It was easy for me to grasp because I’ve read about similar stuff before.
There are some serious issues that were not addressed.
Content warning: Very dark and depressing stuff. The voting system does not address culture. Voting or changing your mind on issues does not address the cultural attitudes that are pro-abuse, pro-violence, pro-corruption. Laws and legislators are meaningless without a culture that backs it up. That’s why there’s so many countries with very progressive laws and constitutions, yet have regular horrendous human rights violations. This voting system in the United States would no doubt spark genocide. Our economy is set up in a way that attacks people’s time, especially minorities. Republicans and wealthy people have so much power because they have lots of free time to spew their hatred into tangible policy that gets passed, and they have plenty of time to waste rejecting solutions that would improve people’s quality of life. Some of our longest filibusters have been rejecting laws that enforced human rights. Our propoganda is so severe that it would be a fast-track people voting against themselves. Politicians in some sense provide a buffer from allowing people to commit political suicide. (from the standpoint of food stamps and healthcare, suicide is very literal.) Yes, there are people who don’t support our government’s actions today. But they don’t vote. I think the statistics on the number of non-supporters isn’t accurate either- if they measure what people support but don’t measure how blindly they answer yes to every survey question then the survey doesn’t mean much.
For the US, someone could say that this is caused by bad politicians. But the farther you go back, the worse it gets. Bigger massacres, violence against all minorities significantly more socially acceptable, greater premature death. In the civil war you had people who would rather die and/or murder their own family members than free their slaves. That’s not an evil politician issue. That’s an evil people issue.
This also doesn’t address people’s opinions being shaped by their brain chemistry. People have longer lifespans now, which swings politics conservative. People get conservative when they age because their brain isn’t as functional. They don’t want change because change takes effort for them to process. Older people have much more time on their hands to vote. Stress and other conditions impact people’s political views, that’s why there’s a link between CPTSD and political extremism.
I think we would agree that just because a reform won’t fix everything doesn’t count as a reason not to do it. I suppose you’re simply saying that better voting methods will only cause a mild improvement in governance, not a major improvement. But I would argue that the characteristics of political institutions are a major explanation for why things like horrendous human rights violations sometimes do or don’t happen.
If you think that genocide is an improvement then you’re holding on to your idea way too tightly. You need to read posts before replying. Having a “the titanic will never sink mentality” is going to kill the idea before you publish anything.
I think you’re assuming people’s evil comes entirely from within rather than interacting to a degree with bad cooperation systems, and that the evil can only be “contained” by “good rational” people. I think that’s a huge moral error, but I will explain myself much more thoroughly in a followup post (I refer you to my reply to kbog’s comment above)
Evil is not contained by good rational people, it’s contained by inefficiently. Systematic murder has to go through a legislative process, not through a cortisol addicts trigger happy political beliefs. If alcoholics had to travel on foot for a week to get to a bar, some would make the trip but most would just switch to a more convenient addiction. Like Twitter.
It doesn’t come from within often, it usually comes from trauma. Politics can prevent that to some extent but it won’t stop death, infertility, natural disasters, disability, accidents, and a whole range of traumas that existed before politics. In a perfect world there would be less evil, but still evil. Trauma + that small percentage of people who are just evil.
It was easy for me to grasp because I’ve read about similar stuff before.
There are some serious issues that were not addressed.
Content warning: Very dark and depressing stuff.
The voting system does not address culture. Voting or changing your mind on issues does not address the cultural attitudes that are pro-abuse, pro-violence, pro-corruption. Laws and legislators are meaningless without a culture that backs it up. That’s why there’s so many countries with very progressive laws and constitutions, yet have regular horrendous human rights violations. This voting system in the United States would no doubt spark genocide. Our economy is set up in a way that attacks people’s time, especially minorities. Republicans and wealthy people have so much power because they have lots of free time to spew their hatred into tangible policy that gets passed, and they have plenty of time to waste rejecting solutions that would improve people’s quality of life. Some of our longest filibusters have been rejecting laws that enforced human rights. Our propoganda is so severe that it would be a fast-track people voting against themselves. Politicians in some sense provide a buffer from allowing people to commit political suicide. (from the standpoint of food stamps and healthcare, suicide is very literal.) Yes, there are people who don’t support our government’s actions today. But they don’t vote. I think the statistics on the number of non-supporters isn’t accurate either- if they measure what people support but don’t measure how blindly they answer yes to every survey question then the survey doesn’t mean much.
For the US, someone could say that this is caused by bad politicians. But the farther you go back, the worse it gets. Bigger massacres, violence against all minorities significantly more socially acceptable, greater premature death. In the civil war you had people who would rather die and/or murder their own family members than free their slaves. That’s not an evil politician issue. That’s an evil people issue.
This also doesn’t address people’s opinions being shaped by their brain chemistry. People have longer lifespans now, which swings politics conservative. People get conservative when they age because their brain isn’t as functional. They don’t want change because change takes effort for them to process. Older people have much more time on their hands to vote. Stress and other conditions impact people’s political views, that’s why there’s a link between CPTSD and political extremism.
I think we would agree that just because a reform won’t fix everything doesn’t count as a reason not to do it. I suppose you’re simply saying that better voting methods will only cause a mild improvement in governance, not a major improvement. But I would argue that the characteristics of political institutions are a major explanation for why things like horrendous human rights violations sometimes do or don’t happen.
If you think that genocide is an improvement then you’re holding on to your idea way too tightly. You need to read posts before replying. Having a “the titanic will never sink mentality” is going to kill the idea before you publish anything.
I think you’re assuming people’s evil comes entirely from within rather than interacting to a degree with bad cooperation systems, and that the evil can only be “contained” by “good rational” people. I think that’s a huge moral error, but I will explain myself much more thoroughly in a followup post (I refer you to my reply to kbog’s comment above)
Evil is not contained by good rational people, it’s contained by inefficiently. Systematic murder has to go through a legislative process, not through a cortisol addicts trigger happy political beliefs. If alcoholics had to travel on foot for a week to get to a bar, some would make the trip but most would just switch to a more convenient addiction. Like Twitter.
It doesn’t come from within often, it usually comes from trauma. Politics can prevent that to some extent but it won’t stop death, infertility, natural disasters, disability, accidents, and a whole range of traumas that existed before politics. In a perfect world there would be less evil, but still evil. Trauma + that small percentage of people who are just evil.