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Possibly controversial in this day and age of Twitter takes: Germany did not sleep walk into a NSDAP victory. People actually voted for it. A reason there is s

by sph 3y ago

Possibly controversial in this day and age of Twitter takes: Germany did not sleep walk into a NSDAP victory. People actually voted for it. A reason there is so much political division is the stupid belief that the bad outcome happens because nobody is awake/smart/educated enough to stop it from happening. No one considers the fact that they are living in a bubble, and the majority might have a totally different view, and thus political affiliation, than your bubble. You can thank the social media recommendation algorithms for turning this bubble into a cozy echo chamber. An intellectual prison where both sides move further and further away, each with their own set of truths, beliefs and interpretation of the world. The saddest thing is, media and journalists are the ones most entrenched in the social media idiocy, and help it spread like wildfire. Party politics were a mistake, social media made it exponentially worse.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
> Germany did not sleep walk into a NSDAP victory. People actually voted for it. 30-something percent, IIRC. Enough to give them a large presence in the legislature - the largest, though not a majority. But they didn't really run things until Hitler was appointed chancellor. Appointed. Not elected. So, yes, Germany did vote - once - for all those Nazis in the legislature. Hitler would probably not have been appointed if the Nazis only had, say, 5% of the seats. But Germany didn't elect Hitler to run the country.
- mopsi 3y ago
  I looked it up: 44%. That's more than is common for governing parties in many political systems (the rest coming from coalition partners for a parliamentary majority), so it's entirely fair to say that NSDAP had people's mandate.
indigochill 3y ago
> Party politics were a mistake Agreed, but I don't see practically how to avoid them in a democracy/republic, even if you started from a totally clean slate and could unilaterally make all the rules before setting it loose. A successful political campaign requires funding and if you don't want directly corporate-sponsored politicians then let's assume for the sake of argument you can create parties which don't take corporate funding. Can't have them running on public funding or you give incumbents a massive potential for corrupt campaign funding. And different geography drives different motivations. What someone farming in Kansas cares about is probably significantly different from what a lead engineer in San Francisco cares about, even if you zeroed out all their existing cultural biases. People with similar interests then will naturally gather to campaign for their interests. Those interests will probably fund candidates they want to succeed. And that then leads into a vicious cycle where the winners (even if they're not actual corporations) get economic benefits they use to fund the next favorable candidate and so on and you end up eventually more or less where the US is now.
- sph 3y ago
  There is no simple answer to the problems you've described. To me it's clear it is impossible to create a state that is vast (i.e. like the US but also as large as most countries), efficient and largely free from lobbying and corruption. A government's efficiency is inversely proportional to its size, but the hold it has on its population scales with size. The tendency of the modern government is to restrict its citizens more and more, while becoming less and less efficient. Parties are self-serving entities of the Large and Inefficient State, perpetuating this uncontrollable growth. To me and most people walking with a circled A on their T-shirts the solution is obvious. The state should simply be smaller, in reach but also in width. The smallest, the better. Why is everyone trying to find a workable solution for a continent-sized country with 300 odd million citizens? Chances are, the problems of Kansas are often quite different than those in California.
  - novariation 3y ago
    > The efficiency of government is inversely proportional to its size This is arguably false, which the libertarian centrists at Niskanen were forced to accept: having an efficient government is key to prosperity, but [most efficient governments are quite large](https://www.niskanencenter.org/quality-government-not-size-key-freedom-prosperity/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/quality-government-not-size-k...). Quoting a [similar article](https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/quality-of-government https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/quality-of-government), a former Niskanen staffer [said](https://x.com/hamandcheese/status/1491474440558895106?s=20 https://x.com/hamandcheese/status/1491474440558895106?s=20): "Countries with high functioning public institutions also tend to have high functioning market institutions. This hints at a deeper continuity between the two domains, and/or a third factor that underlies both."
    - sph 3y ago
      Thanks for the sources. At first sight, I think there are many factors at play, and these sources are mistaking cause for effect. Most prosperous countries are large, but simply because a large state can raise much larger amounts of money, that if wisely used can be allocated to long term investments that improve prosperity. This does not mean that they are prosperous because they are efficient. My thesis is that they are prosperous despite being utterly wasteful. In fact, there are many small but rich countries that have very high quality of life, like Switzerland, Britain, Netherlands, Hong Kong to name a few. It becomes like a U curve where you either are small, or have to grow very very large for waste not to impact prosperity too much.

by sph 3y ago

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

> Germany did not sleep walk into a NSDAP victory. People actually voted for it. 30-something percent, IIRC. Enough to give them a large presence in the legislature - the largest, though not a majority. But they didn't really run things until Hitler was appointed chancellor. Appointed. Not elected. So, yes, Germany did vote - once - for all those Nazis in the legislature. Hitler would probably not have been appointed if the Nazis only had, say, 5% of the seats. But Germany didn't elect Hitler to run the country.

mopsi 3y ago
I looked it up: 44%. That's more than is common for governing parties in many political systems (the rest coming from coalition partners for a parliamentary majority), so it's entirely fair to say that NSDAP had people's mandate.

indigochill 3y ago

> Party politics were a mistake Agreed, but I don't see practically how to avoid them in a democracy/republic, even if you started from a totally clean slate and could unilaterally make all the rules before setting it loose. A successful political campaign requires funding and if you don't want directly corporate-sponsored politicians then let's assume for the sake of argument you can create parties which don't take corporate funding. Can't have them running on public funding or you give incumbents a massive potential for corrupt campaign funding. And different geography drives different motivations. What someone farming in Kansas cares about is probably significantly different from what a lead engineer in San Francisco cares about, even if you zeroed out all their existing cultural biases. People with similar interests then will naturally gather to campaign for their interests. Those interests will probably fund candidates they want to succeed. And that then leads into a vicious cycle where the winners (even if they're not actual corporations) get economic benefits they use to fund the next favorable candidate and so on and you end up eventually more or less where the US is now.

sph 3y ago
There is no simple answer to the problems you've described. To me it's clear it is impossible to create a state that is vast (i.e. like the US but also as large as most countries), efficient and largely free from lobbying and corruption. A government's efficiency is inversely proportional to its size, but the hold it has on its population scales with size. The tendency of the modern government is to restrict its citizens more and more, while becoming less and less efficient. Parties are self-serving entities of the Large and Inefficient State, perpetuating this uncontrollable growth. To me and most people walking with a circled A on their T-shirts the solution is obvious. The state should simply be smaller, in reach but also in width. The smallest, the better. Why is everyone trying to find a workable solution for a continent-sized country with 300 odd million citizens? Chances are, the problems of Kansas are often quite different than those in California.
- novariation 3y ago
  > The efficiency of government is inversely proportional to its size This is arguably false, which the libertarian centrists at Niskanen were forced to accept: having an efficient government is key to prosperity, but [most efficient governments are quite large](https://www.niskanencenter.org/quality-government-not-size-key-freedom-prosperity/ https://www.niskanencenter.org/quality-government-not-size-k...). Quoting a [similar article](https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/quality-of-government https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/quality-of-government), a former Niskanen staffer [said](https://x.com/hamandcheese/status/1491474440558895106?s=20 https://x.com/hamandcheese/status/1491474440558895106?s=20): "Countries with high functioning public institutions also tend to have high functioning market institutions. This hints at a deeper continuity between the two domains, and/or a third factor that underlies both."
  - sph 3y ago
    Thanks for the sources. At first sight, I think there are many factors at play, and these sources are mistaking cause for effect. Most prosperous countries are large, but simply because a large state can raise much larger amounts of money, that if wisely used can be allocated to long term investments that improve prosperity. This does not mean that they are prosperous because they are efficient. My thesis is that they are prosperous despite being utterly wasteful. In fact, there are many small but rich countries that have very high quality of life, like Switzerland, Britain, Netherlands, Hong Kong to name a few. It becomes like a U curve where you either are small, or have to grow very very large for waste not to impact prosperity too much.