4 ms·

Every organisation has 3 major stages: newborn, mature, and old. When competition is present, old organizations are eaten by newborn organizations. Government i

Every organisation has 3 major stages: newborn, mature, and old. When competition is present, old organizations are eaten by newborn organizations. Government is monopoly, so no competition, thus old organization must die first.

lbriner 5y ago
Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? Interesting idea! Unfortauntely, I think the states are too high at government level. Nothing too bad will happen when one trash company takes over from another trash company but what would happen if some random group took over the defence policy for a country because the current government didn't seem to be doing very well at it?
- virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
  > Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? If you have multiple different policies (i.e. laws) with no clear indication of what is legal/illegal, you have neither law nor government
- gen220 5y ago
  This is what federalism is! (Competing state and local governments, federated together and governed by a centralized federal government, which grows over time as citizens of the states agree on what laws they want to enforce). Most laws passed by the federal government were first experimented with at the local or state level, until a majority of the peoples’ representatives believed they should be applied universally with a centralized implementation. Of course there are many loopholes and exceptions in the US’s system, but this was one of the foundational ideas of the current constitution.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    I can't help but wonder how the American political system would look if an amendment passed which gave the individual states the ability to decide for themselves: 1. What constitutes a well regulated militia 2. Whether certain drugs should be legal to consume 3. At what stage of development human life begins Moreover, I can't help wondering how popular such an amendment would be with voters, and with the two main parties.
    - gtyras2mrs 5y ago
      From a US perspective, how would you deal with interstate commerce? Would the federal government be able to interfere as a result? Would companies State A (where drugs are legal) be able to trade freely with citizens in State B (where drugs are illegal) without an inspection at the border? Would citizens from State B (where guns are legal) be able to travel freely to State A (where they are heavily restricted) without an inspection at the border? What laws could State B (where abortion is illegal) create to punish its residents for travelling to State A (where abortions are legal) to get an abortion? How would this disparately impact people based on wealth (i.e someone who could freely afford to fly to State A, vs someone who lives on a min-wage job)
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        My understanding is that US states aren't able to pass extraterritorial laws or claim personal jurisdiction based on someone being normally resident within their state. That should prevent states from punishing residents for travelling to carry out acts which are legal at their destination. Similarly it should be implicit from the existence and intent of the amendment that the Interstate Commerce Clause doesn't allow the federal government to render it null and void. I think it is a common legal principle that earlier, more general laws are overridden by later, more specific laws. Finally, I don't think there is anything unique about this hypothetical amendment from the perspective of wealth inequality. There are plenty of things that wealthier people are able to take advantage of, including travelling to countries where the drinking age is lower, for example.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      You'd have drug and gun smuggling between states, and abortion tourism between states.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        So in practice there'd be little difference between what people do now and what they would do if this amendment was accepted. What would change, however, is the temperature of debates about federal politics, and it would become harder for the two main parties to distinguish themselves and divide the population.
- oddmiral 5y ago
  Some form of competition is nice to have. For example, it's better to have a parliament than a dictator, because parties will compete with each other to fit people needs (or oligarch needs, if democracy is broken). In Canada, police forces are compete. For example, municipality can sign contract with one of provincial police force or municipal police force, or create their own police force. This competition creates a positive feeback loop.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
I have to agree. Governments seem like legacy code bases. Technically the laws are a form of code. People and institutions are the hardware the code runs on. Changing requirements of the environment the machine runs in (reality) mean we must refactor and maintain the code. If the environment changes too quickly and the code is too fragile to change at the required rate then some part of the system will crash. Enough crashes and the whole thing collapses. Then we have to rewrite the thing from scratch with the lessons we learned from the previous version. Unfortunately some governments make use of dark patterns that are bad for users but good for a few. I'm done ranting...
- nslice 5y ago
  Yes I agree. It's difficult to switch to a new code base (government) because the legacy system (current government) also has authority (most citizens recognize government with the most enforcement), incentive (lawmakers want to keep their power), and power (military) to keep itself there indefinitely.
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  This doesn't seem in agreement with the parent comment, and is a much better analogy than a mere 'government as something that will eventually die'. Sure, governments are organizations that will eventually 'die' in some form, but how is that a useful observation? The British government has a lot of 'legacy code' going back to the deep middle ages, and yet (in its current 'state of the codebase', which can improve or worsen over time) it is much further away from 'death' than many newcomers in the third world who had no codebase to speak of 60 years ago. Theirs are badly maintained forks and occasionally the whole thing blows up and needs to be monkey-patched to keep creaking on in some fashion. Age is thus no impediment at all to having a well-functioning, efficient government, and 'startups' are often in the most disadvantageous position of all. So even the software analogy fails us at some point, and cannot be taken any further.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
AshamedCaptain 5y ago
> old organizations are eaten by newborn organizations I would argue that what happens in practice is newborn organizations are eaten by old organizations. In fact, startups are being born these days with the express purpose of being eaten by a multinational. There is no competition whatsoever between the old mammoths and the new things, and in fact it is the exception rather than the rule to see an "old mammoth company" disappear, fail, or be eaten.

lbriner 5y ago

Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? Interesting idea! Unfortauntely, I think the states are too high at government level. Nothing too bad will happen when one trash company takes over from another trash company but what would happen if some random group took over the defence policy for a country because the current government didn't seem to be doing very well at it?

virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
> Are you saying that we should have competitive governments? If you have multiple different policies (i.e. laws) with no clear indication of what is legal/illegal, you have neither law nor government
gen220 5y ago
This is what federalism is! (Competing state and local governments, federated together and governed by a centralized federal government, which grows over time as citizens of the states agree on what laws they want to enforce). Most laws passed by the federal government were first experimented with at the local or state level, until a majority of the peoples’ representatives believed they should be applied universally with a centralized implementation. Of course there are many loopholes and exceptions in the US’s system, but this was one of the foundational ideas of the current constitution.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  I can't help but wonder how the American political system would look if an amendment passed which gave the individual states the ability to decide for themselves: 1. What constitutes a well regulated militia 2. Whether certain drugs should be legal to consume 3. At what stage of development human life begins Moreover, I can't help wondering how popular such an amendment would be with voters, and with the two main parties.
  - gtyras2mrs 5y ago
    From a US perspective, how would you deal with interstate commerce? Would the federal government be able to interfere as a result? Would companies State A (where drugs are legal) be able to trade freely with citizens in State B (where drugs are illegal) without an inspection at the border? Would citizens from State B (where guns are legal) be able to travel freely to State A (where they are heavily restricted) without an inspection at the border? What laws could State B (where abortion is illegal) create to punish its residents for travelling to State A (where abortions are legal) to get an abortion? How would this disparately impact people based on wealth (i.e someone who could freely afford to fly to State A, vs someone who lives on a min-wage job)
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      My understanding is that US states aren't able to pass extraterritorial laws or claim personal jurisdiction based on someone being normally resident within their state. That should prevent states from punishing residents for travelling to carry out acts which are legal at their destination. Similarly it should be implicit from the existence and intent of the amendment that the Interstate Commerce Clause doesn't allow the federal government to render it null and void. I think it is a common legal principle that earlier, more general laws are overridden by later, more specific laws. Finally, I don't think there is anything unique about this hypothetical amendment from the perspective of wealth inequality. There are plenty of things that wealthier people are able to take advantage of, including travelling to countries where the drinking age is lower, for example.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    You'd have drug and gun smuggling between states, and abortion tourism between states.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      So in practice there'd be little difference between what people do now and what they would do if this amendment was accepted. What would change, however, is the temperature of debates about federal politics, and it would become harder for the two main parties to distinguish themselves and divide the population.
oddmiral 5y ago
Some form of competition is nice to have. For example, it's better to have a parliament than a dictator, because parties will compete with each other to fit people needs (or oligarch needs, if democracy is broken). In Canada, police forces are compete. For example, municipality can sign contract with one of provincial police force or municipal police force, or create their own police force. This competition creates a positive feeback loop.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

I have to agree. Governments seem like legacy code bases. Technically the laws are a form of code. People and institutions are the hardware the code runs on. Changing requirements of the environment the machine runs in (reality) mean we must refactor and maintain the code. If the environment changes too quickly and the code is too fragile to change at the required rate then some part of the system will crash. Enough crashes and the whole thing collapses. Then we have to rewrite the thing from scratch with the lessons we learned from the previous version. Unfortunately some governments make use of dark patterns that are bad for users but good for a few. I'm done ranting...

nslice 5y ago
Yes I agree. It's difficult to switch to a new code base (government) because the legacy system (current government) also has authority (most citizens recognize government with the most enforcement), incentive (lawmakers want to keep their power), and power (military) to keep itself there indefinitely.
kspacewalk2 5y ago
This doesn't seem in agreement with the parent comment, and is a much better analogy than a mere 'government as something that will eventually die'. Sure, governments are organizations that will eventually 'die' in some form, but how is that a useful observation? The British government has a lot of 'legacy code' going back to the deep middle ages, and yet (in its current 'state of the codebase', which can improve or worsen over time) it is much further away from 'death' than many newcomers in the third world who had no codebase to speak of 60 years ago. Theirs are badly maintained forks and occasionally the whole thing blows up and needs to be monkey-patched to keep creaking on in some fashion. Age is thus no impediment at all to having a well-functioning, efficient government, and 'startups' are often in the most disadvantageous position of all. So even the software analogy fails us at some point, and cannot be taken any further.
johnchristopher 5y ago
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

AshamedCaptain 5y ago

> old organizations are eaten by newborn organizations I would argue that what happens in practice is newborn organizations are eaten by old organizations. In fact, startups are being born these days with the express purpose of being eaten by a multinational. There is no competition whatsoever between the old mammoths and the new things, and in fact it is the exception rather than the rule to see an "old mammoth company" disappear, fail, or be eaten.