Hacker News Reader

Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

It's not that a leader is capable of long-term planning, it's that a system is. I am a big proponent for democracy, but the fact is simple that when you do a massive regime change every ~4 years, nothing big will get done. You have about 2 good years to do something, and most big projects simply require more time than that.

China, unlike the US, can look 10 years into the future and consistently execute towards a goal. That's not because of leaders, it's because the systems are fundamentally designed this way.

It's like the two party system in the US. It's because of first past the post in the Constitution. The system is designed to do this, so it does it. The US is designed to be unable to plan or execute long term vision.

View on HN

I 100% agree for the fact that biggest systematic root problem USA has is first past the post voting system.

Though how did US managed to be long term thinking since world wars up to ~1980s or 90s? Was it just generational trauma of world wars that allowed to align opinions between parties? And by trauma I mean some combo of real trauma to not have WW2 again to the capitalistict and globalistic drive to be world’s hegemony.

It is not even first past the post that is the problem. Even if you had some sort of ranked voting or parliamentary system you would still end up with the same problem. The person in charge gets changed too frequently to be able to have long term plans. 8 years is too short to execute a plan that will take 10 or 20 years.

I think this is why FDR was a successful president and was able to get so much done. He had 3 complete terms and a partial 4th term.

If you are going to have shorter terms you need to have your successor continue with your plans, but in a liberal democracy you don't know who is going to follow you. Even if your party wins, your successor might not continue with the plan.

In preferential Systems you must chase the centre, in the USA it might be trains versus cars, in Australia because both sides are chasing the centre they will both agree on a train line it's just the specifics they will argue about which believe leads to better outcomes.

At least from my experience I would say change of government won't lead to cancellation of a project or reform just an expansion or contraction in scope.

You can't do something like implement a 1 child policy and stick to it for decades causing a demographic collapse because it wouldn't have broad appeal from the population.

Your last paragraph is my point. Some policies may be good, but not popular. (I'm not suggesting the one child policy is good). How would you be able to continue a policy like the one child policy in a democracy for decades? You wouldn't be able to. With China since their leaders are there longer and because the leaders have a more consistent world view they were able to continue with such a policy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com