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We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

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Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#81

Post by aswegs8 »

graemep wrote: post #38
aswegs8 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly the point, though. Centralization starts to offer real advantages because the cost of complexity has increased significantly in decentralized Western societies. Yes, centralization can be inefficient, but it also makes decision-making much easier. Public opinion in Western societies has become far more fragmented and heterogeneous, largely because of the internet. There is much more internal disagreem…

I think the repeated failure of centrally planned economies proves it generally does more harm than good, and IMO complexity makes central planning less workable not more. The problem the EU has are when decisions are centralised (its an EU decision rather than a member state decision) but require agreement by multiple member states with different interests. In the US, AFAIK, the federal government makes decisions ab…

I agree history shows that decentralization is generally superior to centralization, in a way thats a core tenet our free and open societies are built on.

But yeah it's much more nuanced than just a black and white dichotomy or even a continuum, a body needs a head with one brain, the brain has many parts, each part has many nerve cells which are autonomous, ...

In the light of the current landscape, it seems important to me to funnel resources to capturing of the some new value which will be created. Indecisiveness, misinformation and regulation instead of opening up opportunities are some issues I see today that could be and are solved by centralization. Maybe I am just FOMOing as Europoor, though, and will be happy in 20 years to live in stability and not anarcho-capitalism. Who knows.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#82

Post by kzrdude »

danbruc wrote: post #65

1. An airplane crashes, everyone dies. Clearly a bad thing. Not so quick. For the funeral industry this means additional business, a good thing. And this is true for a LOT [1] of things, they are not good or bad, right or wrong, their judgment depends on perspective and personal preferences. 2. Which means that there is generally no policy that makes everyone happy. So you need a party with a program that aims at fin…

Are you seriously suggesting that there are different acceptable perspectives on the first point?

I think it's important to hold on to such things, that's how we get further and get agreement, to try to agree on fundamental principles. No reason to upset that balance by suggesting that a plane crash is ever preferable.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#83

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

nilirl wrote: post #76
JuniperMesos wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been thinking about this too: why aren't we able to run safe political experiments? Often, the reason is that some constituency, possibly a small one, that strongly benefits from the existing status quo, actively works against the political experiment using the judicial system; and the rest of the electorate doesn't care enough to fight them effectively to make the experiment possible. This is actually a probl…

That's fine if they're benefiting from the status quo, that decision making should be left to those in-context. The political experiments should be chosen and driven by small units in order to be safely contained. Planning shouldn't be a top-down activity, strategy should be. Meaning , the bounds for decisions and the rules of play must be centrally determined, but not the experiments themselves. I don't completely f…

> It sounds like you agree that a centralized planner doesn't have enough context to make system wide decisions.

I don't think that's what that comment meant. Powerful central planners can plow over the concerns of smaller groups regardless of context. In the best case, they have and use the context and make good decisions that can be easily executed (net positive). The bad case is they think they have context but don't and make a bad decision (net negative). Worst case is they have bad faith actors gain control of central planning and abuse this power to benefit themselves (net negative: we find ourselves here more often than not).

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#84

Post by rickydroll »

injidup wrote: post #45

It doesn't work because politicians are not allowed to admit failure. A politician who admits that they tried something, no matter how small, and it didn't work, is fish food. This means there is no difference in downside, for the politician, between going all in on a big decision with huge risk versus taking baby steps. The politician is dead no matter what. They either keep claiming the bad decision was a good one…

s/politicians/coporate exec/ is just as true.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#85

Post by graemep »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #59
inglor_cz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they don't make the same mistakes twice." But they do. Even if we limit ourselves to post-1949 China. Once Mao died, the Party decided to never allow a single leader to arise again, and switched to an oligarchic model. But Xi was able to break that system and once again you have a sort of cult of personality with One Dear Leader at the top, although we have to admit that Xi is a lot saner than Mao ever was. But the…

> worship of a single person, personal loyalty triumphing over competence, and the Chinese economic machine, subject to whims of a single person, seems to be slowing down. The whole world is swinging in that direction. its not like the US is any better in that respect in our current political climate.

The difference is that in the US there is plenty of criticism or, and open opposition to, the leader, or to any leader. You have courts that will restrain the government (as with the recent ruling on birthright citizenship).

I suspect Trump would like to be worshipped, but he is not being very successful at getting it outside a small group.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#86

Post by swiftcoder »

lukan wrote: post #62
kuerbel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm what do you mean by disputed? There is mixed but often promising evidence depending on context. For example there is quite a bit of urban planning evidence that shows that walkable environments improve physical activity and health outcomes and other outcomes. And so on for the other topics. It’s also worth noting that current systems are not the result of a unified scientific optimization process. So even increme…

With disputed I mean mainly that whenever there is a study linked here for example (drug decriminalisation shows benefits) - there is a heated debate about it. And also links shown to other studies. I know that elements of the established medicine in germany for example are highly critical of decriminalisation. So - if something is disputed (rightfully or not) it is not hard to see why it is not allways implemented.

> whenever there is a study linked here... there is a heated debate about it

There are tons of people in this world who don't believe in evolution, but there aren't a whole lot of scientists who doubt its validity - laypeople debating science is worth about what you pay for it.

The only interesting question here is whether there is debate in the scientific community about these topics.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#87

Post by kjshsh123 »

mlsu wrote: post #52
swiftcoder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is not lack of experiments the problem is lack of political will to implemented known good solutions. Indeed. We have extensive and widely repeated evidence that walkable streets, cheap mass transit, free healthcare, decriminalisation of drugs, and a 4-day workweek are all strict improvements over our current societies. And yet somehow all of those are viewed as radical reforms.

Man you guys are so close. "Somehow." Indeed, it is a mystery. 0.01% of the population has direct control over something like 50% of society's resources. Society moves to enrich them, at everyone else’s expense. Curious that.

Most countries don't allow billionaires to influence elections like the USA. Maybe they still do in other ways.

Anyway, I think blaming the 0.01% for how 50%+1 vote is too easy.

Take electoral reform. Is that the 0.01%, or is the case that it's just the only one that could improve elections with electoral reform never has any incentive? Still, if voters really made it their priority and punished parties that run on it and ignore it once they win, it would be more likely to happen.

No doubt there is problems of reproduction of class, and conservatism to preserve existing hierarchies as they are. But is it the 0.01%? Or is it actually a much larger fraction? Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny even if it's 51% lording it over the 49% instead of 0.01% lording it over the 99.99%.

History shows people have a desire for minority scapegoats. We should know that is wrong.

Take housing. Is unaffordability to blame on the 5% of the population that are landlords? The 1% involved in housing development? Or is it maybe the 60%+ households that live in detached homes being insulated from the problem and being NIMBYs in local elections?

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#88

Post by _DeadFred_ »

Bratmon wrote: post #54

It's weird that this article doesn't even attempt to grapple with the reason why governments can't run big policies as experiments and cancel them if they fail: Every time the government hires a group of people to do X, that automatically creates a class of people who: 1. Depend on the government continuing to do X for their livelihoods 2. Are experts in X and know far more about it than any government official This…

Please give examples of these agencies. What you list seems more like how business captures control via 'knowing more than government officials' then how technocrats do. At least that's what conservative politicians tell us as they defer all oversight/domain knowledge to private industry and private industry 'best' practices. Are you also saying that government should stop that practice and that is is also a trap of some kind? Or is it just a trap when it's for the betterment of society?

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#89

Post by _DeadFred_ »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #51
lukan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like all of that, but is there really a scientific consensus about those things? I don't think so. Most seems to be disputed.

Also, do you trust the scientists? Or the scientific establishment that decides what practitioners rise to the level of being trustworthy?

Yes.

I've found most of the people who don't trust don't want to trust, not they actually don't trust, because they know nothing about the bodies that establish this, the standards they hold, specific issues that cause their loss of trust. Zero real background.

What actual bodies that establish credibility/verification do you currently not trust? What examples of their failures prompted you to stop trusting them or even be interested in the topic of if they were trustworthy gatekeeps? Most of the time that answer ends up having personal politics as the root, not actual trust issues that actually occurred and got the doubters attention. Normally if they have any examples they are politically sourced/politically generated laundry lists, not authentically generated concern or personal knowledge/care of the topic past wielding as a political weapon.

Re: We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

#90

Post by _DeadFred_ »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #42
graemep wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? There are plenty of disastrous decisions in the last 70 years at the level of major policies. There are plenty of failed projects. The west in general used to be a lot more efficient. IMO the main cause is exactly the problem the Soviet Union used to have, and China still does: centralisation.

> There are plenty of disastrous decisions in the last 70 years at the level of major policies. one thing I've come to respect about the Chinese is that while they make huge decisions that sometimes have disastrous consequences, they don't make the same mistakes twice. At this point they have fed information from their environmental impacts into reforesting entire mountains and improving air quality. They went in on…

> into reforesting entire mountains

I noticed that PR campaign on reddit to. Hope they planted the right trees (not like Eucalyptus in California, American pines in Sweden that weren't ideal). Meanwhile European and US tree cover is expanding naturally, we just don't really hype it. For example:

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/italys-forests-larger-than-a...

China is also all in on on building out new coal power plants.

https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-e...

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