Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

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For people unfamiliar with this topic, it is commonly referred to as "Turnkey Tyranny".

It is about the belief that you "don't give Mr Rogers any power you wouldn't give to Hitler." Basically no matter how great you think your current leader is, you recognize that they will not be in power forever (or that they may not be good forever). Democracy, autocracy, oligarchy, whatever your system of government, there is a singular truth: all men die. All things change. Obviously this policy can go too far, but personally I think it is worth considering not just how good a policy or power can be, but how much harm it can do if abused or misused. It is easy to ignore this part because we want to believe people are good and have good intentions. Because we see the advantages and get excited about them. Because it is harder to think about abstract scenarios. But it is an important thing to think. You need not think your government is evil or nefarious to still be concerned with turnkey tyranny. In fact, the more faith you have in your government, the more you should be concerned. Because it is at that time that people are less likely to keep their guards up, and it is that same time that hostile actors look to take over. There is no absolute defense against malicious leaders, so it takes constant care.

This is basically the intent of the structure of the US government.

High degree of separation of powers (unlike most other democracies, the executive is separate from the legislative and there are two independent legislative bodies). High level of agreement across multiple bodies before a law can be passed (House, Senate and President).

I thought Scalia's explanation was a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0

I agree, that its the intent. The downside of the US is that it moves slow. But the upside is that it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution. You might think European countries are older but Germany didn’t exist till the late 1940’s. If you really want to stretch it you can argue early 1800’s but that’s facetious.

The point is to be highly distributed. Many keys to power. It makes it hard to get shit done when people are unwilling to work together (read partisan hacks). Which is what makes it strong against takeover, even getting half the keys will still grind your takeover to a slow roll. That’s petty robust to adversaries.

I have a hot take. My faith in the system strengthened with Trump and especially the stupid coup. Because I saw a man try very hard to take over and despite having a coalition that was practicing party over country, he still couldn’t. Though how many keys does he have now and did he do the legwork to make it work a second time? That we’ll see. But even then, I think it tells a successful story of robustness. That it took a few hundred years of growing power and extreme partisanship to break it. Clearly it can be and needs to be improved but clearly it’s got something of value. Something to learn from and iterate from rather than rework from scratch. I’m not aware of any country that’s survived under such extreme circumstances, but I’m not knowledgeable enough here. Please correct me but cite so I can learn more. Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in (we can even argue the US’s fragmentation would disqualify, but the constitution stayed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

>it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution

I think a better way of phrasing it might be "a continuous system of government". Germany certainly existed before the late 1940s, but the system of government was obviously very, very different.

  > Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in

Definitely gets fuzzy with definitions when we have things like Prussia, German unification, the German Empire, and all that. Especially, again, with the national narrative. It is messy business and I think we often pretned it is a lot cleaner than it actually is.

It's not that messy, it's just a disagreement about what a "country" is. You're thinking with the European mindset of "nation", where a country is defined by its borders, history, etc. The OP is thinking with the American mindset where the country is defined by its founding documents and legal principles. They're entirely different.

In the latter mindset, Prussia, the German Empire, etc., really have nothing to do with modern Germany, because Germany is not a kingdom or empire, it's a country that was founded in 1945/6 by Allied occupiers. The only messy thing about it is the reunification in the early 1990s, because two formerly separate countries (DDR and BRD), with extremely different systems of government, were stuck together, but under the same system of government as the western side, which really makes it an annexation.

> But the upside is that it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution.

Iceland would very much like a word about this. But your point in fair, maybe phrased a bit wrong.

  >> Please correct me but cite so I can learn more

Wiki says

  > The current constitution was first instituted on 17 June 1944 when Iceland became a republic; since then, it has been amended seven times.

The earliest date I even see in the wiki is 1849 which isn't even really on topic.

The official document also says 1944[0]

  CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ICELAND
  (No. 33, 17 June 1944, as amended 30 May 1984, 31 May 1991, 28 June 1995 and 24 June 1999)

So I'm going to need that citation because I'm having a hard time verifying what you're saying.

[0] https://www.government.is/library/01-Ministries/Prime-Minist...

he is speaking of our [Alþingi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althing) which has existed since 930.

That's the intent, but evidently, (and sadly,) it doesn't work how it should. There's too much influence from moneyed interests and just too much bad faith participation and gaming of the various processes. It was bad when I was born and it's gotten ever more corrupt and dysfunctional since.

I think that the biggest issue is that congress is underfunded and has ceded too much control to the executive.

By that I mean that the modern world is incredibly complex, yet in the house, each house member only gets 1.25 million per year for staff. Yet despite that they are supposed to create and manage the rules and regulations for a 30 trillion dollar economy.

It's impossible, even if you have good faith of all actors. This leads to lobbying groups providing texts for laws, because they have the resources to provide people to write and review them.

It also leads to shifting the bureaucracy of the regulations to the executive branch, because that is where there is the money to hire staff/expertise/ and regulate something as large and complicated.

My pet peeve is that each congressional rep should be receiving ~25 million for staff, then use that to build up in house expertise, vs having everything under the executive.

Congress has ceded too much power.

Doesn't Congress have all the access they want to the governmental services?

I am pretty sure this is the loophole Gödel found with the American constitution. It is pretty easy to turn the US government authoritarian, if you elect an authoritarian president.

> "Turnkey Tyranny"

Thanks this is a really great concept. I'm going to use this for the slippery slope fallacy fallacy.

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