11–20 of 73 posts
This country was founded on checks and balances. Without adversarial checks on the police, our country is literally done for.
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From someone who's curious, why would the concept of "checks and balances" appear juvenile? Do you find it represents an ideal without possible application in the real world? Genuinely interested in hearing the why behind your statement.
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Evansville, Indiana isn't rural. It's a city of 100,000 people. If you take the entire county it's closer to 200k. Regardless, using this software to spy on people, illegally identify people etc is just F'd up.
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From someone who's curious, why would the concept of "checks and balances" appear juvenile? Do you find it represents an ideal without possible application in the real world? Genuinely interested in hearing the why behind your statement.
This country was founded on checks and balances. Without adversarial checks on the police, our country is literally done for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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From someone who's curious, why would the concept of "checks and balances" appear juvenile? Do you find it represents an ideal without possible application in the real world? Genuinely interested in hearing the why behind your statement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From someone who's curious, why would the concept of "checks and balances" appear juvenile? Do you find it represents an ideal without possible application in the real world? Genuinely interested in hearing the why behind your statement.
Basically yes. It's only useful in the idealistic universe of grade school political science. In actual politics, collusion, careerism, bribery, etc. will persist. A different set of official rules is only a different starting point for the same inevitable behavior. Furthermore, in America's case, the ultimate check will always be the check the capitalists are writing to the politicians.
Hence the whole idea behind checks and balances, i.e. "ambition must be made to counteract ambition". The founders were well aware that any system of government that depends on an unbroken chain of decent people is bound to fail, and fail much sooner rather than later.
By decentralizing power and slicing and dicing it into many layers and segments (local vs. state vs. federal, executive vs. judicial vs. legislative), the damage done by collusion, careerism, bribery, etc. will be more limited and easier to be balanced out by the other forces in government.
Systems must be designed so that individuals trending towards fulfilling their own incentives nevertheless generate positive outcomes for the system as a whole. American government does a pretty good job at that. So does capitalism as a whole; as Adam Smith put it, "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest".
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From someone who's curious, why would the concept of "checks and balances" appear juvenile? Do you find it represents an ideal without possible application in the real world? Genuinely interested in hearing the why behind your statement.
Sweet summer child. To truly "get it" you have to unlearn the years of systemic and structural conditioning from the capital class before I'd even dream of going into the nuances of vanguardism. Your struggle with False Consciousness is totally relatable but can only be overcome with the warm guidance of Lenin. Come brother, it's totally not a cult.
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Evansville, Indiana isn't rural. It's a city of 100,000 people. If you take the entire county it's closer to 200k. Regardless, using this software to spy on people, illegally identify people etc is just F'd up.