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Believing that governments can be effective on a global scale is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. History has shown time and again

Believing that governments can be effective on a global scale is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. History has shown time and again that the best we can do is some local maxima that works only for a part of the population at the cost of everyone of the periphery of power, and even these on the top can get wiped out by a Black Swan. There will not be one single standard of policies that will work for all people, no matter how "democratic" the process to establish the rules are and no matter how good the ideas you think they are. What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments, get their leaders to act on a localized level and to be directly accountable for the results of their policies. Anything else will take us to more centralization, more forced conformity, less diversity and more fragility facing global-scale events. We need more Switzerlands and less USAs and even less European Unions.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Believing that governments can be effective on a global scale is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. No, it's not. > History has shown time and again that the best we can do is some local maxima that works only for a part of the population at the cost of everyone of the periphery of power. To the the extent that’s defensible, the problem with your recommendation: > What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments, Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives. You've jumped from a defensible argument about the limitations of government to an indefensible response.
- rglullis 5y ago
  Let me rephrase: believing that governments can be effective on a global scale while keeping individual freedoms is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. > Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives I am not defending localism as a way to "produce better results" for more people. I am defending it on the premise that it is a more robust idea and more likely to sustain long-lasting societies than any progressive "one size fits all" government.
  - loceng 5y ago
    Did I somehow propose "one size fits all" in any of my comments in this thread? You seem to have come to your conclusions referencing history, and not leading from a conclusion starting at founding principles. The United States of America has been an experiment, with the basis of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. It's done quite well in its first iteration. The next framework now needs to be laid out, but part of that is educating the population (local and globally, as each geography is going to be prone to the actions of bad actors) so then they can vote rationally, reasonably, and ideally not following or indoctrinated into ideology. You seem to have a misconception or confusing what "government at a global scale" is, perhaps you're once again presuming the current status quo of generally captured and incompetence elected general officials (like the establishment/duopoly in the US) will forever be and so then yes, if you do the same thing over and over again (with incompetent and captured politicians in positions of power and others' captured leading our government institutions) then yes, that would be insane - but the status quo can change - and new ideas, the truth, is making its way to regular folks because of the reduction in capture of attention that the internet has allowed, and focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      > Did I somehow propose "one size fits all" in any of my comments in this thread? Yes, even if you don't realize it. UBI, "Journalist Dollars", "Political vouchers" and pretty much every proposal from Andrew Yang are all starting to sound like variations of the old joke about the farmer getting in trouble with the inspector about the feed given to the pigs until he decides to just give each pig $10 so that they can eat at the local buffet. They all involve blanket solutions without looking into any context or idiosyncrasy of any of the separate regions. It reeks of this coastal elite mentality that believes that people on the periphery want to live like those in the big economic centers. > The USA has been an experiment (...) The next framework now needs to be laid out. Read again and tell me how you are not implying that one framework is to be established and implemented. How are you not advocating a top-down solution? > focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key. Yeah, that has been the technocrats wet-dream about the Internet. I've been hearing how the internet would help educate people all across the world since I got my first 14.4k modem. But instead of this utopia you are painting we got Donald Trump, Orban, the Chinese "social credit" system and a continuous detoriation of "Western democracies" that benefited only but the tech elite. No, thank you. This is not the world that I want to my live in and my children to grow on.
pessimizer 5y ago
> There will not be one single standard of policies that will work for all people, no matter how "democratic" the process to establish the rules are and no matter how good the ideas you think they are. Are we defining "people" here racially, as a language group, or as the humans who live within the particular borders of an old colony or the territory of a long dead conquerer? Why is Switzerland the ideal size? Does something about that size reduce the proportion of people at the "periphery of power"?
- rglullis 5y ago
  It's not about Switzerland's size. It's about its bottom-up political structure. The cantons hold more political and economical power than the federation. It's so local-first that there are stories of people who were denied Swiss citizenship basically because their neighbors considered the person to be not aligned with the community values. Policies are defined almost at a district level. Comparing with the other "big" countries in Europe, there is no distant bureaucracy enacting laws affecting subjects that are not on the same sphere. The USA was built on the same idea, where states have a lot more direct power than the federal government, but that idea is basically lost because people on both sides of the political spectrum have been pushing for more centralization and federal control.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Believing that governments can be effective on a global scale is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. No, it's not. > History has shown time and again that the best we can do is some local maxima that works only for a part of the population at the cost of everyone of the periphery of power. To the the extent that’s defensible, the problem with your recommendation: > What we need is to reduce the scope and reach of governments, Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives. You've jumped from a defensible argument about the limitations of government to an indefensible response.

rglullis 5y ago
Let me rephrase: believing that governments can be effective on a global scale while keeping individual freedoms is the leftist version of Intelligent Design Theory of Evolution. > Is that the evidence does not show that that produces better results for more people than than alternatives I am not defending localism as a way to "produce better results" for more people. I am defending it on the premise that it is a more robust idea and more likely to sustain long-lasting societies than any progressive "one size fits all" government.
- loceng 5y ago
  Did I somehow propose "one size fits all" in any of my comments in this thread? You seem to have come to your conclusions referencing history, and not leading from a conclusion starting at founding principles. The United States of America has been an experiment, with the basis of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. It's done quite well in its first iteration. The next framework now needs to be laid out, but part of that is educating the population (local and globally, as each geography is going to be prone to the actions of bad actors) so then they can vote rationally, reasonably, and ideally not following or indoctrinated into ideology. You seem to have a misconception or confusing what "government at a global scale" is, perhaps you're once again presuming the current status quo of generally captured and incompetence elected general officials (like the establishment/duopoly in the US) will forever be and so then yes, if you do the same thing over and over again (with incompetent and captured politicians in positions of power and others' captured leading our government institutions) then yes, that would be insane - but the status quo can change - and new ideas, the truth, is making its way to regular folks because of the reduction in capture of attention that the internet has allowed, and focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    > Did I somehow propose "one size fits all" in any of my comments in this thread? Yes, even if you don't realize it. UBI, "Journalist Dollars", "Political vouchers" and pretty much every proposal from Andrew Yang are all starting to sound like variations of the old joke about the farmer getting in trouble with the inspector about the feed given to the pigs until he decides to just give each pig $10 so that they can eat at the local buffet. They all involve blanket solutions without looking into any context or idiosyncrasy of any of the separate regions. It reeks of this coastal elite mentality that believes that people on the periphery want to live like those in the big economic centers. > The USA has been an experiment (...) The next framework now needs to be laid out. Read again and tell me how you are not implying that one framework is to be established and implemented. How are you not advocating a top-down solution? > focusing on creating online platforms and systems to further strengthen education-learning, communications and reaching like-minded and like-hearted community is the key. Yeah, that has been the technocrats wet-dream about the Internet. I've been hearing how the internet would help educate people all across the world since I got my first 14.4k modem. But instead of this utopia you are painting we got Donald Trump, Orban, the Chinese "social credit" system and a continuous detoriation of "Western democracies" that benefited only but the tech elite. No, thank you. This is not the world that I want to my live in and my children to grow on.

pessimizer 5y ago

> There will not be one single standard of policies that will work for all people, no matter how "democratic" the process to establish the rules are and no matter how good the ideas you think they are. Are we defining "people" here racially, as a language group, or as the humans who live within the particular borders of an old colony or the territory of a long dead conquerer? Why is Switzerland the ideal size? Does something about that size reduce the proportion of people at the "periphery of power"?

rglullis 5y ago
It's not about Switzerland's size. It's about its bottom-up political structure. The cantons hold more political and economical power than the federation. It's so local-first that there are stories of people who were denied Swiss citizenship basically because their neighbors considered the person to be not aligned with the community values. Policies are defined almost at a district level. Comparing with the other "big" countries in Europe, there is no distant bureaucracy enacting laws affecting subjects that are not on the same sphere. The USA was built on the same idea, where states have a lot more direct power than the federal government, but that idea is basically lost because people on both sides of the political spectrum have been pushing for more centralization and federal control.