3 ms·

Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively

Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.

notch656c 4y ago
Can you explain why more local decision making must be the worst thing to do?
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  Humans are the biggest bottleneck in orgs. More devolved power = more orgs = more humans = more gridlock.
wolverine876 4y ago
The local decision-makers know much better the local needs: Local people can communicate with local decision-makers, they have far more experience with local needs (lifetimes worth), and human cognitive capacity is limited - nobody single federal decision maker can learn and know what all the local mayors know. Nobody a thousand miles away can know my neighborhood the way I do. That's a reason decision-making in business is often pushed to the lowest level - the central people can't know as much.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  >The local decision-makers know much better the local needs Do they really? Election voter turnout is absolutely abysmal and gets lower the lower the government level goes. This is a clear sign voters no longer believe in democracy at the local level because exercising democratic rights no longer has influence on the situation. Why? Because imbeciles have successfully embedded themselves in lower levels of governments and use the devolved power to keep the status quo in order to profit off of it.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Turnout was very high in 2016 and 2020 in the US.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Turnout was relatively very high in 2016 and 2020. > exercising democratic rights no longer has influence on the situation. Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government. > Because imbeciles have successfully embedded themselves in lower levels of governments and use the devolved power to keep the status quo in order to profit off of it. Not my local government. It isn't perfect, but it gets a lot done. Same in NYC. I certainly wouldn't call them imbeciles. What local government are you talking about? There are GOP people who, in the name of demonstrating their radicalism, act like imbeciles, but I think they know what they are doing.
    - ssnistfajen 4y ago
      >Turnout was relatively very high in 2016 and 2020. And? The U.S. has countless local elections happening almost every year. The turnouts are abysmal. >Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government. Those aren't 100% of the electorate. This loops back to the point that democracy is failing when the bulk of the electorate no longer bother to vote. Only in a country with FPTP and distorted voter power distribution would a 60% turnout be considered "relatively very high". European elections regularly have turnouts in the high 80s. That's what normal democracies look like.
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        >> Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government. > Those aren't 100% of the electorate. This loops back to the point that democracy is failing when the bulk of the electorate no longer bother to vote. You said voting has no influence; I gave evidence of people who vote and have changed things dramatically.
bilbo0s 4y ago
The thing is, sometimes, centralized decision makers take decisions that are bad because they are too far removed from the consequences of the decisions. For instance, decisions on, say, water rights, made by the federal government in the US. The federal and state governments have effectively collaborated to create a slow rolling disaster across the entire west. (Of course, now I think about it, local and state governments also take terrible decisions. Slavery and Jim Crow spring to mind. So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem. I guess you're basically screwed if you have to allow other people to make decisions for you.)
- prottog 4y ago
  > So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem. Insofar as humanity hasn't yet figured out how to make good decisions all the time ;-) that's true. However, I posit that keeping decisions at as low a level as possible lets mistakes be more easily undone by higher levels in the hierarchy; hence Justice Brandeis's laboratories of democracy.
  - bilbo0s 4y ago
    That might work, for everyone except the slave waiting for the central authority to come liberate them. There really is no way around it, local, state, or federal power have all been shown by history to be guaranteed to screw people over.
prottog 4y ago
> the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication You said it yourself. I don't care if the ansible lets you communicate faster than the speed of light; the capacity of leaders at the top to understand lower-level facts and needs has not changed much from 1542 to 2023.

notch656c 4y ago

Can you explain why more local decision making must be the worst thing to do?

ssnistfajen 4y ago
Humans are the biggest bottleneck in orgs. More devolved power = more orgs = more humans = more gridlock.

wolverine876 4y ago

The local decision-makers know much better the local needs: Local people can communicate with local decision-makers, they have far more experience with local needs (lifetimes worth), and human cognitive capacity is limited - nobody single federal decision maker can learn and know what all the local mayors know. Nobody a thousand miles away can know my neighborhood the way I do. That's a reason decision-making in business is often pushed to the lowest level - the central people can't know as much.

ssnistfajen 4y ago
>The local decision-makers know much better the local needs Do they really? Election voter turnout is absolutely abysmal and gets lower the lower the government level goes. This is a clear sign voters no longer believe in democracy at the local level because exercising democratic rights no longer has influence on the situation. Why? Because imbeciles have successfully embedded themselves in lower levels of governments and use the devolved power to keep the status quo in order to profit off of it.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Turnout was very high in 2016 and 2020 in the US.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Turnout was relatively very high in 2016 and 2020. > exercising democratic rights no longer has influence on the situation. Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government. > Because imbeciles have successfully embedded themselves in lower levels of governments and use the devolved power to keep the status quo in order to profit off of it. Not my local government. It isn't perfect, but it gets a lot done. Same in NYC. I certainly wouldn't call them imbeciles. What local government are you talking about? There are GOP people who, in the name of demonstrating their radicalism, act like imbeciles, but I think they know what they are doing.
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    >Turnout was relatively very high in 2016 and 2020. And? The U.S. has countless local elections happening almost every year. The turnouts are abysmal. >Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government. Those aren't 100% of the electorate. This loops back to the point that democracy is failing when the bulk of the electorate no longer bother to vote. Only in a country with FPTP and distorted voter power distribution would a 60% turnout be considered "relatively very high". European elections regularly have turnouts in the high 80s. That's what normal democracies look like.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      >> Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government. > Those aren't 100% of the electorate. This loops back to the point that democracy is failing when the bulk of the electorate no longer bother to vote. You said voting has no influence; I gave evidence of people who vote and have changed things dramatically.

bilbo0s 4y ago

The thing is, sometimes, centralized decision makers take decisions that are bad because they are too far removed from the consequences of the decisions. For instance, decisions on, say, water rights, made by the federal government in the US. The federal and state governments have effectively collaborated to create a slow rolling disaster across the entire west. (Of course, now I think about it, local and state governments also take terrible decisions. Slavery and Jim Crow spring to mind. So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem. I guess you're basically screwed if you have to allow other people to make decisions for you.)

prottog 4y ago
> So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem. Insofar as humanity hasn't yet figured out how to make good decisions all the time ;-) that's true. However, I posit that keeping decisions at as low a level as possible lets mistakes be more easily undone by higher levels in the hierarchy; hence Justice Brandeis's laboratories of democracy.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  That might work, for everyone except the slave waiting for the central authority to come liberate them. There really is no way around it, local, state, or federal power have all been shown by history to be guaranteed to screw people over.

prottog 4y ago

> the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication You said it yourself. I don't care if the ansible lets you communicate faster than the speed of light; the capacity of leaders at the top to understand lower-level facts and needs has not changed much from 1542 to 2023.