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Very good point. Still, politics is not (only) a philosophical discussion - policy must be made, and it's reasonable to try for an effective policy with minimal
by JoachimSchipper 15y ago
Very good point. Still, politics is not (only) a philosophical discussion - policy must be made, and it's reasonable to try for an effective policy with minimal bad side effects.
Consider the US' Prohibition. Even taking it as a given that the majority of the voters wanted to see alcohol banned [1], it's hard to see it as anything but a disaster.
I'd say there are more modern examples, too.
[1] Yes, this is debatable. Not the point, though.
- Gormo 15y agoBut in order to try for an effective policy, we have to have a consensus on what that policy is meant to achieve. If there's a persistent disagreement here, we're at an impasse. Sure we can look at the unintended consequences of policies like prohibition (which is still a very current example, with its disastrous effects still readily evident), but when the disputes extend to the intended consequences, or when people resolve the tradeoff of primary result vs. deleterious side effects in opposing ways, the debate is irresolvable. I think the highly polarized political climate is itself a deleterious side effect of the meta-policy of political centralization: the more people you try to cover under a single policy, the more conflict and 'gridlock' there will inevitably be. This, of course, is a strong argument for addressing policy questions as the smallest appropriate level; perhaps those who want to create economies of scale for their political projects are creating disproportionate diseconomies of scale.