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The sentiment reminds me of the people who believe that having so much prosperity that people feel comfortable not working all year around... represents some te
by roenxi 7mo ago
The sentiment reminds me of the people who believe that having so much prosperity that people feel comfortable not working all year around... represents some terrible threat that must be vigorously resisted for the greater good! Think of what it would do to the poor metrics.
Literal overnight change might be too radical (although, frankly, I'd want to see some academic work on the matter because it sounds like it might work - typically the problem seems to be that the body politic tries every alternative but good policy first then blames the mess on freedom) but people who are scared of rapid improvement because they don't like change are a massive threat to human prosperity and really shouldn't be left in charge of anything important.
Delaying the industrial revolution was never a good choice at any point in human history. The potential gains from efficiency are unbelievably large.
- joe_mamba 7mo ago>not working all year around Keeping people employed through inefficient bullshit jobs is better for the government than paying them to sit at home, since this way you have control over their livelihoods and their votes.
- pif 7mo agoIn civilised places, the government is the people. And civilised people know they are the government.
- joe_mamba 7mo agoLike which places are those? This is some idealist fairytale view that people like to believe in but doesn't actually exist.
- bigfudge 7mo agoThis is unnecessarily confrontational. The real point here is that there better functioning democracies than the US. They have faults, but Scandinavia and much of northern Europe (partially excluding the UK) much better approximates what you call a fairytale than a US perspective might allow you to believe. Trust in and satisfaction with government institutions in Scandinavia and Finland are much, much higher than in the US, and it's largely justified by their competence and delivery of public goods.
- joe_mamba 7mo ago>This is unnecessarily confrontational. Why? >but Scandinavia and much of northern Europe That's like 3-5 out of 195 countries and only 0,3%-0,5% of the world's population. Being born there is like winning the lottery so maybe take that into consideration when arguing with such examples since that's not the norm. Like what are the odds that people you talk to online are part of that 0,5%? So who's the one being needlessly confrontational? >Trust in and satisfaction with government institutions in Scandinavia and Finland are much, much higher than in the US I don't care about the situation in the US since I don't live there. I'm talking from the perspective in Europe(not Scandinavia) where I can't say the democracy is representing or serving me. No law maker asked about the major decisions the EU made.