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Comment by fractallyte | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone invented/discovered a system where this can't happen?

There's that famous phrase (Churchill): 'It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried'. But this is more subtle: it's about lying, and ultimately, corruption. Is this a solved problem in hard political science?

I know of various solutions explored in science fiction, notably by Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, Eric Frank Russell, Christopher Anvil, et al. There's game theory, where cooperation 'breeds' more cooperation, in a world of defectors.

But, it seems to me, corruption is now the biggest problem facing humanity. If we can fix that, it'll cascade down through everything else: climate change, energy sources, ecological destruction, sexism, etc...

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"Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government" http://mises.org/daily/1121

Distributed dispute resolution services, a market for justice, as the foundation for a society free from most of the issues that plague the stationary-bandit state characterized by attempted monopolies on violence, law, and coercion. A system that lasted many times longer than the US did as a free society before falling to cartelization.

I like von Mises (to pieces) as much, if not more so than the next guy; but the rest of the world is well past the societal tipping point of a low-population growth inaccessible insular community.

Everybody kept the social peace, because the cost of breaking it was too high: nowhere to go to escape societal retribution, everyone "knew" everyone else or could pick you out as a stranger in the local community if you moved around the island and would get your back-story eventually.

wow, I thought that such form of "government" was book fiction and never attempted IRL. Thank you.

There have been studies like 'Democracy, the God that failed'. The book argues a emperor (or king) looks way beyond the typical 4 year time-span politicians do. A king plans for generations and can not push his population too far as they would revolt. Compared to endless 'Blue team vs Red Team' games filled with fake promises, the thought isn't all that crazy. The book sees Wold War 1 as a battle between emperor-states (like Central Europe and Germany) and democratic states Great Britain, France and the US).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy:_The_God_That_Failed

I think it's a fairly safe conclusion that a benevolent dictatorship can be a near perfect form of government - as long as it's benevolent. Long stretches of prosperous european monarchy supports this. The problem is what happens if the king goes mad - either by obsessing over some military objective or empire or such, or medically mad, with his court scheming to rule in his place. Other, similarly long stretches of european monarchy shows this.

Democracy biggest success, despite its significant imperfections, is the orderly overthrow of government every 4-5 years. Even monarchy doesn't guarantee an orderly transition of power.

"long stretches of european monarchy shows this"

I'm struggling to think of many examples from the history of the UK/England/Scotland (and there was a civil war 350 years ago to end absolute power of the monarchy), were there saner royals elsewhere in Europe before everyone switched to keeping their royals as fairly powerless heads of state?

Don't make the mistake of believing current monarchs are powerless...

The Queen of the commonwealth for example and shut down the parliament if she wants to (there is a complex process to do it, but it can be legally done), or buy and sell state stuff freely. Of course, in information age, she knows that if she abuses these powers, people will get upset and overthrow her.

Also in Japan, the monarch legally has no power, but the people obey him anyway, this happened many times in Japan history, and seemly the population like it that way because the monarch become a "failsafe" of sorts, every time some non-monarch leader do major shit, the population can rally behind the emperor again and return his absolute powers (and usually subsequent emperors fix the issues, until someone pull a WWII...)

Yes, true. The biggest problem with this is the short-term planning of everything... Have a look at the map of Germany and Austria-Hungary (I'm European and I didn't know they were so vast). "Vienna was then the capital not of a minor Central European country but the hub of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire that extended over much of Eastern and Southeastern Europe". It made for a good breeding-ground for new idea's (think the time of Freud and others).

Map: http://www.worldology.com/Europe/world_war_1_effect.htm

The problem is ... it is never the monarch that governs, but the bureaucrats and the networks of power and favour that grow under the protection of a monarchy/dictatorship. After a while, the Peter Principle takes over, and the system becomes sclerotic and corrupt, no matter how benevolent the head of the dictatorship. The "continuous revolution" of a democratic system goes some way to remedying that defect, but it is at best a partial fix. This is a problem that all large organizations suffer from, be they democracies, dictatorships, public organizations or private companies: All types of organization, from armies to zoos are vulnerable to sclerosis, and the larger and more long lived the organization, the more vulnerable it gets.

>This is a problem that all large organizations suffer from, be they democracies, dictatorships, public organizations or private companies: All types of organization, from armies to zoos are vulnerable to sclerosis, and the larger and more long lived the organization, the more vulnerable it gets.

Not only that, the larger it gets, the smaller the proportion of what gets replaced at every election. Even if we get some new Congressmen every two years, we still have all the same spies, SWAT teams, prosecutors, defense contractors, etc. And the things with staying power throw money at perpetuating their own existence, so that the Congressman dedicated to halting the proliferation of SWAT teams or reducing the defense budget doesn't stay a Congressman long enough to attain the committee assignments that would allow him to actually do it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Sortition has a lot going for it and certainly encourages participation far beyond our current democratic engagement. I'd like to see it start to appear on a small scale, beyond Juries, in modern democratic states.

There's an interesting EconTalk discussing the Ancient Greek economy where Russ Roberts asks his guest: "We certainly romanticize Greece as this great democracy; but it wasn't much like the United States, tell us about it"

But after Josiah Ober describes Athenian democracy it ends up sounding like what we call modern democracy is a very poor imitation.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/08/ober_on_the_anc.htm...

Thank you for this. Just last week I thought of this, but didn't know there was a name for it, or that it had been used before.

I think people are turned off by the idea of some random "crazy" running things, but that's exactly what I think would provide checks and balances to a government (namely, that the "crazies" don't reach a consensus as easily as the corrupt).

And on another level, our laws would have to be understandable! What would that be like? Would I actually know why I am being arrested?

Corruption is a huge problem, but I think apathy/indifference is a bigger problem. Most people just don't care about anything, anyone other than themselves, and may be their loved ones. Until this changes, no amount of open gov, transparency, education etc will help - in fact, many times, highly educated people are more indifferent than less educated/less bright ones. If enough people cared, most problems wouldn't exist in the first place.

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Moldbug comments that people who use this quote rarely give serious consideration to any of the others. Universal democracies are a very new form of government, and to ignore their problems requires willful ignorance.

Yes, the corruption is the ultimate problem for all societies. It is innate, it is adaptable, it faces only limited counter-corruption defense systems, and it usually has the freedom to choose its own time and place (avoiding this way most of the traps). Also, if that wouldn't be enough, like vijayr said in the sibling comment - "Most people just don't care about anything, anyone other than themselves, and may be their loved ones." I would conclude that we have not found so far the most efficient and effective strategy to prevent and counter corruption. Our organizations specialized in fighting corruption are weak and more importantly - are by themselves exposed to be corrupted in a way or another. My solution? Offer incentives at the individual level to fight corruption and create in this way the most extended system against it.

Yes, maybe China - take about 20 minutes and listen to this talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_s...

At least - a system without elections doesn't breed people, whose primary ability is to get elected.

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