Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
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All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for people in power.
I hoped that people would notice that in the Game of Thrones all that clever politics and noble fights were irrelevant to the people who don’t have aspirations of governing other people. If you are aspiring to uncover the secrets of the universe, if you have talent for music or maybe you just want a simple life - that is still irrelevant unless you can structure your output to feed into the power of a person who holds a title. Why? Because in the eyes of these sociopaths you are a unit of HR management and nothing more.
Unfortunately, an awful lot of people are fascinated with the throne games and are willing to give their lives for it.
For example, according to these people Putin is right because EU and NATO were expanding and Putin had to invade. Actual human beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is irrelevant for them, they will tell you that Ukrainians should have remained a buffer. Go you live your life as buffer.
Power hungry people are always going to seek power, and they're always going to be better at it than people who aren't likewise driven. Democracy helps, but it still plainly falls under "Rules for Rulers" with extra keys. I wonder if the gamesmanship can't be addressed directly: elect a large body of "acceptable" candidates and randomly choose the ones that actually get power. This way, randomness dilutes the climbing incentive.
Of course, one needs power to implement any kind of change... :>
A broken culture in this case would be one which:
- Lacks a next generation/dies out (e.g. the Shakers because of their disdain for sex)
- There is a lack of agreement on foundational rules which make the culture impossible to enter, change, or expand (because the culture is crisis). Think managers giving you completely opposite instructions. One example would be say, attending the religious services of a friend/colleague. If the rules are clear and consistent and conveyed, it's possible to act in a respectful way. "This is how a Catholic wedding works." If you just have to guess what's offensive or what the taboos are, or you get contradicting answers, that's a broken culture. Even insular cultures need to teach children/new members, if they can't, they die.
The the USA has many horrible sins but Pax Americana is a huge win in my opinion. I guess, local sociopaths are fighting their wars much more civilly when they don't dare to challenge higher powers, thus leaving people like artists, scientists, musicians, writers, kids, fathers, mothers etc. alone.
I'm usually very worried when someone challenges the position of the US instead of the methods and wrongdoings of the US. It usually means a local warlord will rally huge amount of human resources(which are actually individuals, but not this time) in a bid for power.
Also trying to figure out what mechanisms are hard to individually subvert?
I do sometimes think that people who spend time building competitive multiplayer games would have some useful input to these questions.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
That you are questioning my status is evil by definition!
From this Republicanism draws it's power. The powerful want to rule over other people, so devide the nation into many small states, give each a leader and let the people choose where they want to live. This forces leaders to compete with each other for head count. These socal climbers are naturally competitive with one another so they will go to great lengths to gain more population.
You have the benefits of a large country for things like national defence and natural disasters, but without the strong federal government that ends up homogenizing the states.
* Many people want to live near their family, and moving means either leaving them or convincing multiple other people to leave as well.
* Most people won't be able to work remotely so they'll need a new job.
* Moving means you won't see your friends in person so you need a new social circle.
* Maybe you need to sell your house and buy a new one.
The state has to to something pretty egregious to convince someone to move. It's not like switching brands of toothpaste.
I believe one of the core value propositions of the state is addressing perverse incentives that emerge from competition. Untaxed externalities, for example. Due to race-to-the-bottom dynamics, "let's compete on the matter" is equivalent to "let's ignore the perverse incentives." Not great.
Imagine if, to switch from AT&T to Verizon, you had to shell out ten grand to Verizon and wait six years, with Verizon being able to add extra hoops and fees at any point in the process? If you fail at any point, Verizon will sign you back up for a contract under AT&T's worst terms. On top off all of this, you still have to pay Verizon's worst rates until the six year period is up.
AT&T could probably send someone to your house every month to punch you in the face and you still wouldn't switch. After all, for the first six years after you switch, Verizon will do the same.
Even harder to uproot your life and move away from a powerful national government.
The founding fathers designed the US as a republic to avoid the issues we see today.
> There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it."[0]
[0]https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/h...
I would not do that again, but it was feasible.
Yes, it pits them against each other and thereby reduces their power -- in theory -- but it still selects for them. It doesn't even claim to be good at keeping them away. It only claims to reduce their power.
I don't think it's particularly good at reducing their power either, but these are two orthogonal issues.
My conclusion was that each person should get to choose up to two people from a randomly shuffled list of candidates. The list would be 2*N long where N=(num candidates/ num seats).
That way everyone can carefully vet their choice if they so desire without being overwhelmed. Pandering to your base also becomes much less effective, unless perhaps the base is very large.
Check the about page.
> Farnam Street
> Founded and led by Shane Parrish, Farnam Street is run by a small but exceptional team.
I am on the same page with you.
Western elites associate themselves with Randist idea of natural right, or natural virtue, and very questionable take on the rationalistm.
When you let these people "rationalise," and "develop flexibility" long enough, they can be forced into rationalising just anything, including fascism. The new new creed of Harward degree totalitarianism apologists in the spotlight today is a great example of this.
The West got stuck in this very questionable mental framework, and is running in circles. The decision makers talk themselves unto death for very petty, hollow arguments, so strong is this "elite conditioning."
In reality, there is little for them to really choose. It's either right, common sense, and sound, or it is this "trying to rationalise." It's morally hollow people trying to find out smart ways to not being pointed on as such basically.
> Actual human beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is irrelevant for them
I encourage you to look into who actually came into power following Ukraine's 2014 coup (hint: look up the founders and accomplices of the "Yalta European Strategy") and what its economy has looked before and after.
PS. I'm Bulgaria born, I know very well what it is like being under Russian influence or Western influence but thanks for the reading material.
Sure, if your audience is literally children.
Using a series of (violent) smut novels as a guide for complex human dynamics is not something that serious people do.
That's a straw man argument. I don't suggest for guidance of society by Lord of the Rings novels.
I don't know if I should reply to you, that's very low quality conversation here. What's next? Name calling? Maybe you should consider the possibility that you are not one of those serious people and try reading a book by Charles Dickens.
No to what? Can you be more specific? What are you objecting to?
In a society, it's never actually irrelevant for anyone. 'No man is an island' and all. Even someone who checked out so completely they moved into a cabin into the woods can get hit by errant bombs or shot by invading soldiers.
What I've learned over the years is that most people prefer to focus on the fun thing right in front of them rather than the larger mechanics of the environment they are in. That fundamentally makes them easier to manipulate for those trying to get control of the larger mechanics for their own benefit.
Sometimes, you get folks doing that where most everyone's benefits and their benefit aligns.
Often, especially if people aren't paying attention or there is a broken system that incentivizes it (which is typical) you get people whose idea of 'benefit' is pathological for others.
Figuring out how this all works, AND being able to influence the overall mechanics and systems so evil folks don't get into power is very difficult and often thankless. Most people can't handle it, so most people check out.
Bad actors like to encourage this, as it makes their life easier.
My argument is actually about focusing on the larger and important things instead of being a device in the fight of the political class.
Oh and understanding how society works is definitely of great value, what I find great waste of human life and resources is to participate in the fight of sociopaths who try to interfere with the workings of the society to skew it in their favour.
Even if somehow you have no sociopaths on ‘your side’ (whichever it is), fighting a sociopath by definition requires participation?
Nothing of these are original problems, some societies managed to build quite robust machines where sociopaths can't really cause huge damage.
If you care to put forward some examples, I’m happy to try to provide more concrete information on what I mean.
It’s easy to write off leaders as sociopaths - but very few seem to check the boxes, if you pull yourself out of the politics.
More often often you see someone acting with a set of incentives and a problem that you don’t understand, making a decision you don’t agree with. Which sucks. Add on top that the extreme pressure, visibility, power, and wealth can cause some unique looking (but all too common) pathologies at those levels, and it gets even easier to us vs them them.
Someone can’t make hard decisions if their heart bleeds (for real) for every bad situation. No group will survive long with no one able to make hard decisions leading it.
No matter what anyone does, if the group size is large enough bad situations will happen no matter how good a system is, or how perfect anyone attempts to make it. For anyone to be able to be effective at that level, they have to be able to make decisions somewhat free of emotional affect, and to be good, they need to do that without completely losing it. Which is incredibly difficult.
It’s easier to just go ‘meh’, make the decision that’s better for them right now and move on.
And being an experienced leader - emotional contagion/forcing empathy as a manipulation tool is super common, and commonly used to try to ‘should’ someone into making a decision that is terrible for everyone.
We all do it (hopefully positively) - give a smile (regardless of how we’re actually feeling) to the boss, or try to relay how terrible it feels to them when a family emergency happens, etc. hoping they’ll empathize and treat us nicer.
And good bosses do, but also know how to draw the line if someone is abusing it.
A sociopath (by definition) acts anti-socially, and they won’t be at the head of any social group for long, if ever.
As an engineer by trade who turned to politics and government for a while, I find your perspective very simplistic. People are hardwired to seek recognition and social respect - also known as "power" - and build hierarchies around it. Politics exists in every profession and walk of life, as soon as you have people trying to achieve some common goal, you will have competition for decision making.
In professional politics, the grab for power is naked and participants understands the game, so the field tends to attract sociopaths effective at persuading others. That's all a good politician does at the end of the day, convinces people around them that acting in the interest of the politician is good for them too. Professionals cannot afford the luxury of ideology or vision, since any effort earnestly spent on those is time not spent furthering their own power, a weakness a better politician will surely exploit. Politicians will claim values and virtues, they will fish around in society for popular themes they can champion to increase their reach, but the only real project of any successful politician is themselves.
In other fields, reality tends to get in the way of pure politics, and you can't talk your way out of a brain surgery or spaghetti codebase. This tends to leave many naive people with the impression that politics is marginal and things are decided on technical merit, personal talent, work etc. This is not the case.
Every CEO, inventor, Nobel-prize winner, famous author and journalist is first and foremost a skilled politician. They were able to convince others to work in their lab or company, to publish them, to fund them, to support and promote them. Every step on the ladder to greatness required accumulating some form of political power - get a well funded lab supporting their research, an investment, a scholarship, a small team of friends to work on their idea.
At every step they competed with other politicians aiming for the same resources, because nobody can make it alone, and everyone would like an army supporting their own dreams. And throughout this process, successful climbers distributed booty to their supporters to keep them on their side.
Politics is not just for rulers, it's for anyone who wants to matter in any sense in society.
What I say is that the problems caused by politics emerge when politicians forget that other people are individuals. That doesn't mean that there are no politics in science, in music, in work or even in intimate relationships.
Are you suggesting that the only way to be a politician is to be sociopath? It is a cliche that I find too simplistic, honestly.
I'm saying a bit more: that there's exactly the same kind of kind of politics that Mesquita and Smith talk about, and that, contrary to your dismissal, their insights are far from irrelevant to people who "uncover the secrets of the universe" or "have talent for music".
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...
Then there was U.S. involvement in the coup in 2014 (Nuland and associated neoconservatives who think he world is a chessboard). Then there was talk about joining NATO and Zelensky hinting at getting nuclear weapons in the February Munich conference just before the invasion (nice escalation strategy).
People like Mearsheimer are realists: They know that both Putin and neoconservatives are playing Game of Thrones and advise the best strategy for the countries that are the pawns in that game.
I never claimed that Ukraine was not corrupt and Russia corrupted it. In fact, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries out there. Very long way down the road in joining the EU(maybe it can be accelerated due to the war).
What I'm talking about is the desire of people not to be part of the Russian way of governance and adopt the western practices.
Anyway, let's not turn the discussion into another Russia VS Ukraine thread.
IMHO, what you describe is often just a special case of not thinking very holistically, zooming in on too few things while ignoring the whole, then reasoning about the whole based on those too few things. Oftentimes that leads to prioritizing something that's morally wrong, or otherwise getting priorities mixed up by elevating some less important thing over a more important thing. Those kinds of errors are also easily exploitable by controlling attention. E.g. if you attend narrowly enough to Putin's grievances, his actions will seem justified no matter how awful they are.
Another area where I often see this is economics.
I've also mentioned that the fact that any of the buffer countries work at all is a miracle, but it is not by design.
[1]Nearly 80% of households in Lebanon don't have food or money to buy food:
You were probably down voted because we have access to maps
It's a politics 101, to be a buffer country you do not need to cover the entire borders, you can cover most of the borders or some of them similar to Ukraine.
Geopolitics has nothing to do with morality/freedom/feelings, it's all about power.
Don't get me wrong; morality, freedom, feelings, those have important place in your own family, friends, community
But if you're talking about places where you have little control eg. companies where competition is given prestige before you were hired in, or in the case of geopolitics, thousand years civilizations fighting for centuries, it's better for you to see what it is
As much as we strive for equality, justice, rationality, sensibility, beauty, and all of those admirable virtues, let be realistic here, we live in a dystopian planet where god is truly dead - men have played as gods in favour of power
Even Marcus Aurelius who was known as the philosopher king, couldn't do much to not slaughter Christians under his name, if we were to believe historians. This is equal to western media smearing Putin's name in the international community, when what he's doing is essentially identical to what the US did in countless countries it invaded
In democracies, the opposite is true: the winning
coalition is large, and the real selectorate is
almost as large as the nominal selectorate. This
means that dictators can keep their jobs by
handing out private goods to their cronies,
whereas democratic leaders have to dole out
public goods to maintain their power. That
seems to square pretty well with observations
in the real world.
I suppose that "dole out public goods" doesn't necessarily have to apply to tangible goods, of course. A lot of Republicans are happy to vote for Republicans simply because they have promised to ban things they find objectionable, like abortion. If preventing women from having abortions is one's biggest personal issue, then I suppose a guarantee to curb abortion rights would be seen as "public goods."
One of the keys is that they pledge to give other groups even less.
As LBJ said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you"
"If you can convince the lowest person that his situation is not his fault, he won't notice that you're making it harder for him to rise up. Hell, give him welfare and a system to blame, and he'll happily and loyally stay down forever."
So.....farmers?
The welfare tropes are so exhaustingly played out, especially when all data shows that red voters get far more welfare.
https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...
This applies in most states at the local level too:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/why-are-w...
Also, you're ignoring the voters who explicitly tell us why they're voting that way: "he's not hurting the people he needs to be": https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...
Given that welfare recipients are among the minority in every single state, it's very possible that the welfare recipients are voting majority blue and still losing their state elections
"Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full time Workers are evenly divided between parties."
And who can forget "don't let the government get ahold of my Medicare"? Conservative voters love to believe that the only good welfare is the welfare that benefits them (similar to how "cancel culture" is bad until it's time to ban books from school libraries and so many other hypocrisies).
It includes things like:
* Voters felt Trump was more genuine than Hillary. That's not hard to believe. Trump is raw and real to a fault. Hillary is a corrupt career politician.
* Make America prosperous again. Democrats like to ignore history that shows that conservative presidents bring far more prosperity; leftist presidents destroy prosperity.
* Trump was the best or only conservative option. In general, the best reason to vote for a candidate is simply that the other candidate is worse.
* A reaction to Obama. Thomas Sowell at the time believed Obama was the U.S. worst president ever. While not a historian myself, I am inclined to take the opinion seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UpiNiaak18&list=WL&index=1&...
And, if you are sick of the welfare tropes, you probably need more Sowell in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdwXoKTW3Ew
Oh man, this was my 8th grade understanding in a Republican household.
However it's not very hard to look at the US economy and debt under Clinton, then Bush, then Obama as recent, alternating, and stark differences. Clinton had one of the best US economies in history with a budget surplus, Bush squandered that on wars and the 08 recession. Obama picked up the pieces of a recession and brought us back to economic strength from the brink.
Then there's the crucial point in history where the three consecutive conservative presidencies, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover led us to the Great Depression vs. FDR's birth of the modern American middle class...
(Yes, I read and appreciate Sowell. And when I say the president's names, I mean their administration's policies.)
Similarly, sowell believes democrats caused the 08 recession via affirmative action housing policies and that Obama put the economy into a a coma until trump got things back in order. Sowell is an economist by trade, by the way.
We can both agree the economy thrived under Clinton, and I would add bush senior. Clinton was a rarity for being relatively fiscally responsible.
If sowell had a cookbook I bet I could guess your diet.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=111 There you go. Another author explaining how FDR only made things worse.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-obama-recovery-took-so-...
Here's another author explaining how Obama damaged our economy. And of course Biden is damaging it even further.
Are you sure it's not: he'll fare... well?
Response bias is well studied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias
Especially when one has been fed a narrative specifically to cover underlying beliefs in something that has more social acceptability.
"The democrats are smug" okay...lets ask the follow-up question. Why? how? please explain? Taking people at their literal word for why they do something is basically the worst possible version of any social sciences research.
I have to admit you've lost me. What reality are we talking about?
> "The democrats are smug" okay...lets ask the follow-up question. Why? how? please explain?
Thomas Sowell has written entire books about the arrogance of leftism. This one I've read personally: https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp...
This one I would like to find time to read: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-S...
From my own personal experience, it takes a certain arrogance to believe in authoritarianism, that a few elite should be making all the decisions for the unwashed masses. This describes the current democrat party to a tee.
Similarly, it takes a certain arrogance to believe you have all the answers, and similarly, to ignore all the evidence that disproves your assumptions. This describes most so-called progressives.
In contrast, it takes humility to be a conservative, recognize that you don't have all the answers, that things are the way they are for a reason, and that the world is complex with more far tradeoffs than pure solutions.
I see you got the names of the Democrat and Republican parties confused. As the 2020 election showed a minority of the country tried to throw out the results of an election to usurp power for their authoritarian...
This is what is meant by the “arrogance”. Peoples opinions are not accepted as inherently credible. The bad faith and the intellectual dishonesty and the projection are not an accident, they are a narrative tool that metastasizes
Is not a response to “why do you hold this opinion”
It strikes me as pretty much straight up satire to use as your primary source the writings of a guy with degrees from Harvard and works for the Hoover institution at standford. To then go from the arrogance of the left to the arrogance of authoritarianism…I honestly think this is parody.
The basics here, that are worth reiterating, is that there is, as usual, no serious people on the left claiming they have all the answers…the only people claiming that are constructing useful strawpeople to then try and tear down.
https://twitter.com/JossFong/status/1496525152598777856
It is really good.
Edit: also, this source seems to disagree with you: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/11/once-aga...
Behind the paywall, the article text confirms this:
>However, there was scant evidence that white voters without degrees preferred Mr Biden to Mrs Clinton. Mr Trump’s margins of victory in white working-class counties this year were just as large on average, and in some places even bigger, than in 2016.
* Honestly, they're astoundingly bad, to the point of being actively misleading if you're not looking carefully. I highly suspect they were thrown together by someone without statistics training using bad autofit at the last minute.
this implies that giving out public goods is actually about giving tax breaks and subsidies to campaign donnors and lobbyists both of which are really for-profit companies.
...or something like that.
The Democratic Party never adopted it at all. The activists that did were largely outside of the Party and opposed by the elected Party officials from day one.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184425/presidential-ele...
TBH, this was an election for the Democrats to lose, when it came to non-white voters and the ball was dropped. I'm not sure why they keep chasing these edge-case voters and ignoring the lower and middle class, base. They assume they're "gimme's" I assume - but voter turn out will, and does, drop =[
Full disclosure, I live in the Seattle area, so the rhetoric bubble here is strong
EDIT: typo
Also see a huge amount of research that who gets part of the public goods is almost important as the fact that they're giving out public goods. Which often falls along nationalistic and racial lines.
I personally doubt that most in GOP vote along those value lines, but there are very vocal and organized segments that do which I think explains why it'd seem that way.
Source: personal experiences and anecdotal evidence (e.g. take with a grain of salt)
Many would consider that a compliment.
I am such a person, or at least I strive to be.
I understand well that there's a "poor Republicans are so dumb that they consistently vote against their own interests" narrative out there. It appears to me that's plainly something you brought to the table here. That trope wasn't present in my observation, either explicitly or implicitly.
And living in a major city like Los Angeles is even worse. The government’s spending billions of dollars for 600-800k apartments for the homeless, when the cost of living for regular people goes up and up. And with little support for small businesses.
The trope that poor Republicans are just “too stupid” to vote for Democrats to save them, or are blinded by social issues, seems largely false. They view the government as causing their problems via cheap labor, “free trade”, unfair regulation and inflation.
Meanwhile, neo-liberalism has been and remains unpopular with the electorate on "both sides" (which is why Trump was able to leverage that gap between voter preferences and the standard party platform)
The trope that poor Republicans are just
“too stupid” to vote for Democrats to
save them, or are blinded by social issues,
seems largely false.
I would be more convinced of this if rural and conservative areas weren't net takers of federal funds. In the US at least, urban areas subsidize rural ones by quite a lot of money.
In addition, take a look at the federal deficit under each partie's leadership for the last 100 years. It's quite a coup that Republicans get to pretend that they are the party for small government and fiscal responsibility.
The narrative you are using is the opposite side of the same coin that Republicans use about how wealthy people who vote for paying for more taxes should just donate money to the government. If the government is giving out money, you'd be a fool to refuse to take it because it's going to get dispersed either way and the voters arent getting their taxes back.
The reality is that people know that their individual vote has a tiny chance of changing policy so the material reward for it is very small. The psychic reward for expressing your values is greater. So the working class person may vote to reduce social welfare, but won't tear up a child tax credit. The professional who votes for higher taxes won't donate an extra $5k to the government. In both cases when those people vote they are expressing their values, not their interests.
"The professional who votes for higher taxes" probably fears that someday they won't be a professional, much like the autocrat who fears they will someday be on the outside.
Conservatives, for the most part, believe that a hierarchy of haves and have-nots is not only natural, but inevitable. It is consistent for them to therefore extrapolate that anyone claiming to work on flattening the hierarchy (by giving to the have-nots) must really be trying to get their in-group further up the hierarchy, at the expense of those currently benefitting from it.
That's why "He’s not hurting the people he needs to be" can be rationalized as in their self interest. In their view, there is some constant, immutable amount of "hurt" that some demographic has to bear. "No such thing as a free lunch" and such. So deep down, conservatives interpret any calls to reduce that harm as instead being an existential threat to redirect that harm to their group.
I really recommend Ian Danskin's videos on the subject, they explain it better than I can in one HN comment, with plenty of scholastic sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4&list=PLJA_jUddXv...
(Linked is "Always a Bigger Fish". Many of the historical sources justifying the argument are discussed in the "endnote" video that follows, but this video is the one that lays out this particular argument, along with the later video "I Hate Mondays")
I use these authors' models in my consulting work to effect change in large tech orgs. Most people say they are playing chess and think they are secretly playing poker, but really they're trapped in a a game of musical chairs during an outbreak of cooties, where people are watching for signs of the music slowing down and angling for a diminishing number of seats. As a consultant, I solve problems and collect my fees move on as I don't value the things they struggle for, but having a metamodel from books like those for what's going on can unblock organizations with some small influential changes.
For me the perspective offered in that video was simply to be aware of this perspective existing, i.e. a paradigm shift. I don't consciously try to use it - I am aware that I don't have the talent for it - but it has proven a useful tool when reflecting on situations and experiences. Certainly made me put a lid on some of the hot-headed idealism I had in my even-younger days. :)
Politicians do and have done plenty of good things, from getting bridges built, to Medicare, to fighting a war to stop slavery.
Every single Superman story is at some level like it could be something from the Talmud about the costs and benefits of Jehovah's day-to-day involvement in the lives of his faithful. The writers were steeped in this culture.
He's not a vigilante. He's more like an actively-involved angel (or avatar in the Hindu sense).
The stories ultimately build into parables about intervention in human free will, and the costs and responsibilities of accepting that intervention.
The reason I say this is to point out the impossibility of this comparison.
Superman does not do "good", he does "god".
Politicians can do "good".
I am not by any means a comic book aficionado. Or Jewish! I'm the son of an RE teacher who was fascinated by subconscious cultural expressions of universal religious themes in sci-fi and comics. (She was really a Star Wars fan, read the books even!)
What you are presenting is a "reading" and not "wrong", but there are alternative readings.
I guess what I'm saying is you can read the character in a very secular way.
There are definitely riffs on Nietsche in there, course. Not least in the name gag.
But it's just one example of the extraordinary amount of hidden/telegraphed Jewishness in US culture of the time. And because it is so well-hidden, people are often surprised when you point it out.
(Like, can you name a really popular Christmas pop song that was not written or co-written by a Jewish person?)
Sure his having a secret identity as Clark Kent can be seen as mirroring a Jew trying to assimilate among gentiles.
His having fled a dead planet can be seen as mirroring Jews fleeing from pogroms.
There's a lot of messianic symbolism, but the moral issue he has to solve is "Lex Luther wants to blow up the west coast of the U.S." not some parable of Talmidic law.
The moral conundrums Superman faces are simple inarguable concepts like "genocide is bad" or "that guy on death row is innocent and somebody should find the real killer and save him". Or "law and order."
If he struggles whether to "interfere" with society it's obviously because the formula of a Superman story is about restoring the status quo to society after a villain tries to disrupt society or blow it up, to be repeated in the next adventure. Superman deciding not to "interfere" is just an in story explanation for the repeated formula of a low brow pulp serial.
The people who make the comics do not and did not even have creative freedom to stray too far from this formula. Superman is not owned by the men and women who write and draw the comics.
I guess exploration was not quite the right word, and this is a fair point for sure. I didn't mean it to sound quite as explicit.
What I suppose I mean is that there's a sort of narrative exposition of it. It's not subconscious, I think is what I mean, even if it is not explicit. Growing up the way Siegel did it would have been difficult to ignore a whole set of stories and cultural associations and dialogues.
The parallels about Superman himself are telegraphed, as you say. He's a refugee, he partially assimilated, and the main brake on his ability to get involved is a very explicit understanding that he cannot break cover without risk (though this is much more evident in the cinema Superman films I think). Both Siegel and Shuster were from families who had changed their names to avoid discrimination.
The stories are simple but I am not sure they start off from anything more than that experience. And the notion of justice and injustice is as I understand it very much something the Talmud concerns itself with. As well as at least one story about whether a largely absent Hebrew god should be allowed to to interfere.
Aside from bridges, all the politicians who did what you said are long dead. How long do current politicians get to rest on the laurels of long dead ones?
Many politicians absolutely do good. Politics itself is not about doing good, it is about working towards the possible.
One side of the US system is consistently better at getting elected than the other, and used to ideologically prefer the concept of a weaker form of governance.
The pragmatic one can say whatever maximizes their chance of winning.
I mean if you look at them with an uncritical eye, sure. The system is corrupt, at least in the US. Just look at what corporations pay in taxes.
Can you name some US politicians that "do good," and what do you define as good? Talk is cheap, they all tell you what they think you want to hear. Think of all the corrupt systems in play that are detrimental to the us population: NAFTA, globalization, policing, qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture abuse, mass surveillance, over-prosecution, ungodly military spending, school defunding, many more. Things these "do good" politicians just ignore. Doesn't that taint them at all in your mind?
Sit back and think about how leaving that thought unchallenged -- not looking for and appealing to the good in politicians -- leads inexorably to the kind of collapse of democracy that you nearly experienced less than a year ago.
Apply the same logic to other organizations. Are there good police? Sure. Are they still good if they ignore police brutality and cover it up? I would argue that would make them bad police.
Currently if you drive with cash, police can pull you over and take it. They split it up with the federal government. You are left with no cash and are now responsible for hiring a lawyer to try to get it back. That is literally theft from the government. Which politicians are trying to stop this? How does legally stealing from citizens reenforce the faith in the rule of law? It doesn't. Rather than trying to blame the person pointing this stuff out for the decline of democracy, maybe put some blame on the people who write unjust laws.
I guess it would but I said nothing about ignoring it.
So what are you saying then? What does that even mean? Sounds like the feel good rhetoric politicians have been feeding us for decades. I can look for the good all I want but that doesn't magically make it appear or make the "do good" politicians effective. I've been giving politicians of both parties the benefit of the doubt for 20+ years, and without fail, they disappoint. Most of us are a lot worse off than we were in 1995.
Be optimistic? Is that what you are saying?
How's our life expectancy looking? Worse. How's the drug war going? Worse. How does the average person's prospect of retirement look? Worse. How's the prospect of home ownership looking? Worse. How's our freedoms looking? Worse. Remember that whole net neutrality thing that the Ds were pushing? What happened to that now that they have power? The politicians are controlled by the parties, the parties are controlled by the donors. Our futures are being sold down the river to the highest bidder. What's good? Give me some optimism.
But if I must spell it out to you -- I'll get downvoted for it -- I am saying that, essentially, "othering" politicians as inherently not doing good, or saying that they are all tainted by the actions of some of them, is the precise sentiment that was exploited to allow a corrupt, amoral, malignant narcissist and populist into the White House, who deliberately tried to overthrow the democratic process.
Very few of the politicians tarred in that way are anything like as dangerous as the man this enabled. And the most dangerous of them take part in the tarring.
If you cannot look at politicians and seek to find the good and the common ground in them, you're doing the nihilistic groundwork of future fascists. Don't do that.
I'm not dehumanizing anybody, I'm just calling them corrupt. Politicians have been doing a lot of dehumanizing though. "Socialists," "basket of deplorables," "anti-vaxxer," "thugs," "racists," etc. You know the routine.
>I am saying that, essentially, "othering" politicians as inherently not doing good, or saying that they are all tainted by the actions of some of them, is the precise sentiment that was exploited to allow a corrupt, amoral, malignant narcissist and populist into the White House, who deliberately tried to overthrow the democratic process.
Don't you feel the corruption of the existing system was what allowed him to get elected in the first place? Would we have Trump if we didn't have the bank bailouts in 2008 while letting grandmas get their house foreclosed on? Doubt it. Would we have Trump if we hadn't insisted on staying in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years, then barely help vets when they came home? Doubt it. Would we have Trump if Occupy Wall Street made a difference rather than get jackbooted? Probably not. Would we have Trump if politicians didn't wholly allow globalization at the expense of the US worker? No. Would we have Trump if politicians didn't almost exclusively pass legislation to the benefit of their donors while ignoring the citizenry? No. Trump absolutely wiped the floor with GOP darlings at the GOP debates and he largely did it from the left of GOP dogma, at least economically.
I see Trump as a symptom of our current predicament. He was popular because he pointed out the corruption of the existing system. The irony of course is he was just as corrupt. Make no mistake, unless things improve, there will undoubtedly be another, who is more politically and bureaucratically expedient. If you are concerned with that at all, the status quo is almost a guarantee it will happen.
Anyway I gave you a couple upvotes incase someone comes along and tries to downvote you. I'm enjoying this discussion.
"Good" is almost never the solition to "bad -- it's usually impractical for pragmatic or political reasons. The solution is "better" aka "less bad" and iterate. Progressive ideas, and ideas that can get some semblance of consensus, work much better than Revolutionary ideas.
Might be worth pointing out the word politics is, for many, a pejorative. In that worldview, this statement is more akin to "Good thievery" or "Good fraud" in which the implication is obvious that it is describing ways of being better at that act, not that you are working towards any moral aims.
But yes, the word "Good" is clearly intended as poetic counterpoint to the "Bad" in behaviour.
Also I disagree about "democratic leaders have to dole out public goods to maintain their power". At least I think public goods here is too flimsy of a phrase to use here. It is alluded later that one of the problems of a leader is bankruptcy. This implies most favours to the 'winning coalition' and doling up public good being just monetary compensation. I don't think is a good way to phrase it. Bread and circus goes more to the point, the former seems an anesthetic, harder to understand way to say drop some money to keep the masses happy. And I don't consider that a 'public good'.
Disagree all you want. This is why certain ideologies that tend to be rule-following and cast aspersion on the spoils system often have trouble holding power. Such as centrists, libertarians and greens.
I'm having a hard time seeing how any ideology opposed to the freebies and pork barrels gets into power at all? Let alone getting to the point of having "trouble holding power". In our system you're simply forced to give out freebies to your voters. There really is no choice. In fact, there are some freebies that all ideologies would be required to give out to all voters. I'm American, in my system an example of that kind of freebie would be something like social security maybe? or the mortgage credit? However, if you're not from the US, but rather from another democratic nation, I'm sure you could name the freebies that are mandatory in your system too.
Also the set of all possible bad behaviours is very big and it would be absurd if all of that would be good politics. The title only makes sense if we somehow restrict that set of all possible bad behaviours.
What a cynical starting point. It's just basic Machiavelli, but gussied up with modern-sounding language and fairly basic Realpolitik thinking thrown in.
It's incredibly narrow-minded too. There were actual philosopher kings and political thinkers and democracies outside our current zeitgeist. Nevermind that some systems actually have term limits, constitutional limitations on power, and lo and behold, some people actually leave office when voted out or their term ends.
Maybe the book is better, but I have trouble reading this with such a fumbling start.
"Give the last word to Washington’s great adversary, King George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, 'They say he will return to his farm.'
'If he does that,' the incredulous monarch said, he will be the greatest man in the world.'"
I don't know all the reasons for this, but I imagine one reason is that someone needs to get credit for successes and blame for failures. When decisions are made by consensus, there is no clear way to assign credit or blame, so the incentives to create success are weaker.
As for gender discrimination, who says it's done in a way that is bad for profit? From what I hear, young women nowadays earn more than young men, and only when women have kids are they discriminated against. Which is unfair for them and bad for society - but profitable for the individual "capitalist".
Years later I heard this youtube essay which I'm just connecting the dots now is basically just a recap of that book. I personally liked the 20 minute essay way more and I think it gives a pretty good summary of the key points:
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/05...
Personally, I think we've all grown up assuming a safe, stable, neo-liberal capitalist environment that gives us a space to play with our toys, and indeed, strongly encourages it. This is not a position of power, but the position of a bright child.
Yes, the money can buy influence over power, but not obtain power itself. And if Citizen's United is ever legislated against (and it should be) even that influence will be limited.
Humans like any social creatures are prone to tribalism. Social cretures crave a sense of belonging and that means defining who you are, what you want and what you stand for and finding similarly minded individuals. Maintaining that group involves signaling one's "belonging". Tribalism can be along racial, cultural, religious or language grounds but it can also be more ephemeral than that.
Take the popularity of Trump, particularly among evangelicals and other "values" voters. Now for anyone familiar with even a modicum of Christian orthodoxy, Trump seen through the lens of Christian morals is objectively a horrible human being. Many of us find this hypocrisy perplexing but seen through the lens of tribalism I think it makes more sense. Trump, through carefully chosen wedge issues like guns and abortion, provides and reinforces that sense of belonging to that group. It reinforces the "us and them" and "we are warriors for Christ" world views that are deeply-ingrained and pervasive.
Beyond Trump, you have Putin. Some evangelicals believe God is working through Putin [1]. Tucker Carlson last week went on a rant about Putin never did [insert imagine liberal sin here], a video that is oddly hard to find now and Carlson has been forced to backtrack on given the invasion.
Nationalism is another common road to tribalism.
But none of this really involves the transfer of material goods as this post focuses on.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/retired-evangelist-pat-robertson-sa...
to be clear these effects are likely not a result of anything trump did directly but mere circumstance of timing, however is credited by the very people you are calling "values voters" with improving their economic position while at the same time supporting their values
In contrast, again correctly or not, the Actions of Democrats led by Joe Biden are seen as directly increasing inflation, gas prices, and worsing their economic situation.
I still firmly believes elections are always about economics, if you believe person A will make you better off economically you vote for them, or if you believe Person A will make you worse off economically you vote against them..
2020 was probably the first election in a long time that upends that mold where it was not about economics...
This is literally the last thing I consider. I'm not an economist, hell, even economists can't tell you the outcomes of changing certain fiscal policies. I vote on social issues alone, which obviously has overlap with economic prosperity, but whether or not some politician will save me 1% on my income or property tax is not on my radar whatsoever.
The opportunity cost to that savings is normally much higher than some fraction of a percent of money I get to keep. That 1% doesn't affect my life in any meaningful way, but cutting school taxes or something does, in a much greater effect, over a much greater time period, and a wider geographical area.
Believing the most slander in history leads directly to the belief he is the worst person in history.
There's a third option and a fourth option that are both more frequent under autocracy: leaders acting against current pressures in accordance with ideologies that in reality have terrible outcomes in both the present in the future (e.g. authoritarian communism and fascism), and just being kleptocrats.
The dichotomy isn't between wise autocratic leadership and democracy. The dichotomy is between democracy and horrible autocratic leadership most of the time with only very occasional periods of wise leadership.
A leadership can be terrible for the populace, but beneficial to him and his cronies. To the dictator, that may count as "good for the future".
(Edit: I'm not even being cynical here, it's just a bit of reality, the word 'autocracy' makes it sound harsh but it is what it is - most important things happened behind closed doors and not even by politicians)
Public sentiment and elections have little influence over most things unless there is 'outrage' or some kind of 'focus' on an issue.
A 'few key issues' drive public narrative and votes, but the gears are run by the bureaucracy.
What we get in democracy is mostly just the ability to pull the plug on groups, and the ability to outrage over some new bit of information about the system. Much less so setting the overall direction. Or rather, we 'kind of influence that' by having a 'rough idea over who is in charge, politically'.
The cronyism problem is mostly solved with transparency and making sure the general public understands.
There are a handful of very 'standard ways' that corruption happens - frankly we should be teaching this in school.
A certain 'recent former president' bought a home in Florida for $20M, then sold it 2 years later for $90M to a Russian oligarch. (Before this person was president).
That is 'perfectly legal' - however, regular people should understand that transactions that happen above or below market value signal something. It's like a 'gift'.
A better way to look at that, is a 'Russian oligarch' gave someone who is now a 'former President' a 'gift' of $50M dollars.
It's irrational for people to just hand over huge sums to other people for no reason.
Ergo - there's probably a quid-pro-quo, which can come in many forms.
It can be to influence policy directly, softly, in a specific direction, a general direction.
Insider Trading is another example. It's not obvious why or how that works, but it's not complicated.
How the 'Art World' can be a big fraud/scam (in an illegal way).
Teenagers can be taught this, and frankly I think it would be an entertaining course that they would really pay attention to.
Going against the public for the benefit of future peoplke is something that in practice is worse than it sounds, because if you ignore the feedback of the general public, it's much easier to act in self-serving or blindly reckless ways, even if "the public is wrong this time".
2) People are moral and have a sense of fairness. This is actually far more common than not. While it's hard to get people to talk with their pocket book - guess what - they do want to spend money on social things, so long as they don't feel it and of course, people hate corruption. So transparency there is helpful.
I was expecting a thing about how the most ragged, boorish politicians make a name for themselves. We all know the names of the 'loudmouths' in Congress, but most of us do not know the reasonable Senators who actually do a lot of work. I think that deserves a story.
I believe that we live in a 'bureaucratic autocracy' i.e. where the things we argue about on the News and in Congress are only a tiny, tiny slice of governance, but that there is generally enough transparency in the system to cause change, driven by voting, public sentiment.
In particular - think about how so many people in power are 'really sensitive' on a lot of issues.
Literally, if almost anyone in the USA uttered the 'n word' in public - they would be 'out'.
Just consider that: a single word - and 'gone'.
That's due to sensitivities.
Overt corruption usually amounts to the same thing.
My PM Trudeau's "Bad Behaviour" List is kind of crazy:
1. Wore Blackface "More times than he can remember"
2. WE Charity was paying his family members for appearances.
3. Banned Unvaccinated Canadians from Flying or even getting on a Train
4. Elbowed a female opposition lawmaker in the Chest
5. Raised the national debt by 40%+ in one year
6. Invoked Emergency Act to quash a protest, during which some protestors were trampled by a police horse.
It's probably a longer list than this. These are just the things I know about. But his inner circle still supports him. And the CBC which is partially funded by the government runs praise articles like he was the dear leader. So it must be good politics on some level if he can still get support after doing all that.
If I was to analyze based on this article. The keys to his success are:
1. Raising the debt by Billions to have money to split to supporters.
2. Vilifying the unvaccinated and acting tough on them.
I was under the impression fox news admitted to this being false[0].
[0]https://www.yahoo.com/video/fox-news-contributor-admits-crea...
Case in point: the war in Ukraine. At the moment there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of people fighting, either in armed forces or deputized civilians. But do they represent the millions of people who will be affected by starvation and bombs by their decisions to keep fighting? Weapons have been pouring in from all sides since 2015, and was localized into a proxy war in Donbass, but now the coflict has spread into all cities around Ukraine.
Civilians are told every day by their local mass media about atrocities committed by the other side, and little is said about why, say, a school was bombed or some other war crime was committed. People can’t personally witness everything, they get all their news digested and fed to them by their news networks.
As a result, many people want to fight to the last. They’ve been told that the enemy is close to laying down their arms and surrendering. This is especially true for able-bodied men whose country has been invaded.
The trouble is, that reality is far more complex and no one is about to stop fighting. Meanwhile, cities like Kherson are about to be without food due to supply chain disruption. Mundane, non-dramatic breakdowns like that is how millions of people enter a humanitarian crisis.
I have seen it before — Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria … neither the host country’s government nor the rebels are “defeated”, because weapons are funneled into the country endlessly by proxies, funded by countries where citizens sit in comfortable armchairs and post their thoughts on the Internet, while their politicians say things like “better the Russians fight them over there, than over here” (Schiff).
The object of my frustration is how the governments are conducting “peace talks”. While the blame for invasion lies squarely with Putin, the “leadership” in Kiev seems to be one of the most incompetent at negotiations I have ever seen. It is their job to negotiate peace, but first they venue shopped for a few days, then they came with zero demands “just to listen”, then the next time they came for a mere 2.5 hours and disbanded, only negotiating “humanitarian corridors”. Is it incompetence or malice? They are likely waiting for more weapons to arrive so homegrown fighters can defend the country some more. These fighters (and their national pride) have been radicalized by how the war in Donbas was reported over the years and are ready to fight, some might even asassinate their government if they made any peace deal. The problem is that they are vastly outnumbered by a “silent majority” of peaceful civilians who will have to starve and live in a war torn region because of all this.
Even Hamas and Israel regularly make peace. And they have a ton less in common than Russians and Ukrainians.
This war could have gone almost exactly like the Russo-Georgian war except in that one, a truce was negotiated by France and the Russians withdrew their armies a couple months into the conflict. Now Georgia continues to be an independent country.
Sometimes it gets dangerous for the whole world when nukes are involved. The nationalists want a no-fly zone. Zelensky appeals for it all the time. Russian television hosts like Kiselyiv almost embrace nuclear war and elimination of the humanrace to defend Russia and its territory. This is collective insanity. These people are prepared to start World War 3 before their nation is “humiliated” in any way, even if the way is largely symbolic.
When Khrustchev was able to “gift” Crimea from Russia to Ukraine with the stroke of a pen, everyone understood it mostly a formality. That’s because the two republics could simply come to an agreement about vacationing, employment, dual passports or whatever else. Visiting your relatives wasn’t even an issue. Planes flew direct flights between everywhere, and people had tons of ties. Those are the ties that bind. A decade of no direct flights and severed ties has taken its toll and even Zelensky complains about losing friends and business partners in Russia. This is a gradual process and the inexperienced politicians who can’t bridge the gap wind up sliding us civilians more and more into war. But the role of mass media and education is crucial for enabling these echo chambers and support for conflict between people who were not too long ago quite close.
One of the main reasons why bad behaviour is almost always good politics is the queue of people willing to argue that if they behave badly, one should simply give them what they demand.
Luckily, we just have the negotiators like Arakhamia and Podolyak come out and discuss what happened. Looks like the Russians were not empowered to decide anything without consultation with Moscow, and the conversations were stilted. Of course, I personally condemn Putin for refusing to meet with Zelensky. For invading when Macron was about to organize the next Normandy format meeting in March. But also, no one on the Ukrainian side taking this seriously to begin with. Because millions of lives are at stake, that is either incompetence or malice.
Arakhamia is a DJ who wears a baseball cap to show how much disdain he has for Russia and how much faith he has in the proceedings. One of the people sent by Zelensky to the talks was assassinated by Ukrainian special forces. They say he had been under investigation for a while for being a Russian spy. Well, in that case what kind of incompetence is it to put him on such a team? This should be the most important team in the country! If they get a peace agreement they can be the heroes of Ukraine!
The political system is broken in many ways, and the fact that closed door negotiations and lack of transparency by elected officials is tolerated, is a huge problem.
I am mad at the political class in general, for refusing to truly listen to each other. It would have been better if Donetsk and Lugansk had surrendered like Kharkiv did, and try to resolve their grievances through peaceful diplomatic channels. None of this would be happening. I apply the same consistent reasoning everywhere.