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Democracy Is Losing Its Race with Disruption

53 points by donohoe 5y ago

specialist 5y ago
TLDR: Hoarding wealth is normal. Redistribution is necessary to keep the peace. This last cycle, wealth was accrued faster than normal counter balancing measures could respond. I wholly agree that technological change begets social unrest. And that regulation, applying rules to the open market, with competent referees, has struggled to keep pace with technological change. However. OC does not propose a theory for technological disruption leading to accelerating inequity. My best guess of the probable root cause is when wages were decoupled from productivity. Productivity boomed, wages remained stagnant. The Productivity-Wages Gap. There are insightful, complimentary narratives of this phenomenon from Piketty, Turchin, many others. Buy why did this happen when it did? My current best guess is when finance got super charged by IT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization When the majority of wealth creation transitioned from doing real world stuff to massaging balance sheets. When Capital transitioned from investment to rent seeking. Advances in IT was the enabler, force multiplier, by dramatically decreasing transaction costs and improving financial analysis (eg playing what-if with spreadsheets), Ok, fine. But why did wages stay decoupled? At the same time, Capital led a sustained attack on Labor. Which hobbled the expected normal efforts society has historically done to redistribute wealth. There are many, many useful complimentary narratives about Milton Friedman, Chicago School of Economics, Heritage Foundation, etc. Another "also true" story is Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-Society/dp/0691168016 https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So... Whereas other histories detail the obvious persons, ideologies, and culture war stuff, this book details the legislative knife-fight that actually made it happen. PS- My starting assumption is the fight is, and always has been, wealth vs democracy.
Threeve303 5y ago
Democracy can fight back
- listless 5y ago
  I just want to be honest for a moment with someone: I don’t think democracy works anymore. The model is predicated on representatives speaking for the people and regulating a few large entities. It is simply not setup to handle when everyone speaks and everyone is an entity. Perhaps we need a new take on democracy, but what I see is it falling apart in front of our eyes and all we can do is watch.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Ya. I've always thought the answer was more deliberative democracy. Hard to imagine how that can happen with modern media funded by advertising, the outrage engine fueled by anxiety and fear. Stuff like Oregon's experiments with Citizen Juries have kept my hope alive. Barely. "Jefferson Smith talks with Linn Davis from Healthy Democracy. Linn oversees the Citizens Initiative Review, in which Oregon voters deliberate a ballot initiative and provide a statement for the voters' pamphlet. The use of citizens' juries to weigh in on public policy has been exported to other states and other countries, including Switzerland where Linn Davis visited in the Fall of 2019." https://democracynerd.us/episode/exporting-oregon-style-democracy https://democracynerd.us/episode/exporting-oregon-style-demo...
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others that has been tried. Competent kings are great, but then we have to figure out how to get rid of them before they go literally crazy, or before their incompetent children mess everything up. ----- Honestly, the main issue today just is the same issue that has plagued democracies for centuries. Misinformation and demagogues. People like kings and authoritarians. People like breaking the rules as long as it supports their side. Caesar can march over the Rubicon in gross violation of law and become a national hero (and emperor) This has been known for thousands of years. Republics die because the people get tired of it and give up for a king or dictator or Caesar.
    - specialist 5y ago
      Societies lurch from tyranny to revolution and then back again. Because preferential attachment leading to winner takes all is something akin to a natural law. Tyranny. Because no open ended complex adaptive system can sustain a stable equilibrium. Revolution. Democracy and other notions try to find a middle path, to avoid the two extremes. Sometimes it works, a little bit, for a little while. Just because no stable middle path is possible doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Over the ages, we've gotten a bit better at it. h/t Robert Wright's book Nonzero.
Barrin92 5y ago
I think the approach that people like Reich take, which is this old-school institutional thinking is desperately trying to put things back into Pandora's box. Marx a long time ago gave a similar criticism concerning the socialist version of this line of argument, agreeing with the critique but pointing out: "[...]In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.[...] Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues" And I think these kinds of articles are the sort of liberal American analogue. Technology has networked people in a way and created structures that will wash old democratic institutions away. If you want to salvage something, salvage the consensus building and free exchange of information, not the separation of powers, rights based discourse, outside imposed regulation and so on. Maybe we should try to bring back Cybersyn or something, it seemed kind of ahead of its time

53 points by donohoe 5y ago

TLDR: Hoarding wealth is normal. Redistribution is necessary to keep the peace. This last cycle, wealth was accrued faster than normal counter balancing measures could respond. I wholly agree that technological change begets social unrest. And that regulation, applying rules to the open market, with competent referees, has struggled to keep pace with technological change. However. OC does not propose a theory for technological disruption leading to accelerating inequity. My best guess of the probable root cause is when wages were decoupled from productivity. Productivity boomed, wages remained stagnant. The Productivity-Wages Gap. There are insightful, complimentary narratives of this phenomenon from Piketty, Turchin, many others. Buy why did this happen when it did? My current best guess is when finance got super charged by IT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization When the majority of wealth creation transitioned from doing real world stuff to massaging balance sheets. When Capital transitioned from investment to rent seeking. Advances in IT was the enabler, force multiplier, by dramatically decreasing transaction costs and improving financial analysis (eg playing what-if with spreadsheets), Ok, fine. But why did wages stay decoupled? At the same time, Capital led a sustained attack on Labor. Which hobbled the expected normal efforts society has historically done to redistribute wealth. There are many, many useful complimentary narratives about Milton Friedman, Chicago School of Economics, Heritage Foundation, etc. Another "also true" story is Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-Society/dp/0691168016 https://www.amazon.com/Lobbying-America-Politics-Business-So... Whereas other histories detail the obvious persons, ideologies, and culture war stuff, this book details the legislative knife-fight that actually made it happen. PS- My starting assumption is the fight is, and always has been, wealth vs democracy.

Threeve303 5y ago

Democracy can fight back

listless 5y ago
I just want to be honest for a moment with someone: I don’t think democracy works anymore. The model is predicated on representatives speaking for the people and regulating a few large entities. It is simply not setup to handle when everyone speaks and everyone is an entity. Perhaps we need a new take on democracy, but what I see is it falling apart in front of our eyes and all we can do is watch.
- specialist 5y ago
  Ya. I've always thought the answer was more deliberative democracy. Hard to imagine how that can happen with modern media funded by advertising, the outrage engine fueled by anxiety and fear. Stuff like Oregon's experiments with Citizen Juries have kept my hope alive. Barely. "Jefferson Smith talks with Linn Davis from Healthy Democracy. Linn oversees the Citizens Initiative Review, in which Oregon voters deliberate a ballot initiative and provide a statement for the voters' pamphlet. The use of citizens' juries to weigh in on public policy has been exported to other states and other countries, including Switzerland where Linn Davis visited in the Fall of 2019." https://democracynerd.us/episode/exporting-oregon-style-democracy https://democracynerd.us/episode/exporting-oregon-style-demo...
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others that has been tried. Competent kings are great, but then we have to figure out how to get rid of them before they go literally crazy, or before their incompetent children mess everything up. ----- Honestly, the main issue today just is the same issue that has plagued democracies for centuries. Misinformation and demagogues. People like kings and authoritarians. People like breaking the rules as long as it supports their side. Caesar can march over the Rubicon in gross violation of law and become a national hero (and emperor) This has been known for thousands of years. Republics die because the people get tired of it and give up for a king or dictator or Caesar.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Societies lurch from tyranny to revolution and then back again. Because preferential attachment leading to winner takes all is something akin to a natural law. Tyranny. Because no open ended complex adaptive system can sustain a stable equilibrium. Revolution. Democracy and other notions try to find a middle path, to avoid the two extremes. Sometimes it works, a little bit, for a little while. Just because no stable middle path is possible doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Over the ages, we've gotten a bit better at it. h/t Robert Wright's book Nonzero.

Barrin92 5y ago

I think the approach that people like Reich take, which is this old-school institutional thinking is desperately trying to put things back into Pandora's box. Marx a long time ago gave a similar criticism concerning the socialist version of this line of argument, agreeing with the critique but pointing out: "[...]In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.[...] Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues" And I think these kinds of articles are the sort of liberal American analogue. Technology has networked people in a way and created structures that will wash old democratic institutions away. If you want to salvage something, salvage the consensus building and free exchange of information, not the separation of powers, rights based discourse, outside imposed regulation and so on. Maybe we should try to bring back Cybersyn or something, it seemed kind of ahead of its time