On 16 Sep 2017, at 15:19, Elliot Temple wrote:
> On Sep 15, 2017, at 9:54 PM, Max Kaye <
m...@xk.io> wrote:
>
>> On 15 Sep 2017, at 9:15, anonymous FI wrote:
>>>
>>>> The Dictator's Handbook:
>>>>
>>>> **Democratic politics is a battle for good policy ideas**.
>
> good policy ideas aren't created by bribing supporters with treasure.
Well, I mean they are when the treasure *is* the policy idea and the
supporters are the voters. Almost by definition.
The second interpretation is that the "good policy ideas" are ideas that
are well suited to the particular selectorate factions you’re trying
to appease. These are *good* ideas in the sense that they satisfy desire
in a way that most changes to the policy would diminish its ability to
do that. They’re not good ideas in the sense that they hit on
objective truths outside of our local human context.
>>>> Yes we want people to be free and prosperous, but we don’t want
>>>> them to be free and
>>>> prosperous enough to threaten our way of life, our interests, and
>>>> our well-being—and that is as it should be.
>>>
>>> So the author thinks freedom and prosperity elsewhere are a threat
>>> to America and it's right for Americans to try to limit the freedom
>>> and prosperity of others.
>>
>> Not in an explanationless way,
>
> there was no explanation, just a simplified model that some countries
> have people with hostile interests to ours (sorta ok) and if they were
> more powerful (while being assumed to keep the same ideas – this
> part is no good) that'd be bad for us.
>
> more on this in the podcast
https://gum.co/EyJnB
I’ve managed to listen to the first 30-40 minutes or so (so far), and
while it doesn’t seem like you talk about it that much, I do think I
have some responses.
In this case, how would you feel about Iran becoming prosperous? I
don’t think it’s controversial to say that *too much* prosperity in
Iran would threaten the US. (Note, the quote itself does not mention
democracy)
There are secondary arguments here about prosperity encouraging better
ideas, and the positive feedback between economics, prosperity, liberty,
intellectual freedom, etc.
*However*, it is the case that a productive unfriendly nation is more of
a threat to "us" than a poor unfriendly nation. (Whoever "us" happens to
be in this case).
In most cases other nation’s freedom and prosperity does not threaten
our own (Australia and the US are easy examples), and then it’s fine.
But if another nation’s prosperity (possibly through oil) threatened
our own, *and this was a salient threat*, I’d expect the US and
Australia to react.
Another way to look at this: **eventually the US will become the
problem**. Since the US (like Australia) is not based in fallibilism
(though maybe has some small ability to correct errors over a long
time), as we grow as a society both the US and Australia will **need**
to change, or they will *become* the problem. *Everything* eventually
becomes a problem if it doesn’t have a good enough system of error
correction, and canonical democracy is **really** bad at it.
Note: dictatorships are definitely *worse* at this than our democracies.
That means they’ll become problems first, before our systems of
governance do. However, once the world in general is more prosperous, or
western countries become even *more* prosperous, these systems of
governance will *need* to change. I mean surely you agree that they can
be improved? That there are future breakthroughs with democracy to
uncover? And that those improvements will be unintuitive but far better
for us? (In the same way new scientific breakthroughs are unintuitive
and also better)
>> the preceding paragraph (which lives between "free and prosperous"
>> and
>> "president’s solemn duty") reads:
>>
>>>> Our individual concerns about protecting ourselves from unfriendly
>>>> democracies elsewhere typically trump our longer term belief in the
>>>> benefits of democracy.
>
> what unfriendly democracies? when was the last time two democracies
> went to war against each other?
>
> is there any dictatorship in the world we'd prefer stay that way,
> rather than change into one of mildly unfriendly democracies like
> Germany?
Well Nazi Germany was a democracy. I’ll just point to [2] though.
[2] links to wiki’s article on "Democratic Peace Theory" and is only
linked for the list of counterexamples. I think the theory itself is
essentially explanationless and empirical, a much better explanation is
via economics / trading partners / opportunity cost of war, etc, and the
tendency for democratic nations to be very productive and thus have a
lot of benefits from trading with each other.
The selectorate theory actually explains *why* democratic nations are
more productive, and it’s not because they’re democracies. Rather
they’re democratic *because* they’re productive. See [3]
That doesn’t *exclude* the possibility of a future democracy-democracy
war, though. Especially if democracies become unstable due to a downturn
in the productivity of the workers or a massive new source of natural
resources is discovered. (Again, see [3])
>>>> Democratic leaders listen to their voters because that is how they
>>>> and their political party get to keep their jobs.
>
> this is a blanket statement. but current US politics is a counter
> example.
>
> Trump and many other Republicans have been ignoring the demands of
> their voters for a long time. a few have lost their jobs as a result,
> but many others have retained their jobs.
I’d argue that Trump was able to win because other candidates
*didn’t* listen to their voters, or underestimated their voters’
willingness to support another candidate. I discuss this idea a bit more
in my response to your post on "End states who sponsor terrorism".
If Trump ignores his voters too much he won’t get reelected. [1]
So I don’t see it as a counter-example at all, in fact I think it
explains it well.
Additionally, Clinton (H) did not satisfy her voters *enough* (there’s
another question, too: was that ever possible?)
>>>> Democratic leaders were elected, after all, to advance the current
>>>> interests at least of those who chose them.
>
> they are not!
>
> they are elected to advance some policies they offered. this isn't
> about promoting someone's interests, it's about ideas about good
> policies.
> it's about ideas about good policies.
That would be nice, but when was the last time you heard someone discuss
the philosophy of a good policy? When was the last time there was a good
affirmative action policy? Ever? Yet there are affirmative action
policies.
If we do get "good" policy - it’s not in the sense DD uses the word in
BoI, and often they’re not based on good explanations.
I wish it were about good ideas, philosophy, and good policy. I
desperately want that to be the case because I think the world would be
*so much better* if it embraced that. But people don’t want to be
criticised, and they don’t want their political views criticised
either. They don’t want *good* policy, they want *their* policy.
> they are elected to advance some policies they offered
Yes, and the people who want those policies are the ones that voted for
them. Some voters did their research and think the policies are good,
but most voters want them *because they like them*, and most voters
don’t apply rationality to that. It’s much easier to be
self-interested than vote for good ideas.
Why would people not be self-interested in politics when they are
self-interested economically?
> good people don't vote for their own interests to be advanced. they
> aren't
> looking for win/lose outcomes in their favor. they are trying to
> figure out what's objectively good and get that.
If you define "good people" as people who already are willing to vote
for the best policies, regardless of the impact on them, then you’re
right.
But most people aren’t like that. They’re not looking for the
"/lose" part of that, but they’re definitely looking for the "win"
part of that.
I see it every *day* in modern democracies, or at least Australia’s
(and it’s not much different to the US - not PR based, at least)
I can give examples if you want. But it’s not hard to criticise most
policies (especially when they don’t come with explanations; they’re
just lists of instructions and rules with no reasoning behind them).
> the large majority of Americans would prefer government policies
> they're convinced are objectively good over policies aimed at
> advancing their current personal interests. (these are largely
> compatible, but it's the objective good they focus on, and rightly so.
> they focus more on their personal interests when there's a LARGE
> effect at stake, but they're virtuous enough to be pretty objective
> about most policies.)
I don’t see that at all. Is there any evidence for this?
> why do they do this? because they think it's the morally right way to
> vote (ideas!), and they care about issues (like which policies are
> better and which political arguments are correct), and they're
> comfortable enough not to be desperate to get a handout. they also
> care about things like *fairness*.
But they’re not rational! How do they know what good ideas look like
if they can’t even find them in their own lives?
If you were arguing that rep democracy worked with a population of
critical fallibilists, I’d be inclined to agree. But most of the
voting population is *so far* from that it’s not funny. Every time
people get up in a town hall, they’re talking about problems *they*
care about. How is that not self-interest?
>>>> The long run is always on someone else’s watch.
>
> and yet most Americans care about it anyway, even ones without
> children. because they think the long run is important. that's an idea
> they believe.
Again, I don’t think this is true. There are lots of "long run" things
we *should* have done.
An easy example is embedding cryptographic tools in ID cards; in the US
- *actually making ID cards at all* (drivers licenses aren’t
universal, and aren’t meant for ID anyway, an SSNs are **terrible**
for ID). Even in Aus we don’t have ID cards - we defer to drivers
licenses or "proof of age" cards.
The benefits of this sort of forward-thought would be massive - because
you can *build* on it. This sort of thing is *super* cheap (we’ve been
doing it for as long as we’ve had credit cards), easily upgradable
(since they expire), and have literally *no* downsides (cancelling a
card is the same process).
But then go and look back at what happens - in the long run it *is* on
someone else’s watch. After a bad representative (corrupt,
incompetent, etc) is kicked out or loses an election, ppl don’t say
"whoops, it was us, the voters who made the mistake" - and even if that
did happen it wouldn’t be true, since voters don’t have a *choice*.
Two candidates out of hundreds of thousands of voters is not a choice.
>>>> When a foreign people are aligned against our best interest, our
>>>> best chance of getting what we want is to keep them under the yoke
>>>> of an oppressor who is willing to do what we, the people, want.
>>
>> Notice that he’s not arguing that this is *universal* either, he
>> does frame it particularly with the first sentence to talk
>> particularly about unfriendly democracies.
>>
>> I don’t see this as any different from arguing that damaging and
>> dangerous cultures should be kept out of America - it’s preferable
>> to let them be worse off than to risk both the American culture and
>> people.
>
> one thing you're ignoring is the effect of democracy on people's
> ideas. it helps create new knowledge which helps people change their
> minds.
>
> the yoke of the oppressor keeps the people ignorant and hostile, and
> gives them less opportunity to pursue positive values in their own
> lives.
This is true when democracies are stable. But for stability you first
need prosperity. Think about Brazil - their democracy is dysfunctional
and corrupt. Why? Because the productivity of the people is dwarfed by
the productivity of a small number of sectors (like oil), and corruption
can be a good idea (doesn’t mean it’s a *great* idea), and moreover,
if people who are corrupt keep getting into power, what does that say
about Brazil’s democracy’s ability to select and promote good
candidates?
>>> And of course has no relevant arguments that address my view, nor
>>> address well known published views by many of the authors I
>>> mentioned above.
>>
>> From what I know, most of them haven’t written on *why power
>> changes the wielder’s behaviour in the way it does*,
>
> it doesn't. behavior is determined by ideas. ideas about power and
> about one's situation and things like that can be relevant, though
> aren't controlling (one may still reach whatever conclusions).
Ideas like "how do I react to my key supporters and voters to find the
best outcome?"
Ideas and memes don’t act external to context. They *need* context,
and power is a context. It *changes* what is expressed, to whom, and
why.
>> so not sure there’s much to respond to. I don’t think that
>> economics really comes into it - it’s a different level of
>> emergence.
>
> claims about being threatened by the prosperity of other countries
> should involve addressing previous knowledge of that topic.
That’s fair, but I’d address that like:
* Here’s the conditions where democracies get along (trade / mutual
dependence / opportunity cost of war / etc)
* And when those things go away, here’s what happens: X, Y, Z
It definitely does give us more context for when things can and can’t
happen like that, but I don’t think it disproves that it *can* happen
at all, or that we can learn things from thinking about it.
Max
[1] : I’ve pointed to this tweet once before I think (retweeted by Ann
Coulter - which is where I found it)
> If he does not build the wall, he simply will not get reelected. If he
> does build it, he will win 2020 by a landslide. It is that simple.
https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/908176374074155009
[2] :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory#Possible_exceptions
[3] : This 4.5 minute section of rules for rulers explains this well.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/rStL7niR7gs?start=733&end=1013&version=3
Transcript of section (formatted):
https://pastebin.com/rb0ngVwV