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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it turbo sucks, but what matters is what we can actually do about it.

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... :>

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> 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.

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.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism

Intellectually, I enjoy the idea of the states competing as a free market, but the system has enough friction to prevent that being generally true in practice. For instance, it's very difficult to uproot your life and move to a different state.

* 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.

yeah it's not a free market, but it is an "(semi-)independent laboratory" system where one state can try an idea and others may copy it if it works well.

> Intellectually, I enjoy the idea of the states competing as a free market

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.

That's the point of immigration? "My life sucks here, but I can get what I want there." Treating economic freedom as an "untaxed externality" to be rectified will eventually create economic immobility and stagnation. That has perverse incentives of its own.

As someone who did all of those things (except I didn't have a house to sell), I feel you've left out one of the biggest barriers: Immigration laws.

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.

We're talking about a theoretical federal republic where states aren't allowed to restrict immigration, but the federal government isn't strong enough to homogenise the laws here.

The EU is such an entity.

> For instance, it's very difficult to uproot your life and move to a different state.

Even harder to uproot your life and move away from a powerful national government.

This likewise ignores the individual. "Oh you don't like the politics where you live? You want human rights? Leave your family and friends and everything you've ever known and move a thousand miles away."

The alternative is: "Oh you don't like the politics where you live? You want human rights? 51% of your "peers" decided you don't get that. Here's my boot on your neck, stop resisting!"

I dunno, maybe there is another alternative?

I've read a lot of history and I haven't seen one. I can go as far back as Aristotle to see my same observation being made: "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."

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...

Faster transportation technology can lower the cost of moving. If you can travel 600mph reliably and cheaply, you can move 200 miles from your job and still enjoy a 20 minute commute. Families could relocate to a shared community without people changing jobs.

I suspect you might be aware of this, but Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota serries takes this idea as a very significant part of its world building, and I highly recommend it if you're willing to sit though 4 doorstops of books for things to pay off. Reading just the first book for the worldbuilding is probably worthwhile on its own even if you're not going to commit to the serries.

Yep ... especially fast, cheap public transport ... I had the "pleasure" to commute about 86 km for five years. In Germany that took me about 1,5 hours with most of the way a regional train that took about 40 minutes between two cities.

I would not do that again, but it was feasible.

Competition doesn't address the problem of "the people who are ultimately given power will be the ones who craved it and were willing to do anything to obtain it." It exacerbates the problem, if anything.

I think the point is that the power is also decentralized making it harder (not impossible) for those type of people to gain control over others.

Republicanism still selects for scoundrels.

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.

<snip>

The poster you replied to was not talking about Republicans, "the party", but of Republicanism, "the political structure". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism

Haha, shit. Thanks <face palm>.

What about smaller effects? I'm not saying don't work on large scale solutions, but figuring out / iterating on smaller scale problems could give useful information around where problems crop up and how to go about tackling them.

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.

I'm not that pessimistic. If you notice, when structured properly, the previously blood shedding monarchs cease to exist as the time goes.The USA and Europe were once battlegrounds just like most countries that once had smaller warlords that kept machiavelling all the times.

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.

I once thought about what would be the best way to fill the seats in a legislative body.

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.

Expunge them of their power, status, and station, and probably purge them of their existence in this realm entirely. Then recreate the system in such a way to defend against such a vulnerability. There is no other way, we just need the will to do it.

A number of people tried that in the 20th century with some pretty ugly results.

How about you just skip the expunge part and defend against the vulnerability with land value taxes and negative interest rates?

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition which appears to solve these problems and others.

This is why intact culture, and a moral imperative, are far more important than ideology. It's why "spreading democracy" by destroying culture and people results in worse outcomes.

what does "intact culture" mean?

I'd consider an intact culture to be one that's capable of transmitting its knowledge and traditions to the next generation, and one that permits some kind of social learning [1]: It should be possible for a child or novice in the culture to be able to figure out how they are expected to behave, consistent parameters should exist for interactions, etc.

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.

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

We can do plenty about it, kill the evil people, quit being a fucking pawn.

Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Perhaps you don't owe evil people better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

In addition to what dang said: Can you kill a bunch of them without you becoming evil? Are you sure?

It’s very easy to not be evil, just define yourself to be good and thus any act that you perform is a necessary part of propagating good on the world.

That you are questioning my status is evil by definition!

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