5 ms·

Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, long term burrocrats, thereby ensuring the reigns of power are held in a stable structure

Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, long term burrocrats, thereby ensuring the reigns of power are held in a stable structure that cannot be perturbed by passing social fancies. and that would be better yet, right? I think that best government is least government; if we need a "governing class" hanging around all the time, then making sure they're webbed up and tied down with process, procedures, and other bullshit to the point of almost total sclerosis is the best way for society to survive their presence.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>I think that best government is least government... and thus if need a project management class in the company then making sure they're webbed up and tied down with process, procedures, and other bullshit to the point of almost total sclerosis is the best way to get our projects delivered on time and under budget!
- the_other 5y ago
  I’ve been wondering if we should replace government entirely with all the project managers. They all huddle together learning strategies, processes and practicing on one another. They can read history and philosophy too if deemed useful. The actual work gets done by everyone else. When a project comes up, the project team applies for a manager or two for just their one project. “Government” helps determine the appropriate management system for the project outcomes and rents/gives the project a (team of) managers trained in Scrum/PRINCE/Consensus/holocracy/etc. At the end of the project the team disbands and the managers return to the pool.
lesuorac 5y ago
> Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, long term burrocrats, thereby ensuring the reigns of power are held in a stable structure that cannot be perturbed by passing social fancies. Does it though? It's much more than just the heads of agencies that are political appointees [1] that change with administrations. It may appear that the government can be slowed by paperwork but there really is no penalty for the executive branch (or any branch) to just ignore the other branches (ex. [2]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_in_the_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#Legal_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#Legal_backgroun...
dbingham 5y ago
> I think that best government is least government; The problem with this view is that government is the way that we - as a society - make collective decisions about the rules and norms under which we want to live, as well as the way we build programs to serve the public good and achieve things that we want to achieve together. If you make that process - the process of deciding rules and norms - so painstaking slow, and the process of enforcing the rules nearly impossible, then what you end up with is a society with out rules or norms. Which isn't a society. Or with rules and norms locked down and frozen, unable to adjust to the changing needs of the society. What we need is a government that is as responsive to the needs and wants of the governed as possible. Usually the way you achieve that is through various forms of democracies, but those are prone to tyrannies of the majority - in which a majority intentionally choose to oppress various minorities. So the trick is to have a super-responsive Democracy that also has safeguards in place to protect the minority from the majority. And there in lies the rub, what those safeguards should be is the never ending debate. But "best government is least government" is a truly toxic and self-destructive meme that has badly infected US culture. If you want to understand what you're actually saying with that sentence, s/government/civilization/g. Government is simply the mechanism through which we collectively build our civilization.
- lkrubner 5y ago
  It's worth comparing the way the Constitution is amended in Hungary and the USA. In Hungary the process is too fast, in the USA the process is too slow. There must be a sweet spot, in-between these two countries: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/thesis-1-there-is-one-correct-way?s=w https://demodexio.substack.com/p/thesis-1-there-is-one-corre...
- IncRnd 5y ago
  > But "best government is least government" is a truly toxic and self-destructive meme that has badly infected US culture. If you want to understand what you're actually saying with that sentence, s/government/civilization/g. Government is simply the mechanism through which we collectively build our civilization. Now that our civilization is built, we don't need armies of elected politicians or long-term, unelected functionaries controlling the society or ourselves.
Veliladon 5y ago
I get the sentiment but I'm really curious to ask. What happens if someone wants to go into politics to make positive change for a community and it's bogged down with that same process, procedures, and other bullshit?
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Then "politics" is not the means to make a positive change in society. Cf Elon Musk.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> I think that best government is least government Ok. That is literally an extremist view. It is too easy a mantra. Exactly how little government would be too small? I personally think the IRS should be funded, so to the FBI, EPA and military. Other people think otherwise and would be happy to do away with all those agencies. But to say that less is always better is to wash one's hands of the conversation, to abandon the hard task of working out exactly which services society wants and needs from government. Less always seems better until you actually need something.
- kelseyfrog 5y ago
  On the contrary. It's a bold claim that there should be a government with any size at all. The modern nation state is a relatively recent invention. There is no reason why it among all possible forms of organization or unorganization should be the global optimum. What's more frightening to me is that it would be a local optimum - a corridor of thought impossible to reverse course on once decided, and always preventing us from reaching a more perfect form of governance or ungovernence as the case may be. I'm not here to discuss the benefits any particular form of governance, that's irrelevant to the idea of only having local information in an governance optimization landscape.
  - adamsmith143 5y ago
    >The modern nation state is a relatively recent invention On what time scale, geologic?
    - h2odragon 5y ago
      500 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
  - lkrubner 5y ago
    All known human societies have government, even the most primitive tribes, so I'm not clear what your point is. I was just reading about the The Tripolye Culture giant-settlements in Ukraine, from 7,000 years ago, who seem to have had something like a democratic government: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1842174835/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1842174835/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
gumby 5y ago
> Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, long term burrocrats, thereby ensuring the reigns of power are held in a stable structure that cannot be perturbed by passing social fancies. and that would be better yet, right? Well, sure. I am glad to have domain experts who understand the trade offs of highway construction or whatnot on the execution side while other people operate at a higher level of abstraction (how do we allocate funds at a macro level, and trade off the various interests?). It’s far from perfect but far more effective than having elected officials decide how thick the roadbeds should be or the maximum spacing for electrical plugs in houses.
- lkrubner 5y ago
  Suggested in a previous essay, in a world of complexity and great specialization, political power should shift to the highly specialized committees: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-have-politics-in-the-usa-become?s=w https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-have-politics-in-the-us...
adamsmith143 5y ago
I don't think Anarchists and US style Libertarians understand the implications of their beliefs. Go look at countries where there are very weak central governments. You will universally find strife, famine, corruption, war, etc. These are not utopias, frankly they are dystopic.
rstuart4133 5y ago
> Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, Baked into that statement is the assumption shorter electoral terms means shorter periods in power. It doesn't. Governments tend to stay in power for about 8 years where I live, which has 3 year terms. That doesn't seem to be much different to the UK, were terms are twice as long, or the US for that matter. But individual politicians are often there for decades. The fate of the election tends to depend on 10 or 20 swinging seats, out of about 80. Typically a bureaucrat is going to be dealing with politicians with decades of experience at handling bureaucrats. It's not always true of course. Occasionally, the electorate does get riled up when the government does a particularly poor job. And then it isn't just a matter of 10 or 20 seats, most of them change, and it's after a minimal term in office. But that's only happened literally once in 60 years to me. Yes, that's inefficient, but I don't see any choice. Occasionally, the political class needs to be reminded who is actually in charge. 3 year reminders seems to work well enough.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>I think that best government is least government... and thus if need a project management class in the company then making sure they're webbed up and tied down with process, procedures, and other bullshit to the point of almost total sclerosis is the best way to get our projects delivered on time and under budget!

the_other 5y ago
I’ve been wondering if we should replace government entirely with all the project managers. They all huddle together learning strategies, processes and practicing on one another. They can read history and philosophy too if deemed useful. The actual work gets done by everyone else. When a project comes up, the project team applies for a manager or two for just their one project. “Government” helps determine the appropriate management system for the project outcomes and rents/gives the project a (team of) managers trained in Scrum/PRINCE/Consensus/holocracy/etc. At the end of the project the team disbands and the managers return to the pool.

lesuorac 5y ago

> Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, long term burrocrats, thereby ensuring the reigns of power are held in a stable structure that cannot be perturbed by passing social fancies. Does it though? It's much more than just the heads of agencies that are political appointees [1] that change with administrations. It may appear that the government can be slowed by paperwork but there really is no penalty for the executive branch (or any branch) to just ignore the other branches (ex. [2]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_appointments_in_the_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#Legal_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears#Legal_backgroun...

dbingham 5y ago

> I think that best government is least government; The problem with this view is that government is the way that we - as a society - make collective decisions about the rules and norms under which we want to live, as well as the way we build programs to serve the public good and achieve things that we want to achieve together. If you make that process - the process of deciding rules and norms - so painstaking slow, and the process of enforcing the rules nearly impossible, then what you end up with is a society with out rules or norms. Which isn't a society. Or with rules and norms locked down and frozen, unable to adjust to the changing needs of the society. What we need is a government that is as responsive to the needs and wants of the governed as possible. Usually the way you achieve that is through various forms of democracies, but those are prone to tyrannies of the majority - in which a majority intentionally choose to oppress various minorities. So the trick is to have a super-responsive Democracy that also has safeguards in place to protect the minority from the majority. And there in lies the rub, what those safeguards should be is the never ending debate. But "best government is least government" is a truly toxic and self-destructive meme that has badly infected US culture. If you want to understand what you're actually saying with that sentence, s/government/civilization/g. Government is simply the mechanism through which we collectively build our civilization.

lkrubner 5y ago
It's worth comparing the way the Constitution is amended in Hungary and the USA. In Hungary the process is too fast, in the USA the process is too slow. There must be a sweet spot, in-between these two countries: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/thesis-1-there-is-one-correct-way?s=w https://demodexio.substack.com/p/thesis-1-there-is-one-corre...
IncRnd 5y ago
> But "best government is least government" is a truly toxic and self-destructive meme that has badly infected US culture. If you want to understand what you're actually saying with that sentence, s/government/civilization/g. Government is simply the mechanism through which we collectively build our civilization. Now that our civilization is built, we don't need armies of elected politicians or long-term, unelected functionaries controlling the society or ourselves.

Veliladon 5y ago

I get the sentiment but I'm really curious to ask. What happens if someone wants to go into politics to make positive change for a community and it's bogged down with that same process, procedures, and other bullshit?

h2odragon 5y ago
Then "politics" is not the means to make a positive change in society. Cf Elon Musk.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> I think that best government is least government Ok. That is literally an extremist view. It is too easy a mantra. Exactly how little government would be too small? I personally think the IRS should be funded, so to the FBI, EPA and military. Other people think otherwise and would be happy to do away with all those agencies. But to say that less is always better is to wash one's hands of the conversation, to abandon the hard task of working out exactly which services society wants and needs from government. Less always seems better until you actually need something.

kelseyfrog 5y ago
On the contrary. It's a bold claim that there should be a government with any size at all. The modern nation state is a relatively recent invention. There is no reason why it among all possible forms of organization or unorganization should be the global optimum. What's more frightening to me is that it would be a local optimum - a corridor of thought impossible to reverse course on once decided, and always preventing us from reaching a more perfect form of governance or ungovernence as the case may be. I'm not here to discuss the benefits any particular form of governance, that's irrelevant to the idea of only having local information in an governance optimization landscape.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  >The modern nation state is a relatively recent invention On what time scale, geologic?
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    500 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia
- lkrubner 5y ago
  All known human societies have government, even the most primitive tribes, so I'm not clear what your point is. I was just reading about the The Tripolye Culture giant-settlements in Ukraine, from 7,000 years ago, who seem to have had something like a democratic government: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1842174835/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1842174835/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

gumby 5y ago

> Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, long term burrocrats, thereby ensuring the reigns of power are held in a stable structure that cannot be perturbed by passing social fancies. and that would be better yet, right? Well, sure. I am glad to have domain experts who understand the trade offs of highway construction or whatnot on the execution side while other people operate at a higher level of abstraction (how do we allocate funds at a macro level, and trade off the various interests?). It’s far from perfect but far more effective than having elected officials decide how thick the roadbeds should be or the maximum spacing for electrical plugs in houses.

lkrubner 5y ago
Suggested in a previous essay, in a world of complexity and great specialization, political power should shift to the highly specialized committees: https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-have-politics-in-the-usa-become?s=w https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-have-politics-in-the-us...

adamsmith143 5y ago

I don't think Anarchists and US style Libertarians understand the implications of their beliefs. Go look at countries where there are very weak central governments. You will universally find strife, famine, corruption, war, etc. These are not utopias, frankly they are dystopic.

rstuart4133 5y ago

> Shorter terms devolve the actual functions of governance to unelected, Baked into that statement is the assumption shorter electoral terms means shorter periods in power. It doesn't. Governments tend to stay in power for about 8 years where I live, which has 3 year terms. That doesn't seem to be much different to the UK, were terms are twice as long, or the US for that matter. But individual politicians are often there for decades. The fate of the election tends to depend on 10 or 20 swinging seats, out of about 80. Typically a bureaucrat is going to be dealing with politicians with decades of experience at handling bureaucrats. It's not always true of course. Occasionally, the electorate does get riled up when the government does a particularly poor job. And then it isn't just a matter of 10 or 20 seats, most of them change, and it's after a minimal term in office. But that's only happened literally once in 60 years to me. Yes, that's inefficient, but I don't see any choice. Occasionally, the political class needs to be reminded who is actually in charge. 3 year reminders seems to work well enough.