Comment by arminiusreturns | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arminiusreturns | Hacker News Reader

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arminiusreturns

That wouldn't line the pockets of the oligarchs and the good ol boy network, because it would require the money to actually go to resources and not just overblown accounting entries to cover the pocketbook lining in the first place. The DC elite say fluffy words in public but in private are almost to a person "fuck you I got mine" people. They take oaths but don't mean them.

It's the sad truth that greed is the largest part of it, which enables the oligarchs to buy the politicians in the first place. Then if some rare person does resist, there are a whole slew of tools to use against them to force compliance, usually in the realm of blackmail (this is what Epstein was). These tools grow even more powerful as the surveillance engine is expanded (and the truism to remember is that surveillance is about control, not security). lookup Thomas Drake and William Binney to find out what happens to people on the inside who actually care about security and not control.

Top down compromise of a centralized system makes the system increasingly trivial to control as the compromise progresses.

> It's the sad truth that greed is the largest part of it, which enables the oligarchs

Slightly related, and for anyone that might accuse the OP of using the term "oligarch" as too modern or too politically-motivated, I highly suggest Robert Michels's "Political Parties", a book written more than 100 years ago and whose subtitle says it all: "A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy".

I've just finished reading it (it had been on my to-read list for a couple of years now) and it's fascinating how prescient the writing in there is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Parties

Also worth noting that the political structures in 1984 are described in the book as "Oligarchical Collectivism" - not being in the US I tend to associated the term "oligarch" with Russia.

For anyone interested, the CBO published an excellent primer on military force structure here: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51535

I think it informs ideas about what branches, soldiers, civilians, and contractors do. Once you track where the money goes there are practical ideas to reduce defense spending, as well as dispassionate pros/cons of what’s been tried in the past.

At the top end. However, the electorate that enables it all is frequently xenophobic and racist, and combined with the lie of rugged individualism, the tack most Americans take is one of "every man for himself, except when fighting the Reds."

> That wouldn't line the pockets of the oligarchs and the good ol boy network

Step back for a minute and think about what you are writing and how you came to such a childish view of the world

I'd say his viewpoint is quite realistic and based on common knowledge. It's comments like yours that are childish.

If you really believe the structure of US expenses isn't heavily impacted by interests of a few rich, powerful men then I'd call your view of the world very naive.

People don't vote for flood protection.

They do like military spending.

I think sometimes folks wrap up the political will of the people in "oligarchy" simply because they don't like what those folks want or value.

The public if largely mislead on the risk of epidemics, flooding, etc. Democracy needs education to run smoothly.

There is many studies that show that the government aligns strongly with big money. Just look at the state of health care as an example.

What are the risks of epidemics that people don't understand?

I don't doubt money influences things, but also I don't buy into what seems like an all or nothing theory here that the only driver is money or some vague "money".

In an capitalist society money will be... everywhere in most every market. It's awfully easy to point that out.

> I don't buy into what seems like an all or nothing theory here that the only driver is money or some vague "money".

I completely agree with that. Right now the system is less than ideal. But, there is many people willing to fight for a better world. And cynicism is only going to make things worse.

Many wrong decision are taken in name of profits. But that can be changed, our well being, our planet are at stake.

We have time and will to make things better. I just want to point out that we need to work for it. It will not come for free.

> What are the risks of epidemics that people don't understand?

How exponential growth works, for one. Two, its implications on JIT supply chains modern society operates on.

In all honesty, money flow is the most powerful force on this planet. On the face of it, this looks like a pretty trite observation, but it isn't. What it means is that if you study the feedback loops and incentive structures, look at the market as a dynamic system, you'll see where things are heading - and that picture is very bleak.

For instance, you can be damn sure that no matter how badly this epidemic goes, the next one will be handled just as badly. All the problems: lack of tests, disappearing protective equipment, fragile supply chains - are a direct and predictable consequence of market pressures, which chip away all safety buffers, piece by piece. You can't fix this without reducing or removing the influence of market pressures in many points across our society - which is synonymous with the trite saying, "we need to stop X from being driven by money".

Exponential growth isn't risk.

The consequences of it are, and not understanding the nature of exponential growth also creates risk in itself (in the form of severely underestimating risk).

If you're hoping people would care about the topic because of risks....I kinda would hope that risk could be conveyed beyond "risk".

An example of exponential growth being a risk would be the risk of societal backlash when blue collar work is automated away at a large scale.

And to GPs point, those reaping the rewards of the growth are not those impacted by the first or second order effects.

People don't vote on things, they vote on other people. That's the first problem of modern democracy.

Second problem: to the extent people vote on politicians over things they promise, they vote based on what politicians say they will do (and not in absolute, but relative to competing politicians), not over what they actually do or have done in the past. Since politicians are not accountable for their promises, and the general population has a really short memory, the main impact of voting is as an indirect signal - politicians hoping for being (re)elected have to say and do the things they hope will win them the next elections.

(In other words: the control input to political decision making system isn't what the populace wants, but the prediction of what would make most people vote favorably.)

Three: people vote based on what the media they read tells them is important, which usually has zero relation to reality and relative relevance of things. I'm far from believing media sources (including social media) are bought and controlled by politicians - no, it's worse. All sides try to nudge and control the narrative, and not just the government, but also the private sector. No one wins that tug-of-war, but the end result is that modern media is a form of complete DDoS attack on population's cognitive capabilities. It's literally making the society stupid.

Voting for people means you can hold them accountable. They lay out their policies, if you trust the person and like their policies you vote them in. If they under-perform you vote them out. Along with a separation of powers to limit abuses, it works very well.

Voting for specific policies directly is often disastrous. Look at the way voter initiatives ring fence high levels of spending while also restricting taxation. Look at how Brexit became such a dumpster fire because a government and an elected parliament was compelled to try to implement a policy the government and a majority of MPs disagreed with. Voting for things not people inevitably creates a breakdown in responsibility, especially for complex policies that could be implemented in many ways and involve difficult trade offs.

I’m not against referendums in principle, they can work, but only if they are seeking permission to implement a policy supported by the government that is calling the referendum. In that situation the lines of responsibility are clear, and for an important decision it can make sense to hold a referendum.

I'm not 100% convinced that direct democracy is a good idea either. It has its own problems, as you point out.

Still, this part:

> if you trust the person and like their policies you vote them in. If they under-perform you vote them out

absolutely doesn't work in practice. One, there's no way to build trust at the scale elections are held. For any given politician, you can have maybe a couple hundred people who know them who could actually trust them. Everything above that requires transitive trust - trusting someone who trusts that politicians. However, in my experience, in the general population, the proper chain of trust isn't happening. People trust media outlets, which they have no basis to trust.

Compounding the problem is that in some countries, you aren't even voting for people, you're voting for parties. At the moment, there is no political party on the planet I would trust to do a good job in governance.

There are a lot of failure modes in the democratic system; it's probably worthy of a dense textbook (and I'm sure someone has written one). The incentive structures, the feedback loops, are all wrong for delivering good decisions. The only redeeming aspect of democracy in my eyes is that it's designed to enable bloodless transition of power. And, while I suppose that this makes it the best system, I'd really love if we could figure out a way to make it stop consistently producing idiocy.

>absolutely doesn't work in practice

It demonstrably does, elected leaders get voted out in well functioning democracies all the time. Do some incumbents hang on longer than seems right? Yes, but who gets to decide how long is right? The voters, whether you or I like it or not. Sometimes the voters screw up, but that's their right and it's their right to correct that if they choose to or not if they don't.

For me the key is to be a floating voter. Do not buy into the group-think tribalism of party loyalty, it's a mug's game. I say that, but I've voted for the same part here in the UK except for twice, but to me those two times are crucial. They were actually painful choices to make, but important decisions. To be honest I have also voted on party lines and regretted it. Those two times should really be three.

I really don't like representative democracy where you're voting for a list. It puts power in the hands of party committees, and makes those actually elected beholden to those who put them on the list. Elected officials should never be exposed to that kind of leverage.

> It demonstrably does, elected leaders get voted out in well functioning democracies all the time.

That doesn't mean it works in practice. It may mean your electorate is tuning in to the media noise. The end result is usually that no long-term improvements happen in the country, because the first thing a new government does is undo the reforms and cancel the programs of the previous one.

> For me the key is to be a floating voter. Do not buy into the group-think tribalism of party loyalty, it's a mug's game.

That's table stakes for any human being with more than half a brain (unfortunately, most people aren't like that). But then you hit another problem. Last two elections (one internal and one for EU MEPs), I decided to learn more about the available choices of political parties and their programs. And I came from this with a firm belief that I cannot, in good conscience, support any single one of them. That's the negative side of voting for people, parties and programs. You don't get to express your true beliefs - you can only vote for the lesser evil, or abstain.

You're confusing leaders with policies.

In a pseudo-democracy policy priorities are defined exclusively by the oligarchy, and the required opinions are sold to voters through media channels directed by think tanks and PR outfits.

Voters are persuaded they have a choice over personalities and superficial issues, but never over national policy.

If a politician appears to threaten the cosy consensus, the media wurlitzer goes into overdrive to smear them, talk them down, and persuade voters that they're "extremist", "not electable", and other stock tropes.

So - it doesn't matter if leaders are voted out if key policy goals never change. And as a rule they either don't, or they change in ways that benefit the oligarchs, not the majority of the population.

> Voting for people means you can hold them accountable.

Then how come the US Congress has extremely low approval ratings, but also extremely high incumbent re-election rates?

People tend to hate Congress in general but love their own representative.

Yes, which refutes the claim I was responding to. Everyone thinks the problem isn't their representative, it's all the others. Which means they never hold their representative--the only one whom they have control over with their votes--accountable.

I'm willing to bet there is a study about the effects of letting people who are elected be involved in the process of re-drawing the districts they are elected from.

I'm in the UK and frankly the level of gerrymandering in the US is appalling. I mean it's your system, I hesitate to judge generally speaking, but OMG is your system of redistricting screwed up.

> People don't vote on things, they vote on other people.

It's interesting that empirical evidence show that people rarely vote for something. More frequently, they vote against something. This explains the success of political attack ads but also opens the gate to incredibly cynical manipulation of the voting public.

If people could vote against disaster, they would. As it stands, all they can do is vote against a candidate that gets portrayed as pro-disaster though media manipulation.

I'd say you are letting preformed politically designed black and white thinking colour your holistic view of how the world actually works.

It isn't childish. It's the history of the US. From the very beginning to today. But that's the history of most nations around the world.

You might also want to check out "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler. Then you might want to check out why the oligarchs created the US in the first place. Had nothing to do with freedom or liberty. It was about land and wealth.

"Had nothing to do with freedom or liberty."

I have trouble with such a sweeping statement considering the volume of freedoms available and successfully fought for and gained in the US.

> I have trouble with such a sweeping statement considering the volume of freedoms available and successfully fought for and gained in the US.

You have trouble because you've been brainwashed by endless propaganda. I also used to be troubled as well. Also, my point was that those freedoms weren't why the founders fought for independence. The real reason was land/wealth.

The reason for the discontent wasn't "lack of freedom", it was britain forbidding western expansion of the colonies. We wanted land, the british wanted good trade relations with the native americans who supplied them with valuable fur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763

The american colonists were "proud englishmen" enjoying the freedom/liberties of all englishmen for nearly 150 years before the independence war? So why the sudden shift in sentiment? Because of wealth.

"Freedom, liberty, etc" are just war propaganda. Just like invading iraq to bring "freedom and democracy" to the iraqis.

uh oh

The scale of freedoms alone would seem to clearly indicate freedom had plenty to do with the foundation and development.

You don't get those freedoms in an oligarchy as you describe it.

> The scale of freedoms alone would seem to clearly indicate freedom had plenty to do with the foundation and development.

The scale of freedom? The freedoms were pretty much "the rights of an englishmen", which the american colonists already had. For 150 years, the american colonists ( especially the elites ) enjoyed the rights of englishmen. The american "freedoms" pretty much stem from the magna carta and lockian/english principles. Nothing new and nothing special. I know, we are told it was "new", "special", "exceptional", "revolutionary", etc. All nations lie to their people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Englishmen

> You don't get those freedoms in an oligarchy as you describe it.

I know. That's why the founders didn't allow 90%+ of americans to have "freedoms" or the right to vote. It's why slavery existed after the war of "ideals and freedoms", women were property and the poor unlanded whites were 2nd class citizens.

The central reason for the american revolution and every war is greed of the oligarchs. That's it. Everything else is just saccharine fake facade to rile up the uneducated masses.

> The reason for the discontent wasn't "lack of freedom", it was britain forbidding western expansion of the colonies. We wanted land, the british wanted good trade relations with the native americans who supplied them with valuable fur.

Dunno, to me that still sounds like "lack of freedom", it's just a matter of how you want to frame it.

You may be correct, but your point could have done without the "you've been brainwashed" slap in the face - rather unbecoming of HN imho

You're ignoring all of the other impulses that led to the American Revolution to focus on the only one that supports your argument.

Take the Stamp Act. This produced the most ferocious resistance to that date in the colonies, in part because it was a tax increase to support something that most colonists didn't want (they suspected, rather correctly as it turns out, that the British army being stationed in the colonies was primarily a sinecure). But it also fueled suspicion that Britain was pushing other changes that pissed off other groups in the colonies--there was a specific mention of stamp duty for documents in ecclesiastical courts, which didn't exist at the time and were opposed by the majority of colonists. Or duties on diplomas that would hamper the growth of a professional class in the colonies, forcing them to rely on Britain.

And then there's the Intolerable Acts. In an utterly misguided response to a terrorist act condemned by the majority of colonists (Boston Tea Party), Britain decided to close the third-largest port in the colonies, abolish its legislature, and force trials to be held back in Britain (effectively abolishing the judiciary as well, at least for royal officials). This overreaction soured many colonists on Britain, as they saw themselves as potentially being next in line; nearly guaranteed imminent revolution, with reconciliation much harder; and ultimately turned a terrorist act into a symbol of patriotism.

The proclamation against settling the Ohio Valley may have set the speculators against Britain, but there were many, many other steps that Britain took to turn the colonists away from them.

> Take the Stamp Act

Money?

> Britain decided to close the third-largest port in the colonies

Money?

> Or duties on diplomas

Money?

> The proclamation against settling the Ohio Valley may have set the speculators against Britain, but there were many, many other steps that Britain took to turn the colonists away from them.

Yes. All of them were tied to money. British needed good relations with native americans in order to maintain their lucrative fur trade. Americans wanted native american land.

Pretty much every major founder viewed themselves as proud englishmen. Nobody saw themselves as pennsylvanian, virginian, etc. They all referred to themselves as proud englishmen and willing subjects of the british crown. Until the british crown screwed them over money.

There has never been a war over ideals. Every war is about wealth. The more a war wraps itself around ideals, the more it was truly about wealth.

I assume you're referring to his lack of apostrophe in "good ol boy"

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