Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Friday, June 14, 2013

Talking Sense to Would Be Aristocrats Pining for Aristocracy

The exchange I reported in my last post has actually continued a bit, and is rather illuminating. My Very Serious interlocutor has revealed himself to be a conservative monarchist or would-be aristo of some kind in his politics. Quite a righteous vantage from which to lob his criticisms of Nancy Pelosi's supposed incumbent-elitism, I must say. Obviously, now, this sort of intellectual (to be generous) position is even less relevant to actually lived politics than the anarchists of the right (or who fancy themselves on the left) who also make more noise in my Moot than they will ever manage in the world. Of course, I spar with them as well on occasion, if only through such sparring to try to elaborate democratic principles and pragmatically progressive realities for my general readers -- the anarchists themselves rarely being available for instruction themselves. But I have noticed that several transhumanoids seem to be taking up this line lately, however, like poor Michael Anissimov (who, when he realized after a decade of self-abnegating labor and PR-fluffing he wasn't going to be a big fish in the already small pond of Robot Cultism, opted for the even smaller pond of a self-declared reactionary aristocratic futurism, as opposed to the more usual stealthful reactionary plutocratic futurism) or that weird white-racist gun-nut "Mark Plus" who occasionally pukes in the Moot. And so, in something of the spirit of my exemplary exchanges with foolish anarchists I have attempted much the same here with a foolish monarchist (or something). His comments are italicized and indented, and my responses are interspersed.
I would prefer to live in a non-murderous democracy where franchise would be limited to rational, productive members of society who are not getting any subsidies or welfare (except maybe retirement benefits). Or an orderly, efficient non-democratic society.
Who determines the limits of the franchise? Who determines who the "rational" "productive" members of society are? I certainly know a lot of people who fancy themselves consummately "rational" who are the most ignorant wish-fulfillment fantasists imaginable, as I also certainly know a lot of people who fancy themselves uniquely "productive" while disavowing their dependence on the efforts of historical and now living laboring, communicating, participating multitudes they nonetheless disdain as "non-productive" in comparison with themselves. Why do anti-democratic assholes always assume that they would be the ones running things, they would be regarded as the rational ones, they would manage to do everything better than the people they look down on without knowing them or really knowing themselves? It is interesting that my interlocutor does not seem to conceive of the benefits of a stable legal system and efficient administration of common and public goods from which he would benefit in this non-democratic polity as in any sense general welfare entitlements disqualifying him from having a say in the public decisions that affect him -- only money "stolen" from the "good" people to bolster the "bad" people counts as welfare, right?
Such societies are more likely to make people invest in what they prefer less, than let them squander their resources on short-term luxuries, such as bigger housing, cars, as Americans are wont to do..
That's rich, you glibly refer to "Such societies" as if any actually exist -- or can you possibly be pining for historically actual examples of monarchical or plutocratic tyrannies?
From my own experience, and from what I have seen in others, I am convinced that people mostly do not have a clue about what is good for them, and often only get it after a failure of some kind.
You are definitely demonstrating the truth of that insight. Funny that you seem to believe that some people should tell others what is good for them whatever their preferences in the matter even though the ones doing so are just as prone to wrongheadedness as the ones they dictate to.
This egalitarian notion that people are in any way equal is just ridiculous. They are not.
What you describe as "this egalitarian notion" is a straw man. The aspiration toward equity is not an aspiration toward homogeneity. I regularly refer to the value of equity-in-diversity precisely to circumvent such confusions (to treat you generously here).

Equitable recourse to law is indispensable to the sustainability of a stable trustworthy legal system in a complex functional division of labor with even a notionally mobile, meritocratic rather than inherited selection of roles in the labor force.

The universal provision of basic education, healthcare, and income (at any rate a living wage coupled with a comparable unemployment benefit) are indispensable to the maintenance of a scene of actually informed, actually non-duressed consent to the terms of commerce if that system is to benefit from market efficiencies and innovations (such as they are) without endorsing forms of fraud, exploitation, and slavery it presumably disapproves.

While it is true that some people are stronger than others, and some people do exhibit different forms and measures of intelligence, of course it is also true that co-ordinated collective inquiry and effort are incomparably more accomplished than any individual efforts could ever manage to be, and hence such individual differences in strength and knowledge are always rendered socially negligible (though they remain personally important) when people act in concert.

Social justice is mostly impossible, simply because some people are more able, or more motivated than others. Equality of outcome is a complete crock of..
Apart from your repetition of the facile confusion of equity with homogeneity here, what you really mean to say is that your vision of social justice is different from mine. That is obvious from the arguing happening here.

I believe that societies where elections, sloganeering and propaganda stunts such as Apollo program would be less important could take a longer view where infrastructure, basic research and such are concerned.
Because non-democratic societies built such better infrastructure -- pyramids, possibly? Because non-democratic societies facilitated such wide-ranging exemplary research programs -- Lysenko, possibly? There is at least a loose correlation of comparatively more mobile and responsive governments investing in public goods with periods of greater experimentation and discovery, presumably because they must respond to a wider range of real stakeholder experience and draw from a wider pool of potentially capable collaborators.
There is also the notion that Europe was at the pinnacle of it's power and success in an age when franchise was limited to wealthy individuals..
Not to mention when it was gorging itself on the wealth and effort of non-European societies -- do you pine for slaves and imperial conquest too or are we pretending not to know about all that bloody business?
Of course, there is little hope of bringing about such change, short of armed revolt, or some sort of elite coup.
Dizzy daydreams, eh?
Which of course would be unlikely to result in what Id like, since the present elites do not care about the greater good, but are rather selfish. Maybe if some real trouble happens in EU. Even then, we would probably just get fascism like so many predict.
Yes, armed revolt would be ugly -- not because the wrong elites would be in charge instead of the right elites you would prefer -- but because armed revolt is ugly, and elites are almost never elite in the sense you mean anyway (which is why your politics are so foolish).
On the other hand, fractional improvements to the abysmal representative democracy can be envisioned.
I agree. Ever increased and improved provision of education, healthcare, support paid for by steeply progressive income, property, and transaction taxes eventually coupled with more and more public funded elections and wider and wider enfranchisement of consenting adults would in my view yield an ever more competent, accountable government in an ever more sustainable, equitable, consensual, diverse society.
Imagine letting people have a say in legislation, in a process where lawmakers would have to explain, and have each part of new law approved by (literate and intelligent) citizens - who could be selected via some sort of open-source complex IQ and grammar test.
IQ tests? Really? Testing for what? And just who decides who isn't intelligent enough or intelligent in the right way to deserve to have a say in the public decisions that affect them? Somebody a lot like you, right?
Business is greatly hampered by suddenly changing laws, and there is little evidence the frenetic pace is necessary.
No small amount of what passes for "business" should be hampered.
This kind of improvement.. I believe is doable. No doubt has been suggested..
Well, we agree that reform is possible. Otherwise, I think your politics are profoundly misguided and your anti-democratic assumptions mostly based on self-congratulatory fictions.

9 comments:

Y. said...


My Very Serious interlocutor has revealed himself to be a conservative monarchist or would-be aristo of some kind in his politics.


That is like saying that if I claim that Toyotas are not bad cars, that I said they are the best ones.

No. I am in favor of certain brands of democracy. I would prefer a system that would select better people. No idea how to do that.

For starters, maybe representatives should be selected randomly. At least half of them.

As to aristocracy, yeah, I believe government should be done by the better kinds of people. Smart, preferably moral, non-superstitious, etc.

Universal franchise tends to get us honey-tongued demagogues supported by businessmen too inept to get on without govt handouts..

That does not mean I am in favor of the traditional kind of aristocracy. There is some merit in the notion, but even less than in universal franchise...


It is interesting that my interlocutor does not seem to conceive of the benefits of a stable legal system and efficient administration of common and public goods from which he would benefit in this non-democratic polity as in any sense general welfare entitlements disqualifying him from having a say in the public decisions that affect him -- only money "stolen" from the "good" people to bolster the "bad" people counts as welfare, right?


You are pretty good at rhetoric. Not so logical.
Citizens pay taxes and in return get govt services- law and order, legal system (justice system is a misnomer), etc.

Welfare is not having to pay taxes, or recieving benefits above the standard ones, such as unemployment or social assistance, or subsidies in case of companies..


Who determines the limits of the franchise?

Yeah, well, it could be done by some sort of intelligence test. I know many people disdain those, however, it has been well established people who do well on such tests are less likely to fail at stuff, harder to hoodwink, and more able at other intellectual work.

I know of counter-examples, yet those people are uncommon.

Say, maybe let the top 25% vote, or let everyone vote and put a multiplier on the the votes of brighter people.

Intelligence test performance can be increased by practice, so people particularily keen on having their votes count could spend their free time, instead of watching TV sports by getting better at them. I bet few would do so.

Y. said...


That's rich, you glibly refer to "Such societies" as if any actually exist -- or can you possibly be pining for historically actual examples of monarchical or plutocratic tyrannies?

Singapore is doing pretty well, to name a non-democratic country.

I have little liking for clericalists, especially those affiliated with churches I dislike(all of them), yet the Spaniards I have met have expressed the notion that where large-scale infrastructure projects(roads, dams, etc) are concerned, the Falangists were far more likely to succeed.



What you describe as "this egalitarian notion" is a straw man.

Well, most countries claim everyone's vote counts the same, and that everyone's opinion is equally important.

Which saddens me. For almost a decade, the most popular politician in my country was a paranoid* narcissist who ruined the economy by giving away state property to his cronies, had the son of a president who did not bow to him kidnapped, then pardoned everyone involved in the kidnapping.

This man, who kept telling everyone what they wanted to hear was the most widely trusted and popular politician.

*funnily enough, the national psychiatrist's association said his ramblings and accusations (claimed without evidence police foiled assassination attempts on him) make it very likely he suffers from paranoid delusions.


The universal provision of basic education, healthcare, and income (at any rate a living wage coupled with a comparable unemployment benefit) are indispensable to the maintenance of a scene of actually informed, actually non-duressed consent to the terms of commerce if that system is to benefit from market efficiencies and innovations (such as they are) without endorsing forms of fraud, exploitation, and slavery it presumably disapproves.

I mostly agree with this. However, lately local government seems it makes sense to send 50% of high school graduates to universities.

Where about 70% of them flounder, because they do not have the brains for them. What sense does it make to let someone who has problems with quadratic equations enroll in an engineering school?

This resulted in a widespread lowering of standards in upper education.

It would make sense to let 10-25% of the best students go on and get a university education.

It was that way during the communist era. No one can accuse them of bending to public opinion excessively..

Y. said...


Because non-democratic societies built such better infrastructure -- pyramids, possibly? Because non-democratic societies facilitated such wide-ranging exemplary research programs -- Lysenko, possibly?


Nah. But you know, Austria-Hungaria built all the railways that are still in use. Despite having at first none and later limited franchise.

Economy did pretty well, despite it having no colonies to speak of, or slave labor or whatever.

It exhibited a remarkable lack of corruption in the state bureaucracy. Less than interbellum democratic Czechoslovakia and far less than the present-day Czech Republic.


IQ tests? Really? Testing for what? And just who decides who isn't intelligent enough or intelligent in the right way to deserve to have a say in the public decisions that affect them? Somebody a lot like you, right?

No. I would let no one decide, just calibrate the tests so that only 1/3 of the population would pass, adjust difficulty as needed.

I mean, my class at preparatory school had some people who were like me, but .. there were few. Most others were quite different. Still, it was one of top-ten schools in my country, and no doubt life outcomes of people who managed to pass the entrance examinations for it are going to be markedly different for those who went to vocational school or not as good preparatory schools.

Of which a great wealth has mushroomed since the creation of them has been under popular control.


No small amount of what passes for "business" should be hampered.

Those are your words, not mine. Money is just means, not an end, and businesses are just means for the economy of a country to operate.

However, how can anyone run a business if each year, some of his competitors manage to bribe enough people to exclude him from running his?

For example, when I was finishing driving tests, a new law came out that drove 40% of driving school out of business by mandating that every driving school has to have an expensive driving simulator.

Even though no one has shown such simulators help, people who have trained or them are better drivers and so on..

I could mention the state electronic road tax system which ruined about half of small trucking businesses, and from which 30% of the amount collected goes to cronies of the govt which completed it..

All thanks to the people having elected a bunch of corrupt snakes in suits, just one of whom can speak a good game.

This is just a minor example. Plenty of others can be had. Look at what FDA has been doing in the US where farming is concerned.

Dale Carrico said...

You declare yourself in favor of some kinds of democracies... the "kind" that aren't. You declare yourself not in favor of "traditional" kinds of aristocracies... you prefer "better" kinds, in the usual aristocratic manner. Nobody is fooled by any of that so I set all that aside.

You speak endlessly of better people, smarter people, who should run things and dumb people and inept people who muck everything up. All this idiotic business over IQ tests is truly embarrassing, I'm not even going to dignify that with comment. Privileged people always think they have it better because they are better -- this doesn't mean they are all bad but they are usually mostly wrong. The conception of intelligence in such discussions is always radically impoverished, usually implicitly self-congratulatory, often demonstrably racist. You don't have to take my word for it, and this is the sort of thing I won't spend too much of my time arguing about because it is even more unutterablly depressing than the other topics I take up here. Look, there's good and bad in everyone. In general, people seem to me to be capable of good and bad things.

Dale Carrico said...

I think all kids should be educated to be competent citizens, all people should have access to reliable information to make informed decisions, all troubled people should have access to therapy, all trouble-making people should have access to therapy, support, and marginalized and rehabilitated if they are violent, all violent crimes and fraud, all people who get sick, or make a mistake, or lose everything, or get into trouble should have enough support to get back on their feet, try again, find another way to participate in the world.

Who should pay for all this? We all already pay for these things whether we respond to them helpfully and supportively or we ignore them or just warehouse the "losers" in warrens. Even if taxing the rich more than the poor didn't pay for the provision of welfare to ensure equitable access to law and the maintenance of a scene of informed, nonduressed consent to protect the poor from the rich it would still be necessary to society simply to resist wealth concentration and the regression, brittleness, and authoritarianism that tend to accrue from such concentration.

People who make more and benefit more from their societies should pay more to maintain them -- including paying to help some fellow citizens who aren't yet contributing as much as they could to become people who can. From those to whom much is given, much is required. Some resentment of that state of affairs is to be expected, but it is not reasonable and it certainly is not admirable. Nobody is sole author of either their fortune or misfortune and so there is to be no talk of unfairness or theft here. Being born without as many chances or prey to more problems doesn't seem fair to those who experience that any more than having to pay more taxes that deprive you of a photogenic servant or gold-plated yacht doesn't seem fair to those who experience that. Life isn't fair.

Dale Carrico said...

It is true that some knowledge can be counterintuitive -- the sun doesn't travel around the earth, you should borrow more to stimulate the economy in recessions especially when interest rates are at the zero-bound, human actions can catastrophically impact global climate, you can lower aggregate healthcare costs by providing them universally, social policy works better when it focuses on harm-reduction rather than punishment, and so on. Education is necessary, competence for all tasks is not automatic.

To declare that people should be assigned to government at random -- apart from freeing you from having any skin in the game when it comes to making actually existing governance actually better since it will never even remotely happen -- also demonstrates a mistaken disdain for the work of administration and legislation fairly typical of right-wingers like yourself. The same goes for your reduction of governance to "services" paid for by fees, as if commonwealth is a commodity which it very much is not, also an error pretty typical of right-wingers.

The availability of non-violent arenas for the adjudication of disputes -- including over the determination of what counts as violence -- is not a commodity, equity in access to law and in the accountability of law-making to all is not a commodity, the maintenance of a scene of informed, nonduressed consent to the terms of everyday concerns is not a commodity, a community of healthy, well-educated, non-precarious potential collaborators confident in the laws, norms, infrastructural affordances of their society is not a commodity, a sustainable planetary ecosystem of the sort humans evolved to flourish in is not a commodity -- these are all goods, but not private goods, they are public and common goods. You declare me "illogical" in making such distinctions and proceeding in my arguments and formulations in ways that take these distinctions into account. You say this because you have a profoundly mistaken and impoverished understanding of politics.

I do not doubt you are educable, but as of now you certainly don't strike me as particularly superior in the way of intellect -- quite apart from the question of your morals, which look to be conspicuously inferior, given the ugly inequities and violent evils you seem willing to countenance in support of your errors.

Dale Carrico said...

You talk about "snakes in suits" in government -- there is no doubt that most governments are bought and paid for by plutocrats, full of cronyism, corruption, incompetence, disdainful of facts and outcomes that are equitable-in-diversity. It seems to me most "snakes in suits" are in what passes for "business" or are beholden to "business interests" so called. Your plutocratic vision -- all plutocrats fancy themselves meritocrats, "nature's" aristocrats, you aren't the first to find such facile formulas appealing, you know -- is far too close to the status quo to justify your apparent disdain for the status quo. I will say again, much that passes for "business" today should be hampered by regulation or rendered too unprofitable to proceed (war profiteering, for instance), quite a lot of advertizing is misinformation and fraud, some of it verges on harassment, quite a lot of financial "services" amount to fraud and theft, quite a lot of fees for services are extortionate, exploitation of common and public goods amounts to theft and corruption verging on treason, externalization of costs for parochial profit-taking is theft at best and might be better construed as violent assault.

Y. said...

Too close to status quo? Really?

My notion that when selecting representatives, selection ought to be either more random, or more weighed towards choices of intelligent people.. that is status quo?

Also, when it comes to business, you are attacking a straw-man.

One thing is not hampering business by whirlwind legislative changes, other thing is combating fraud and deception.

One can endorse both.

Personally, I would propose a ban on all advertising, ever and forever.

It is just spam. If you really want to decide well, advertising is not the answer. Performance tests, studies, etc, reviews, yes.

Ads.. no.

Dale Carrico said...

Advocating the sea be turned into lemonade -- apologies to Monsieur Fourier -- is also advocating for the status quo, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, because it isn't advocating anything connected to any actual organizing, any actual constituency. You leap back and forth between deploying bald uninterrogated terms like "business" in ways that suggest the usual terminological entailments and then leap off the cliff into wild recommendations with little connection to actual realities. It isn't exactly easy to try to follow these twists and turns as a good faith interlocutor -- believe me, I'm trying. I actually haven't decided conclusively whether you are a right-wing tool, a right-wing troll, or actually a temperamental radical with your heart somewhat in the right place on some issues and hence reachable as a partner for eventual good, but prey for now to a host of ill-thought notions that embed you in a right-wing politics that you might somewhat disapprove when it actually comes down to it. Calling my interrogation of what passes for "business" a "straw man" is perfectly ridiculous, even the formulation "what passes for business" demonstrates a level of care that circumvents that particular charge. Rather than defend yourself on this score, which looks to me to threaten to arrive at diminishing return very rapidly, might I suggest that maybe you should read more and write less for a time?