I feel like there's probably an excellent reason that the order is the way it is, due to the wonderful process of time.
This feels a lot like saying "let's just blow up the tax code and rewrite it!" And we end up generating the same 2 million lines of policy to close all of the loopholes all over again.
> I feel like there's probably an excellent reason that the order is the way it is, due to the wonderful process of time.
But this assumes that the process of time is tending towards the better. Each change that was made was surely made on the basis of experience and created a local improvement, but that doesn't mean that they operate well together.
(Nor, of course, does it mean that they are likely to be so easily fixed that it can be done in a tossed-off HN comment.)
> Yes, this I generally believe, at least as far as societal maturity is concerned.
That's probably too big a discussion for here, but, on the institutional rather than the societal level, is that what you observe? Certainly it seems to me that institutions just accumulate more and more cruft over time, and, though "throw it out and re-write it" is, as well documented, rarely the right answer, neither is "trust that things are as they are because time has optimized them."
Cruft can be good. If you give everyone a chance to speak on any issue, it's extremely slow, but also the most egalitarian. When societies move too fast, large groups of people are invariably marginalized.
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" etc.
I do think institutions, while extremely flawed, are currently the best versions of themselves. Very difficult to measure, of course. Rome was the best version of itself until the second it began to collapse.
I'm not a history buff, but believe deeply that it's a predictor of the future. Are there historical examples you can think of where the institutions were better than they are today?
> I'm not a history buff, but believe deeply that it's a predictor of the future. Are there historical examples you can think of where the institutions were better than they are today?
The problems with this question are at least two. First, there is no fixed definition of "better," so that two people might disagree about any example even if they agree on the facts. For example:
> I do think institutions, while extremely flawed, are currently the best versions of themselves. Very difficult to measure, of course. Rome was the best version of itself until the second it began to collapse.
While I wish I shared your optimism, I also disagree with your example! It seems clear to me that a society that is about to collapse is likely not its best self, and that surely there was a local maximum of Roman "goodness," however it's measured, some time after its founding but well before its collapse.
Second, that the examples I know best are likely to be the examples in which I have a personal interest, and so, inevitably, a bias that prevents me from judging them dispassionately.
In that spirit, as a teacher, I think that most, let's say for specificity, US universities were much better in the period immediately following the GI bill than they are today. Their "corporatification" is, to me, a huge step backwards. But then, I am a university teacher, so, though I can speak from a position of knowledge, I can hardly be trusted as an unbiased judge of in what way universities can best serve society.
This feels a lot like saying "let's just blow up the tax code and rewrite it!" And we end up generating the same 2 million lines of policy to close all of the loopholes all over again.