Phil Karn writes
It really gives one pause. Is government really the enemy of personal freedoms, or does it merely reflect an intolerant and unenlightened general population?
John Kreznar replies-
Excellent question. Answering it the wrong way leads to tremendous energy misdirected to trying to influence politicians and bureaucrats, even when they are effectively representing their constituencies in the general population...
John seems to mean 1) the people are bad, and 2) people who believe the people are good try to influence politicians. Point 1: Saying that a bad government is just representing bad people gives it more credit than is due. Sure, that's what it claims to do, but does that have anything to do with reality? The whole is different from the sum of the parts. Besides the parts there is their arrangement. Government as we know it is a bad arrangement of people. It contains positive feedback structures that amplify certain mistakes instead of correcting for them. The bad things that happen with governments often play on people's irrational fears and psychological "hot buttons." They also make use of the news media's eagerness to cover certain kinds of subjects and events. A feedback loop will take advantage of whatever signal paths are out there. So, you have people whipped up into showing their worst sides, and then given exaggerated coverage on the news. It's hard to say what would give a true picture of what most people are like. On the other hand, governments contain negative feedbacks (formerly called checks and balances) that can sometimes make them act *more* sanely than the average mob taken from their own population. On John's point 2: The goodness or badness of the people has little to do with whether it makes sense to try to influence politicians, since they do not represent and are hardly influenced by the will of the majority anyway. It's the structure of government that needs changing. What might help change that is a complicated thing I won't go far into. But whether you're going with or against popular opinion probably has never mattered as much as how clever, ruthless, resourceful, well-connected, etc. you are. --Steve - - - - - - - - - - why did the chicken cross the infobahn? finger for more info.