One person cannot pervert the system. One person, 63 million voters, lots of members of congress, lots of federal employees, etc. can. Not that the system doesn't have problems, but the people that make up the system are voluntarily giving Trump power. It's not possible to design a system that the participants themselves can't destroy if they decide to.
> It's not possible to design a system that the participants themselves can't destroy if they decide to.
You can raise the bar arbitrarily high, though. Make the destruction of the system require lots of coordinated effort, and then make coordination difficult. Coordination is hard for humans as it is, even without a system that actively subverts it. That's why we have lots of issued labeled together as "tragedies of the commons".
You can, but then you run head-first into another problem: this "bar-raising" undermines the legitimacy of the system in the eyes of the people and, not unjustifiably, makes them feel that it is undemocratic. Worse: this is a positive feedback loop. The more you raise the bar, the angrier people get and the more radical they will get in their attempts to tear it down, and so the more bar-raising is needed.
This is the unfortunate paradox that Matthew Yglesias highlighted in "American Democracy is Doomed" [0]: people are raging against horse-trading, organized parties, and 'elites' poo-poohing the "will of the people". This is totally defensible, but to some extent horse-trading and elite rule are the only things that make governance possible. I don't know any solution to this problem.
>This is the unfortunate paradox that Matthew Yglesias highlighted in "American Democracy is Doomed" [0]: people are raging against horse-trading, organized parties, and 'elites' poo-poohing the "will of the people". This is totally defensible, but to some extent horse-trading and elite rule are the only things that make governance possible. I don't know any solution to this problem.
Well, I think a parliamentary system with proportional representation would help a lot. In those systems, the parties/lists might trade horses, but you know that your vote bought some measure of strength for a platform you actually believe in. Oh, and real civil-service protections to keep government staff from being fired for political reasons, including for security and military officials.
I used to think that, but based on recent events I'm not so sure: European Parliamentary governments seem to be having the same populist uprisings based on perceived illegitimacy and disconnect from of government that we are. All things being equal, I'd rather the US had a Parliamentary system, but I don't think it's a silver bullet.
gov't is currently optimized with only two of three core primitives (literacy+numeracy). Gov't like all institutions will be re-developed with the relatively (50years) new primitive, computeracy. Nothing like automation and disagregated decision making exists in the corporate bureaucracy of government today. If you want more outcome, you literally have to hire more ppl. There is no software leverage in government. Changing that changes everything. Our problem is we are alive at a time similar to when literacy became possible for everyone. It's very obvious that institutions not built on literacy would change, but it took nearly 100 years.
Not only that but given there are 318 million people in the US it costs 2.5 billion dollars to buy everyone lunch one time. Good luck bribing that many people into complacency without running out of GDP.
These days, it feels like that effort is well coordinated by a combination of voluntary ignorance, poor foresight, and targeted messaging. Tools like social media sure make it easier.
One person can pervert the system if the system itself is based on broken consensus. The approach to everything being objective in this reality needs to come to an end now. There is ONE person making this a subjective reality manifest and he's doing so by spreading dissonance within the populations you list here. As long as we keep on keeping on with the current system, we're going to keep getting Trumped.
> The approach to everything being objective in this reality needs to come to an end now.
That is the full sentence I wrote. I do not allow people to reword the things I write to make the statement change its meaning, as you have done here by shifting the subject from "the approach" to "everything". There is a mighty difference between bringing an approach to an end and bringing everything to an end. We already have a ton of people on this planet speaking for others, I figure it's my bag whether I defend against it or not. I've noted that most people who like to speak for others will take other's words, twist them a bit, then ask a leading question to change the conversation in a way that allows them to speak for others in a very unique way. It's an efficient technique when things are going well, given it can raise interest in groups. It's not so great when things are off the rails. All of that is regardless of whether an individual had intent to do it or whether they may formulate rationalizations to defend their actions in the future. Speaking for others isn't right and it's a wasteful, recursive operation.
Nevertheless, I will clarify that I am claiming the intent by humans to force everything into an objective reality here is causing issues for what can be considered the meta or unknown - the yet to be if you will. I don't consider the unknown anything magical necessarily, but I do consider it the result of causality based on both the current state of the universe plus some yet to be discovered phenomenon that governs quantum events and the rest of the unknowns around us. It is a direct observation that we struggle to explain these "types" of intuition of the unknown with objective descriptions or knowledge.
A good example that I give is aliens. About half of people believe in aliens and half don't. No probabilities exist that make any sense to us to figure out if aliens exist, so we are left looking for an objective (observed) alien signal to "prove" they exist. Any tendency to say "there are no aliens" is illogical, given the lack of proof of them is not proof they don't exist. On the other hand, claiming "there are aliens" has some reasonable intuitive basis, given we're claiming we exist and we're here on this rock in the middle of a HUGE universe. It's faith that aliens exist, but it is not observed, yet, so it can't be objective. Faith is based on a few primaries, including sacredness which is a regard with great respect and reverence by a particular religion, group, or individual. Making something sacred is primarily elevating the belief in the unknown, based on an intuition which is not forced by recursive self-supporting speculation or speaking for others.
So, claiming there are (objective) aliens is illogical, given lack of proof. Someone saying they have faith there are aliens is fine, however. Saying people who have faith there are aliens are wrong (because it is not yet observed) is speaking for others, given their internal frame is faith based and a truth to them.
There are certainly other examples. Michael Faraday believed there was a single unifying force in the universe, but was unable to prove it before he died. He did manage to pop off inventing the electric motor, but his master intent of discovering anti-gravity went undone. Still, he had faith anti-gravity (or shielding of gravity) was possible.
I know this because I have read his words saying as much.
So, I have faith that anti-gravity will be discovered. Nobody else in existence can tell me otherwise, given they'd be speaking for me while doing so. And there's the point I was making to begin with - speaking for another's faith is speaking for their internal frames, which are subjective in nature. Not everything here is objective, so expecting that it is is also akin to speaking for all others here. We have free will, and I won't let anyone tell me otherwise.
I've left off discussing issues with faith in aggregates. Religion has gone horribly wrong in the past, and will likely do so again in the future.
I like this comment. We are guilty of letting this happen. I doubt stating that will change the average person's willingness to go out and vote and get involved with politics, but it is important to acknowledge our part of the blame. We can't be Halocaust-deniers, and we can't pretend we didn't have some part in this surveillance overreach. We let our fear play into their hands - and their hands have stayed busy since 2001.
~ don't give in to apathy, no matter how depressing we must stay involved in politics ~
If this keeps up for the remaining four years, as is likely, it will be hard for the GOP to win 2020. With any luck there will some big turnover in the house as well.
I guess by participants I was mostly referring to actual government participants. Trump can't pervert the system if Congress doesn't approve his nominees or pass legislation he wants, and federal agents don't follow his orders. A small group of people can control a large group of people, but one person can't really transform a government without its consent.
Hypothetically speaking, one person can if the other persons are of the greedy kind and believe that blind obedience will get them more green now and/or in the future. Not saying it is so but as Trump still has his companies he can (try to, but most people have their price) bribe whoever to do whatever. Especially if he picked them for that reason. Just in person over a few beers and pay out in 4 or 8 years when he is just a business man again.
