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Excellent article, as expected for an Eliezer Yudkowsky article. One place where it leaves me hungry... what can we do about this very real problem? I understa
by swombat 17y ago
Excellent article, as expected for an Eliezer Yudkowsky article.
One place where it leaves me hungry... what can we do about this very real problem? I understand that no single person can fix this all by themselves, but is there some kind of action that we can take, when the circumstances arise, that will help resolve this problem rather than help perpetuate it?
Edit: Additional note... this is one of the many reasons I like the Swiss system. We vote on issues separately from voting on people. This has its disadvantages, but at least it's direct democracy.
- lionhearted 17y agoHistorically speaking, the corruption and degradation of the system build up until the empire collapses on itself or is defeated in a war and has a foreign power rebuild their government. This has been written about a bunch, the earliest known piece I've read notes of was by Ibn Khaldun. Some of his work is outdated, being 800 years old, but there's some pretty incredibly insightful things in it. Worth a skim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah
- tokenadult 17y agoThis view of historiography goes back about two millenia years in China. A corrupt regime loses the "mandate of Heaven" and a new regime takes its place by conquest.
- bokonist 17y agoDirect democracy does not solve the problem, see California. The Swiss cantons work well because they are small. Direct democracy does not scale. One of the best ideas for reform I've heard is the idea of unpredictable elections, a la Venice. See: http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/03/unpredictable-elections.html http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/03/unpredictable-elect...
- tome 17y agoUnpredictable elections look interesting but why do you support them? Is there any evidence that they perform well in any particular fashion?
- bokonist 17y agoThey worked quite well in Venice. The Republic lasted 1,000 years, which is pretty impressive. The half-life of the typical represenative democracy seems to be about twenty years, so that's a big difference. Since Venice, unpredictable elections have never been tried. Most governments have been clones of either the British or American systems.
- yummyfajitas 17y agoCalifornia is not quite a direct democracy. They have ballot propositions, yes, but they also have a legislature almost as bad as the NY legislature, and their state workers are completely unaccountable. Arnold: Until the budget is sorted out, all state workers get minimum wage. State workers: You can't do that. Besides, our computer are too old to handle paying minimum wage. http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1132588.html http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1132588.htm...
- bokonist 17y agoRight, but the limited direct democracy they have does not seem to make better decisions than the legislature: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/myth_of_the_rat_2.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/06/myth_of_the_rat_...