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Why Good Government is Impossible


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2012 Aug 2, 6:42am   14,844 views  55 comments

by freak80   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

Think about it:

Who is it that gets power? Nice people, or sociopaths?

The people who get power are generally those who are willing to do almost *anything* to get it, no matter how devious.

I really don't understand this humanistic belief that "good government" is just around the corner. I'd say the belief is no more "rational" than religious belief.

The only thing good about Democracy is that we can have a "bloodless revolution" every two years if necessary. As the old saying goes, "politicians are like diapers...they should be changed often, and for the same reason." We can at least replace the current sociopaths with different sociopaths every election cycle.

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35   thomaswong.1986   2012 Aug 4, 2:26pm  

curious2 says

The TARP companies did fail,

what does TARP have anything to do with this, corporate governance!

36   curious2   2012 Aug 4, 2:35pm  

[...]

37   The Original Bankster   2012 Aug 4, 3:49pm  

eventually, perhaps soon, the whole thing will fall apart.

It's simply a matter of time before the financial viability of a nation is completely eroded by it's population. When a nation is financially viable, all sorts of parasites that don't have long term intentions arrive, become citizens, don't participate in the military, and simply collect. We have people like that in the millions today in America. The Left protects them as if they were victims. Eventually, the system falls apart- descends into civil war, foreign campaigns for profit, etc.

this is where America is today. You liberals who think you're about freedom aren't the solution, you're the problem.

38   moonmac   2012 Aug 4, 11:24pm  

From the local level to the federal level all politicians are immoral crooks! They only care about increasing the size of their own bank accounts and will do anything necessary to make it happen. The trillions in bail outs was all about self preservation and throwing working class Americans to the wolves! It's really sick when all my friends that make over 6 figures say our economy is doing great. They text me every time there is over an hour wait at a fine dining restaurant to prove it. Meanwhile people on Main Street are giving the option of bologna or 99 cent hot dogs to feed their families! We need a REVOLUTION against the crooks that bailed out the rich at our expense. Not letting the Crooks fail was Satan announcing that he's now completely taken over our country!

39   moonmac   2012 Aug 4, 11:30pm  

Able bodied scum on welfare, section 8 and food stamps have a better standard of living then people working 80 hrs per week! I say let's burn all the leeches until they are dead or have been ripped out of their blood sucking roles!

40   Auntiegrav   2012 Aug 5, 12:17am  

Dan8267 says

Good government is possible, but not with humans running the show. Fully automated government ran by software is the way to go.

We've already got that. It's called "Excel". The corporations use it to decide how to proceed in their profit-making psychopathy, and government uses it to decide how to respond to the corporations' interests. Churches use it to decide whether to save souls or to save the Building Fund. Consumers use it to decide whether to rent or to buy.

41   Auntiegrav   2012 Aug 5, 12:45am  

moonmac says

From the local level to the federal level all politicians are immoral crooks!

This is why the problem is elections, not government. An election is just a popularity contest. In the case of our media-based entertainment, we have very few people to choose from.
Open up the whole thing to a lottery. Choose ALL government appointees at random. Replace all income taxes with one sales tax and a prebate (see FairTax.org but double the rate and the prebate until the water and air are clean).
The problem isn't that we HAVE government, or the government itself, per se, but that we CONSUME government, like we can buy a good one from Monsanto or Goldman Sachs. We can no more buy good government than we can buy a good marriage or a good farm. These things have to be built by hand with a lot of hard work and no immediate reward.
Government is also like any complex machine: it requires feedback mechanisms to keep it in line and to put energy into it. Most of the time, such a machine goes wrong not because the machinery is bad, but because a key part is overlooked or neglected. In the case of our Constitution, it is trying to do something that it was not equipped to handle: manage a consumerist society. They should have seen it coming (re: Spain and it's free gold), but ignored it, thinking that popular vote or an intelligent Senate would prevent such mass stupidity. The consumer society happened because of the Industrial Revolution, and the devaluing of manual labor (everyone wanted an easier life, so it was no big deal to replace their hard tasks with machines...except the Luddites tried to get the point across that doing so destroyed lives as surely as weapons do) was a "no-brainer" of "efficiency" and "standards of living". The problem with consumerism is that it makes the assumption of people being useless except when they are purchasing something, rather than useful when they are making or doing something. Buying things stimulates those things to be made merely because people have money, and through inflationary practices, money was free; just as though we were taking it from 'ignorant savages' in a New World: except the savages are ourselves and our resources in the future when the free money comes through debts.
The proper feedback against consumerism is a consumption tax: a sales tax. It must be applied at the point of decision (the checkout) or it merely gets buried (like corporate taxes are buried in the price of products or the lack of wages).
Humans are smart: not intelligently intentional. By this, I mean they solve problems, but don't personally make the best choices for their own interest. That's why we invented religion and government (yes, they ARE the same thing, regardless of the delusion of separateness): to 'trick' ourselves to not do things we know we wouldn't otherwise be able to control ("If you get me through this night, I promise I will never take another drink."). God and government were both invented by drunks in a moment of semiconscious wisdom. They are exploited by tea-totalers and whiskey runners. Somewhere in between are the people who want to just go about a useful life without causing harm or being harmed. It's time to wake them up to the harm of the polarizing fanatics or it will kill us all in a Civil War the likes of which Joss Whedon can't imagine.

42   Auntiegrav   2012 Aug 5, 12:55am  

curious2 says

thomaswong.1986 says

you would lose employees and your business would fail talking like this.

The TARP companies did fail, which is how they got more money and power than ever before, via TARP. It was, from their POV, a huge success. Strange that one of the biggest news stories of the last fifty years seems to have escaped your attention. Your theory seems to be that boards, as currently constructed, are perfect. But theories must yield to facts.

Terry Pratchett makes a good humorous example of this in "Going Postal": where the board members all serve on each other's companies and pretend they are separate companies.
Perhaps what we need is a good Tyrant (who may or may not also be a vampire), immune to the desires of any particular interest in comparison to his or her desire to improve the domain. It is the petty leaders who try to gain power over little slices that screw up the whole Domain relationship (being the focus of power makes you the locus of responsibility...nobless oblige).

43   Auntiegrav   2012 Aug 5, 1:17am  

In order to have "good government", you first have to have a concept of what is "good" and what is "bad" as determined by the best interests of some kind of future. How does nature make some things succeed for millions of years and others die off after a flash in the pan?
Too many confuse "government" with "country" and "freedom" with "no government", rather than understanding that it isn't the government who decides what will work or not. Fate does that. Government is a tool we are supposed to use to help us deal with Fate, hopefully in ways that aren't self-destructive.
Government is a System to help us manage our actions, but it is ultimately our collective actions that Fate sees. Fate doesn't care what we believe: only what we actually DO. The constitution deals with many things that government and citizens can and can't do. Laws are written in detail also expanding on these choices.
Too many laws, and the truths get buried. Top-heavy or not, the system must be made to work or replaced with another system. Sometimes the change is done through choices (elections, revolutions), and sometimes just by Fate (famine, environmental changes, expanding wars into neutral countries).
Government is us. We are it. To separate "government" from humanity is folly. We always have some kind of government because we are communicative social animals. If we keep failing at government, it is because we keep doing the same things and don't evolve. No species evolves if it is in a stable environment. Humans created a stagnant environment that is artificial. It consumes resources in massive amounts to maintain a false niche of air conditioned comforts. We will not change as long as we are comfortable with this false idea of stability, until the resources to maintain it run out. Knowing this is coming is little help, as we have several feedback mechanisms to maintain the state of things as they are. Government won't give up its authority, consumers won't give up their comforts, and corporations make profits feeding the desires of both, regardless of the logical result of perpetual growth on a finite world.

44   canino   2012 Aug 5, 7:15am  

Dan8267 says

Good government is possible, but not with humans running the show. Fully automated government ran by software is the way to go.

And who will be the "WatchDog" for those writing the software?

45   curious2   2012 Aug 5, 7:48am  

[...]

46   Auntiegrav   2012 Aug 5, 10:24am  

curious2 says

The Ghost of Steve Jobs,

Speaking of Tyrants.....

47   Dan8267   2012 Aug 5, 10:54am  

Auntiegrav says

We've already got that. It's called "Excel".

Yeah, I'm thinking of something a little more sophisticated than Excel.

48   thomaswong.1986   2012 Aug 5, 6:54pm  

curious2 says

The Ghost of Steve Jobs, channeled by Tim Cook. Their new iPhone app, "iGuv," will tell us what to do. Steve will appear in hologram and tell us when to take our daily meds as prescribed, and track our locations, etc. Naturally we will be required to carry iPhones at all times, but don't worry, if you can't afford one, it will be subsidized.

BTW, people who refuse medication on religious grounds may opt for the other new app, "iGod."

Steve Jobs was not Christian, and believed in his eastern holistic method of teas and herbs... it didnt save him. He stilled died! He of all people ignored science. What does that tell you of the man.

49   freak80   2012 Aug 5, 11:16pm  

canino says

And who will be the "WatchDog" for those writing the software?

No one. Dan is completely unbiased and has all of our best interests at heart! ;-)

50   MisdemeanorRebel   2012 Aug 6, 12:47am  

justme says

I cannot agree with this. Do you not understand that if we replace the legislature with random sheep then all the sociopath wolves (think lobbyists and donors) will simply surround the sheep and threaten to tear them to pieces unless they do as they are told?

Justme, I gotta disagree. "Jury Duty" Citizens generally didn't want the job to begin with, and they may or may not wish to be re-elected. In addition, they aren't practiced liars and they'll easily get caught if their $39k/year legislative job suddenly allows them the ability to buy a vacation home, a BMW, and a month-long vacation to Monte Carlo.

Elected officials WANT the lobbyists' money.

We won't have an informed public UNTIL the public REALLY suffers, because of the media. The Media practices "Manufactured Consent" in that they only allow a debate to happen in a narrow band of "Acceptable" subject matter. For example, notice that most of our problems can be solved either by "Innovation" or "Tax Cuts/Privatization" - no other ideas can be mentioned, as the people offering them (whether whacky, or reasonable) are not given the microphone nor invited onto the stage.

51   Dan8267   2012 Aug 6, 12:53am  

freak80 says

canino says

And who will be the "WatchDog" for those writing the software?

No one. Dan is completely unbiased and has all of our best interests at heart! ;-)

Everyone. The software should be transparent and the code publicly available.

Transparency is superior to trust. It cannot be corrupted or broken.

52   freak80   2012 Aug 6, 1:54am  

thunderlips11 says

The Media practices "Manufactured Consent" in that they only allow a debate to happen in a narrow band of "Acceptable" subject matter.

How else could we get from "homosexual behavior is a psyhological disorder" to "those who question homosexual behavior have a psychological disorder" in only 15 years?

People are sheep. And the "powers that be" know it.

53   justme   2012 Aug 6, 10:49am  

thunderlips11 says

justme says

I cannot agree with this. Do you not understand that if we replace the legislature with random sheep then all the sociopath wolves (think lobbyists and donors) will simply surround the sheep and threaten to tear them to pieces unless they do as they are told?

Justme, I gotta disagree. "Jury Duty" Citizens generally didn't want the job to begin with, and they may or may not wish to be re-elected. In addition, they aren't practiced liars and they'll easily get caught if their $39k/year legislative job suddenly allows them the ability to buy a vacation home, a BMW, and a month-long vacation to Monte Carlo.

Your argument is that random selection of lawmakers should work because random selection of citizens for jury duty generally works pretty well.

BUT people who are on jury duty generally do not get paid by criminals for finding them innocent, nor do they get paid by the proscution to find people guilty.

That is one heck of a big difference. And I think that is why your argument is flawed.

54   justme   2012 Aug 6, 10:59am  

Ruki says

So let me get this straight:

You rip into the proposed system of sortition based on what you THINK will happen but then declare that our current system is definitely failing.

And what are the lobbyists going to do to people who don't need campaign contributions, btw? It is clear you haven't even thought this out.

No, you didn't get it straight. Pointing out that the proposal of random legislator selection is even worse than what we currently have is a completely defensible position to have.

By the way, you seem to think money in the form of "campaign contributions" is the only way to corrupt a legislator. A randomly picked legislator can be corrupted in any number of different ways:

For example, they can be promised a fat job by a private corporation if they vote a certain way. Or they can be threatened with loss of their old job unless they obey. The possibilities for coercion and/or payoffs are endless.

55   canino   2012 Aug 7, 5:32am  

thomaswong.1986 says

What does that tell you of the man.

He was not among the "Sheeple"... He lived and died by his convictions!

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