@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri Better corrupt and evil government than evil private power that is only not corrupt because it can be openly predatory without having to pretend to serve a public interest.
I don’t think well of your opinions (though it’s fun to chat!) either, but I’ll try to refrain from the insults.
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri As I say, we agree its disagreeable when in our name and with our resources government does what we abhor. But I think it most disagreeable to allow private power to concentrate and act without fetters. Government is like fire, a technology that if incautiously applied will burn your house down, but you tame it, don’t abjure it, because you require it to keep you warm. Or, in the case of government, to keep you free from the depredations of concentrated private power.
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri I agree that the way out is dispersal of power. But since I view money as the primary source and marker of power in a society like ours, dispersing power means reducing and preventing wealth concentration, and government, for all its difficulties and pathologies, is the only institution capable of achieving that.
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri No one accepts or applauds a complete lack of personal virtue. But it’s pretty dumb to build a system that depends upon its omnipresence. I know that’s not what you are advocating. You know I am not advocating discounting personal virtue, we should all strive for it individually and among those we support in positions of respect or authority. But that doesn’t get us out of the work of building systems either resilient to its absence or ensuring of its presence.
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri I have rarely felt abused by the government but feel constantly at the mercy of private monopoly and power. Our feelings and personal experiences of these things won’t take us very far. The danger I experience is the danger of the society we have actually become, the one that elevated people you support to power, to do awful things you support and I do not. It is unsurprising we don’t find common ground, because things you think good I think quite evil, and I’m sure vice versa.
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org don’t worry, the simulation is only simulated, we needn’t take it so seriously.
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri I live in the world. I would love to be able to rely upon people having honor and virtue impervious to pecuniary and other influence, but I have observed human behavior and history and understand that human behavior varies dramatically based on institutions and circumstance, and relying on personal virtue to construct a social, political, or economic system is a fool’s errand. we thrive or die based on institutions and systems. 1/
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri Money is power. That is all that it is. Absent government to constrain the monied, it is violent and coercive power. You will have heard the expression “warlord”. That refers to the coincidence of wealth and violent coercion that emerges when states fail. Government is corrupt, and private power is not, only because self-interestedness is the expected nature of private power. Only govt is corruptible because it aspires to, sometimes imperfectly achieves, something better. /fin
@Phil@freeatlantis.com @adamgurri money is power, nothing more or less. it doesn’t “buy things”, it only influences human behavior. influencing human behavior is the very role and purpose of money. none of us should be shocked that it influences the behavior of legislators through a variety of channels. if you have institutional suggestions about how to insulate them from influence, we’re all ears. if your solution is less government, well that leaves only money as power, even worse.
@GuerillaOntologist i agree that the current system selects pathologically. i disagree that sortition under anything like existing institutions would be much better. selection effects would be replaced by capture effects, the selected would very quickly cease to be representative by virtue of their selection and ensuing experience, and not just in desirable ways like learning to act in their new roles on behalf of the public.
@phillmv @adamgurri it hasn’t aged like fine wine.
@admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org whatever it is, we are irredeemably within it and have little choice but to work our way through it.
@GuerillaOntologist if popular sentiment as ascertained by polling numbers were “the authentic will of the people”, then should we replace elections or legislative outcomes with polling numbers?
i also think our political outcomes are plutocratic, poorly serve the general welfare. I’m glad to use Gilens+Page to help make that case.
but args abt democratic “preference aggregation” i think ultimately have to be consequentialist, not framed in terms of accuracy in adducing some preexisting truth.
“We allowed markets to produce a class of politically connected billionaires, and defenders of this outcome foolishly argued that it would be to everyone’s benefit. Now that enough billionaires have lined up behind fascism and authoritarian consolidation, it’s clear that liberal governments today and in the future will need to figure out ways to greatly reduce the wealth and social power of that class overall.” @adamgurri https://www.liberalcurrents.com/pluralism-partisanship-and-patriotism/
it’s the authentic will of the people when they seem to agree with me.
it’s the way the system is rigged when it appears that they do not.
(hint: there’s no such thing as the authentic will of the people independent of the system by which it is ascertained or constituted.)
someone is not even wrong on the internet.
@gl33p Yes! There are real tensions between stabilization and stability! (This was a major theme of the blog macroresilience, which was excellent.)
@gl33p (have you seen what the S&P 500 is doing, after a brief flirtation with rationality in April? or the reemergence of GFC-style special purpose vehicles by the Fed to save the banks in 2020? then de facto insuring all deposits during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in 2023? maybe things change under the chaos monkey, but so far i think stabilizing finance has remained a lodestar.)
the natural lifecycle of an asset class is
1. succeed unconventionally
2. fail conventionally
3. bailout
4. enjoy state backing and stabilization indefinitely
@b0rk maybe one way to do it would be by contradiction. suppose there was no add, commit was a one step process, it always just snapshotted the full state of your working directory. 1/
@b0rk you might get frustrated, you’d want to commit but there’d still be some file not ready. you’d have to mv it to some temporary place commit, mv it back. or maybe you have changes that logically are about multiple things, you’d like to be able to attach a message like “implement feature X” to some changes and “fix bug Y” to others. 2/
@b0rk add and the “staging area” constitute the feature, the improvement over one-step commit, that let you control what gets snapshotted (allowing the convenience of unfinished or temporary work in your working dir) and how changes (even changes within a single file) get labeled. /fin
remember when a New York Times editor got fired for running a Tom Cotton opinion piece arguing in favor of what the President is now doing routinely?
there’s a lot of ruin in a nation, but eventually it’s going to matter just how much.
