-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham) writes
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.
You leave me wondering what you mean by ``bad people''. As someone near here (Eric?) is fond of reiterating, never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by ignorance or stupidity. Bad people? Well, maybe, but it's mostly ignorant-bad, not malicious-bad.
... 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.
Yes. This is the social ``cancer'' I mentioned, democratic political government.
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.
Talk with them. Find that a decent, civilized Northridge resident uses the earthquake as cover for replacing his carpeting at taxpayer expense through FEMA assistance. Find that a self-proclaimed tax resister holds his rallys on a tax-funded picnic ground. Find that an active patron of free market educators lobbies in Washington for continued tariffs when his business is threatened by imports. Generally, find rampant gratuitous acceptance of the ``benefits'' of big government, generating the demand that makes it bigger still.
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.
Majority or not, the constituents strongly influence the bureaucrats. A good recent example familiar to readers of this list is the EFF with its shrill and incessant campaign to all of us to pressure politicians to do this or that. Thanks to the EFF's efforts, proponents of government surveillance can now claim the cooperation of a leading representative of data communications users. And the cypherpunks who are designing privacy mechanisms will have new obstacles to overcome. With constituents that adamant, it's no wonder that a bureaucracy grows powerful. When its budget is up for review, it need only point to the clients clamoring at its door.
It's the structure of government that needs changing.
The social cancer would need to be cured. It's hard to believe that what would result would embed anything like ``government''.
What might help change that is a complicated thing I won't go far into.
Well, can you go a little ways? John E. Kreznar | Relations among people to be by jkreznar@ininx.com | mutual consent, or not at all. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLmG0OsDhz44ugybJAQHvKAQArFNeoK/YiXD4ymGJZ2CBhTWxzmjI3i2h cCUe/QM+l5FD6OUfJjnKbfXXu0AKAjpbwcK8i5xN8lGqYebakF032g5K8rF5CwK7 Vq6VEvJwwMHc6H85uFkdRrb38QlByCpqC25e3YgNGbeH0Ek3hdOUiUWObLM73L/S 039vfiF4W0U= =y9xl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----