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Ray Dalio’s Principles framework calls this out as an indicator of a society in decline. When political groups start to care more about winning than they do abo

Ray Dalio’s Principles framework calls this out as an indicator of a society in decline. When political groups start to care more about winning than they do about the integrity of the system.

sergiomattei 4y ago
It’s always been this way.
- lumost 4y ago
  Is that really true? there have always been side deals and scandals - but Nixon was a popular president before watergate and was ousted in a heartbeat. That was only 50 years ago.
  - acover 4y ago
    He resigned, which avoided the fight entirely.
Hammershaft 4y ago
This seems like a simplistic or morally convenient take. Politics everywhere evolves to a state where top competitors seek primarily to win. The difference between say, the highly adversial politics of the US & the less negative politics of, say, Canada, is not the result of some difference in altruistic behavior between Canadian & American politicians, but a difference in systemic incentives between countries. In the US, elections are fought between two party candidates, and so the results of a highly adversarial approach can viewed through a zero sum lens. If I lose less social trust by smearing my opponent then they do, then smearing my opponent is a strong viable strategy. In Canada, due to a host of systemic differences (smaller electoral districts, debates run by inclusive institutions, stricter campaign finance regs, etc) multiple visible parties compete politically. A direct result of this is that if adversarial behavior negatively affects public perception of both the attacking party and the target party, both parties lose while a third party gains. This a small example of one facet about how differing systems channel the behavior of competitive politicians. An observation of flawed electoral systems is that they tend towards harmful feedback loops. Culturally, maliciously adversarial behavior becomes normalized and escalated. Gerrymandering leads to competitive primaries & non competitive general elections which leads to partisanship that makes it more difficult to deal with gerrymandering. Judicial capture leads to the institutionalization of systemic flaws that benefit the party of the judiciary.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  You are not necessarily disagreeing with the GP. I am not familiar with the framework he's mentioning, but what he is referencing sounds comparable to what Plato referenced. And it was not a simplistic or morally convenient take. It's simply an observation of the infinite loop that humanity is stuck in, seemingly unable to ever escape from. In other words, the inevitability of reaching some point in a system does not preclude the possibility that reaching that point also results in collapse of the system. It just means the system collapses over and over again, like the cycle of humanity. This [1] is "book" (it's short) 8 of Plato's the Republic. If you skip down to the line of "And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?", and read from there you might otherwise assume it was just an elaborately and archaically crafted metaphor referencing the past ~60 years in the United States, aside from a handful of references to substantial norm differences, including slavery. But of course it was written 2400 years ago. I don't think the issues we face are systemic so much as they are social. Technologies and systems change, but humans remain more or less the same. Reading the classics convinced me that the saying that history repeats itself is not just some some abstract saying where if you interpret things in some way or another they resemble one another, but a quite literal one. We're a species stuck in an infinite loop with little but technology changing the scenery, for better and for worse. [1] - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.9.viii.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.9.viii.html

Ray Dalio’s Principles framework calls this out as an indicator of a society in decline. When political groups start to care more about winning than they do about the integrity of the system.

sergiomattei 4y ago

It’s always been this way.

lumost 4y ago
Is that really true? there have always been side deals and scandals - but Nixon was a popular president before watergate and was ousted in a heartbeat. That was only 50 years ago.
- acover 4y ago
  He resigned, which avoided the fight entirely.

Hammershaft 4y ago

This seems like a simplistic or morally convenient take. Politics everywhere evolves to a state where top competitors seek primarily to win. The difference between say, the highly adversial politics of the US & the less negative politics of, say, Canada, is not the result of some difference in altruistic behavior between Canadian & American politicians, but a difference in systemic incentives between countries. In the US, elections are fought between two party candidates, and so the results of a highly adversarial approach can viewed through a zero sum lens. If I lose less social trust by smearing my opponent then they do, then smearing my opponent is a strong viable strategy. In Canada, due to a host of systemic differences (smaller electoral districts, debates run by inclusive institutions, stricter campaign finance regs, etc) multiple visible parties compete politically. A direct result of this is that if adversarial behavior negatively affects public perception of both the attacking party and the target party, both parties lose while a third party gains. This a small example of one facet about how differing systems channel the behavior of competitive politicians. An observation of flawed electoral systems is that they tend towards harmful feedback loops. Culturally, maliciously adversarial behavior becomes normalized and escalated. Gerrymandering leads to competitive primaries & non competitive general elections which leads to partisanship that makes it more difficult to deal with gerrymandering. Judicial capture leads to the institutionalization of systemic flaws that benefit the party of the judiciary.

somenameforme 4y ago
You are not necessarily disagreeing with the GP. I am not familiar with the framework he's mentioning, but what he is referencing sounds comparable to what Plato referenced. And it was not a simplistic or morally convenient take. It's simply an observation of the infinite loop that humanity is stuck in, seemingly unable to ever escape from. In other words, the inevitability of reaching some point in a system does not preclude the possibility that reaching that point also results in collapse of the system. It just means the system collapses over and over again, like the cycle of humanity. This [1] is "book" (it's short) 8 of Plato's the Republic. If you skip down to the line of "And democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?", and read from there you might otherwise assume it was just an elaborately and archaically crafted metaphor referencing the past ~60 years in the United States, aside from a handful of references to substantial norm differences, including slavery. But of course it was written 2400 years ago. I don't think the issues we face are systemic so much as they are social. Technologies and systems change, but humans remain more or less the same. Reading the classics convinced me that the saying that history repeats itself is not just some some abstract saying where if you interpret things in some way or another they resemble one another, but a quite literal one. We're a species stuck in an infinite loop with little but technology changing the scenery, for better and for worse. [1] - http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.9.viii.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.9.viii.html