite an extraordinary claim to make so confidently. If anything, it seems more plausible to me to assume that this distribution would shift in favor of the sustained-interest policies, which is precisely what inertia optimizes for. Now obviously, it matters where you are on the inertia scale. A society going through rapid, ill-considered, constant change is going to benefit from inertia while a sclerotic, declining polity in need of bold gov't action would benefit from less. But showing that the second case is relevant and making a case for the necessary policy shifts is a far heavier lift than the oversimplified assumptions you rest your general case on.
Semiapies 6y ago
It's a feature if you don't trust government to act well. If you did trust government to act well, why would you want them to be deliberate? Deliberation is a feature allowing opportunities to prevent harmful policies before they're enacted.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Because there's a point where continuing deliberations does more harm than acting without full confidence in the decision. It applies to governments as much as it does to companies and individuals.
  - Semiapies 6y ago
    "Because" what? That sentence structure suggests you're answering a question I raised, but you're not.
kansface 6y ago
The a priori expected outcome of any government intervention is neutral at best, net negative on average. Worse still, government interventions are sticky - essentially append only. We create government, policy, institutions, and regulations but very rarely remove them. Slow government is a feature, not a bug given the constraints.
- dv_dt 6y ago
  Slow government is like reducing the clock of your cpu in order to protect against security vulnerabilities. It's a non-sequitur. If you want to protect against bad government decisions you have to address the processes by which decisions are made, not slow down already made decisions.
  - kansface 6y ago
    > Slow government is like reducing the clock of your cpu in order to protect against security vulnerabilities. Negative. Bad laws are the program (business logic) itself, not the vulnerabilities. In lieu of refactoring society, I'd vote to continue underclocking the CPU. In so many words, "move fast and break things" isn't how I want society to be run. You have proposed we "move fast but don't break things". I do not believe that possible.
  - tremon 6y ago
    Slow government is like reducing the clock of your cpu in order to protect against security vulnerabilities Step debugging is exactly that: slowing down the execution enough so that errors in the process become apparent before the program reaches its fatal state. I disagree that it's a non-sequitur. What you want is for government to move slower than its observing processes, otherwise you can't prevent disasters, only correct them after-the-fact. Whether that means slowing down government or speeding up transparency (e.g. journalism/foia requests) is open for debate, but slow(ish) government is essential to the process of checks and balances.

by dv_dt 6y ago

Slow government is sort of only a feature of you don't think government should act. Really we should want deliberate and democratic/cooperative to decide but fast to act on settled matters.

mc32 6y ago

That presumes a democratic polity always settles on good matters.

dv_dt 6y ago
In general, to have a government at all, it should act by the processes by which it is validated by it's citizens - democratically ideally. But to have a government and pretend you don't want one to actually act seems silly. If you're worried about it acting in the wrong way, then focus on strengthening the democracy, transparency, and collaboration aspect of it. An ineffective government is a long term path to instability often leading to a risk of non-democratic rule.
- mc32 6y ago
  You’re fundamentally betting on both people AND government to make the “good” decision even in trying times. That’s just not the case. Under duress both people, even in a healthy democracy, can reach for the easy solution to a threat which might not be the good of right solution. Time delay usually blunts that initial urge.
  - dv_dt 6y ago
    That's why I say "we should want deliberate and democratic/cooperative to decide"...
paulmd 6y ago
Inertia is only that - inertia. It doesn't affect the overall trend, by definition no democratic system can withstand a popular-but-harmful idea that remains popular over a sustained period of time (Brexit might be an example). If a system doesn't manifest that public opinion then it is no longer democratic. In other words what you're arguing against here isn't rapid change, it's democracy as a whole. You can't prevent people from having stupid ideas, and on a long enough timescale any democratic system will eventually implement those ideas. The idea of gridlock as a design objective is very harmful. The "inability to form a government" is considered a failure states in most government systems, having a government that is actually able to enact policy is a good thing. In practice however, this gridlock does not produce any incentive to pass "things everyone really agrees on" at all, as you can see by various topics that have 90% public support (eg cannabis legalization) that have been ignored for decades. It just produces gridlock and nothing gets done at all, not even the stuff that "everyone" agrees on. This, too, is a form of un-democracy. A lot of the "gridlock = good" comes back to people blindly falling back on the fetishism they were taught about the US constitution in grade schools - checks and balances are a good thing, who could be against checks and balances? But if there are too many checks and balances that drags the whole system to a halt - again, having a government that is able to actually enact policy without a supermajority control of all branches of government is a good thing. They only work when everyone has a "gentleman's agreement" to play nice and actually do the things that help constituents - when everyone starts playing hardball to the maximal extent permitted by law, the systems drags to a halt and stops working. And once that becomes a matter of routine as opposed to a last resort due to extremity, the systems begins to fail. That's a design flaw, that gets brushed under the rug because we're all taught "checks and balances are automatically good!" as children. Having some checks and balances is good, but too many can also be bad. With inertia taken to an extreme you get the Polish Sejm and the liberum veto - where any single member could object and veto not just the current legislation but every bit of legislation that had been passed in that session. That certainly "slowed government down", and eventually led to the collapse of the polish government. So there clearly exists some configurations where there can be too much inertia and it leads to an inability of the state to respond to a changing world and eventual collapse. Where does the US fall? Compared to most other countries, far far on the side of too much inertia, and we are also failing to a much greater extent then most other states at the moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto In particular I think the election of the US president separately from the legislature is very harmful. The executive and legislative agenda largely should be aligned, the cases where it's adversarial have been largely periods of "failed government" where nothing really gets passed. Of course that is also tied up with representative-level gerrymandering and state-size mismatches in the senate. The fixed 2-4-6 year cycles of the US government is also harmful compared to the (potentially) more frequent election cycles in other countries, as those countries can respond to losses in public confidence much more quickly. As such - the best solution to an unpopular president/legislature is likely a variable election cycle to get them back out quicker once they lose a mandate. I am completely willing to trade the other party being able to accomplish more of their agenda while they're in office, for me being able to accomplish more of my agenda while I'm in office. Elections should result in a mandate to enact policy, that is a good thing. It is better to have frequent elections that result in a mandate to lead, with changes in control when the party no longer reflects the will of the people, than to have nobody able to do anything all of the time.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  > Inertia is only that - inertia. It doesn't affect the overall trend, by definition no democratic system can withstand a popular-but-harmful idea that remains popular over a sustained period of time (Brexit might be an example). If a system doesn't manifest that public opinion then it is no longer democratic. This is a spherical-cow version of politics that doesnt reflect reality. There are plenty of path- and timing-dependent effects that shape public opinion and policy, especially given the powerful status quo bias most people use as the core of their cognition about policy. > what you're arguing against here isn't rapid change, it's democracy as a whole. There are two senses of the word democracy that you're conflating. One is democracy as a pure platonic concept, and one is the much more universal colloquial use to refer to a polity that meets a certain threshold of being democratic. The maximal case of the former word sense would be something like direct democracy with no constitutional protections. Very few people would argue for this form of "pure" democracy, and a marginal directional move away from that end of the spectrum doesn't suggest one is opposed to a country being democratic in the colloquial sense. (The distinction of the senses is important enough that explicitly anti-democratic phrases like "tyranny [of the majority]" are often used to refer to the "pure democracy" perspective). A second assumption you're making is that the distribution of the "goodness" of a policy is completely neutral with respect to policies that the masses are whimsical about vs have sustained support for. This is quite an extraordinary claim to make so confidently. If anything, it seems more plausible to me to assume that this distribution would shift in favor of the sustained-interest policies, which is precisely what inertia optimizes for. Now obviously, it matters where you are on the inertia scale. A society going through rapid, ill-considered, constant change is going to benefit from inertia while a sclerotic, declining polity in need of bold gov't action would benefit from less. But showing that the second case is relevant and making a case for the necessary policy shifts is a far heavier lift than the oversimplified assumptions you rest your general case on.

Semiapies 6y ago

It's a feature if you don't trust government to act well. If you did trust government to act well, why would you want them to be deliberate? Deliberation is a feature allowing opportunities to prevent harmful policies before they're enacted.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Because there's a point where continuing deliberations does more harm than acting without full confidence in the decision. It applies to governments as much as it does to companies and individuals.
- Semiapies 6y ago
  "Because" what? That sentence structure suggests you're answering a question I raised, but you're not.

kansface 6y ago

The a priori expected outcome of any government intervention is neutral at best, net negative on average. Worse still, government interventions are sticky - essentially append only. We create government, policy, institutions, and regulations but very rarely remove them. Slow government is a feature, not a bug given the constraints.

dv_dt 6y ago
Slow government is like reducing the clock of your cpu in order to protect against security vulnerabilities. It's a non-sequitur. If you want to protect against bad government decisions you have to address the processes by which decisions are made, not slow down already made decisions.
- kansface 6y ago
  > Slow government is like reducing the clock of your cpu in order to protect against security vulnerabilities. Negative. Bad laws are the program (business logic) itself, not the vulnerabilities. In lieu of refactoring society, I'd vote to continue underclocking the CPU. In so many words, "move fast and break things" isn't how I want society to be run. You have proposed we "move fast but don't break things". I do not believe that possible.
- tremon 6y ago
  Slow government is like reducing the clock of your cpu in order to protect against security vulnerabilities Step debugging is exactly that: slowing down the execution enough so that errors in the process become apparent before the program reaches its fatal state. I disagree that it's a non-sequitur. What you want is for government to move slower than its observing processes, otherwise you can't prevent disasters, only correct them after-the-fact. Whether that means slowing down government or speeding up transparency (e.g. journalism/foia requests) is open for debate, but slow(ish) government is essential to the process of checks and balances.