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Do blind trusts really work? I mean, with the amount of corruption, would it not be possible to get all info from the trust and give decisions, one way or the

Do blind trusts really work? I mean, with the amount of corruption, would it not be possible to get all info from the trust and give decisions, one way or the other?

kristopolous 3y ago
I'm a big supporter of a forced liquidation, without tax penalties, of all positions upon winning federal election. That would of course dramatically limit the people who pursue public office to you know, only virtuous people who are willing to selflessly sacrifice themselves for the public good. Those people do exist, we've just configured our electoral system in every way to discourage such admirable behavior. It doesn't have to be full of opportunistic palm greasing scoundrels, we've just set it up that way.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > That would of course dramatically limit the people who pursue public office to you know, only ... people convinced that the graft in office would offset the loss of opportunity from investment gains.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist. You can find them at state parks, libraries, museums and schools even. I've met plenty of scientists for instance, that work at universities, places like MBARI and JPL and for the city/county at lower salaries without stock options for the opportunity of public service. They're real, we just need to get more of them in higher office
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist. Sure, I'm one of them. If you think that for the subset of public service that constitutes "electoral politics", that cutting people out of the opportunity to have investment income while in office is going to restrict office holding to those people, than you are, well, hopeliessly naive. Compared to the status quo, you'll eliminate some good people who would have been happy enough putting their investments in a blind trust and not been acting out of conflicts with their own investments, and you'll eliminate some people for whom the ability to serve their own investments was a deciding factor, but there's all kinds of corrupt interests that don't rely on having investments in ones own name that people pursue in politics.
    - chii 3y ago
      > There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist. relying on altruism is not what i would call scalable nor stable. The rules of the system should be such that the optimal/desirable behaviour is also the selfish behaviour. If something selfish or damaging is beneficial to the individual at the expense of someone else, then the rules must be changed to even it back out.
      - kristopolous 3y ago
        Selfishness is anomalous if the consensus of research literature on the topic is to be believed. Without dropping volumes of research, you can derive this intuitively. Think about how people respond in disasters. Running into danger to save strangers is common for things like floods or bystanders trying to save someone in a car crash. Prosocial is the norm. These days extreme selfishness is an indicator of autistic spectrum disorder. So when you pivot everything around selfishness what you in practice do is reward people with a certain flavor of autism and those who have that learned behavior. For example, Elon Musk, Richard Sackler, Adam Nuemam, Sam Bankman Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Martin Shkreli, Mark Zuckerberg... Selecting for those traits exclusively to administer the public commons sounds fairly dangerous
        chownie 3y ago
        Always fun to scroll hn and get some drive-by ableism. The majority of autistic people aren't in full time work, they probably don't resemble that remark.
        kristopolous 3y ago
        Of course not. There's a really big difference here. On the one hand, asd people are everywhere including in positions of power. However, if you had a system which, by design, considers a subsection of asd people as the only ones qualified to hold power, you would be missing out on the contributions of everyone else which we should be including, you know, as a virtue of democracy. To circle back around, the premise that people are fundamentally selfish is what's being rejected. The reality is (some small minority of) people behave in ways that might be considered fundamentally selfish and they've been thoroughly studied by behaviourists and psychologists.

Do blind trusts really work? I mean, with the amount of corruption, would it not be possible to get all info from the trust and give decisions, one way or the other?

kristopolous 3y ago

I'm a big supporter of a forced liquidation, without tax penalties, of all positions upon winning federal election. That would of course dramatically limit the people who pursue public office to you know, only virtuous people who are willing to selflessly sacrifice themselves for the public good. Those people do exist, we've just configured our electoral system in every way to discourage such admirable behavior. It doesn't have to be full of opportunistic palm greasing scoundrels, we've just set it up that way.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> That would of course dramatically limit the people who pursue public office to you know, only ... people convinced that the graft in office would offset the loss of opportunity from investment gains.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist. You can find them at state parks, libraries, museums and schools even. I've met plenty of scientists for instance, that work at universities, places like MBARI and JPL and for the city/county at lower salaries without stock options for the opportunity of public service. They're real, we just need to get more of them in higher office
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist. Sure, I'm one of them. If you think that for the subset of public service that constitutes "electoral politics", that cutting people out of the opportunity to have investment income while in office is going to restrict office holding to those people, than you are, well, hopeliessly naive. Compared to the status quo, you'll eliminate some good people who would have been happy enough putting their investments in a blind trust and not been acting out of conflicts with their own investments, and you'll eliminate some people for whom the ability to serve their own investments was a deciding factor, but there's all kinds of corrupt interests that don't rely on having investments in ones own name that people pursue in politics.
  - chii 3y ago
    > There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist. relying on altruism is not what i would call scalable nor stable. The rules of the system should be such that the optimal/desirable behaviour is also the selfish behaviour. If something selfish or damaging is beneficial to the individual at the expense of someone else, then the rules must be changed to even it back out.
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      Selfishness is anomalous if the consensus of research literature on the topic is to be believed. Without dropping volumes of research, you can derive this intuitively. Think about how people respond in disasters. Running into danger to save strangers is common for things like floods or bystanders trying to save someone in a car crash. Prosocial is the norm. These days extreme selfishness is an indicator of autistic spectrum disorder. So when you pivot everything around selfishness what you in practice do is reward people with a certain flavor of autism and those who have that learned behavior. For example, Elon Musk, Richard Sackler, Adam Nuemam, Sam Bankman Fried, Elizabeth Holmes, Martin Shkreli, Mark Zuckerberg... Selecting for those traits exclusively to administer the public commons sounds fairly dangerous
      - chownie 3y ago
        Always fun to scroll hn and get some drive-by ableism. The majority of autistic people aren't in full time work, they probably don't resemble that remark.
        kristopolous 3y ago
        Of course not. There's a really big difference here. On the one hand, asd people are everywhere including in positions of power. However, if you had a system which, by design, considers a subsection of asd people as the only ones qualified to hold power, you would be missing out on the contributions of everyone else which we should be including, you know, as a virtue of democracy. To circle back around, the premise that people are fundamentally selfish is what's being rejected. The reality is (some small minority of) people behave in ways that might be considered fundamentally selfish and they've been thoroughly studied by behaviourists and psychologists.