@phillmv and yet. serious, thoughtful, smart, competent, educated, virtuous. all of these attributes have taken a bit of a beating when people who seem like the very worst, not just ethically, but in terms of basic competence, beat the people we judge as capable.
it’s like elon is an idiot, obviously, and yet spacex has made progress on space travel at a pace unseen for decades. i have my cope stories (he was lucky with good hires), but at a fundamental level, i’m missing something
@phillmv i think even a bit less than that, latest projection i saw 49.9%, with third parties putting dems a percentage point or two less.
but, you know, if a tiny sliver was enough to justify UK Brexit, why not US autocracy too?
when politics is good television, it’s bad real life.
@Hyolobrika it's not a matter of mere necessity. the ability to do things collectively at scale is the greatest technological achievement of humankind. a capable, legitimate, ethical state is the key to human flourishing, but it's pretty hard to get and keep all three of those characteristics!
a capable state always relies on individual enterprise, shapes and is shaped by it. freedom and collective capability coexist thanks to the magic of the central limit theorem.
@Hyolobrika i'm a big fan of @ntnsndr i haven't read the book, but from a glance, it looks like he is advocating ways of strengthening democratic habits via civil society, participation in lots more democratic spaces, ideally personally and socially consequential, which i agree would help a lot, render us better at being part of a constitutional democracy.
@Hyolobrika we have a system whose skeleton would support one, we've just let it go in other directions. i'd start with electoral reform, so that multiple political parties contest. i'd dramatically expand the size of the house of representatives, perhaps consider something like this. you don't have a representative if it isn't someone you know, or at least can know if you want to. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9069.html 1/
@Hyolobrika i'd encourage states to subdivide into territories much smaller of roughly similar population size. i'd have the state finance, in a viewpoint neutral way, a wide variety of media. (viewpoint neutral by letting citizens allocate funding among orgs qualified on basic function, rather than directly allocated.) many more good ideas are out there. /fin
it's really gratifying to see meritocracy restored to the United States.
[new draft post] What does it mean to have no kings? https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/11/13/what-does-it-mean-to-have-no-kings/index.html
without comment.
from #LukeLattanzi https://americanmind.org/salvo/post-liberalism-is-here-to-stay/
Text: In other words, a second Trump administration will have the opportunity to embrace noblesse oblige, helping to foster a nobility that is obliged to take seriously the economic, cultural, and political well-being of the American public. Trump’s appointments so far have been promising, but only time will tell whether he can sustain four years of follow-through on this definitive populist mandate.
Like water.
"We can call the depression void-gazing. Everyone does it sometimes, but step two has to be wrenching your gaze away from the void and doing something. There's nothing in the void but more void" @ludicity https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/why-i-will-always-be-angry-about-software-engineering/
has anyone else noticed the irony, that people devoted to a man who slathers orange make-up all over his face every single day calls everybody else clown world? 🤡
( inspired by @darwinwoodka )
@ajroach42 i write on politics / economics / finance @ drafts.interfluidity.com and have a tech notebook (really is that, more than essays bout tech!) at tech.interfluidity.com.
i'm very RSS-centric!
@ajroach42 (gack! twice edited to remove typos from my own $^*&#$ urls!)
you can make facile analogies with the Roman Empire and pretend there's fundamentally been no progress, but we really have advanced. they had to go through like two emperors before they got themselves a caligula.
handing control over one of the world's largest bureaucracies to a person who has zero experience with how jockeying for influence works managing inside this (or any) bureaucracy seems like a pretty big win for the deep state.
the innovation was realizing that even when it is picking pockets, the invisible hand can only act to the benefit of all.
if it takes careful, contestable social science to perceive an effect, it’s not a politically meaningful effect.
if efficiency were truly the goal, they’d fire a ton of private contractors and consultants, and hire a lot of on-payroll civil servants (“bureaucrats”).
so, suppose four years from now, we have an ordinary election and Democrats win a resounding trifecta. would we tolerate Elon Musk retaining his clearances and ownership of SpaceX, or force divestiture? would we tolerate John Roberts’ rejuvenated 6-3 majority for generations, or reform the court? 1/
then is it plausible these people, with full control of the institutions today and a roadmap to complete immunity for any legal restraints they trample, would tolerate an election in which that is a plausible outcome?
this is why i lose sleep. /fin
one way to view the election is as a test btw "mobilize the base" theories of winning and "persuade" theories.
the two are not mutually exclusive, but there are real tensions! mobilizing the base may involve emotional language that offends "swing voters" who identify somewhat with the targets of, um, critique.
in any case, the democrats plainly went for "persuade", the republicans for "mobilize the base". it's very clear which won.
( i tend to argue for "persuade!" https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6732.html )
