Re: Bad govt represents bad people?
sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham) writes
Saying that a bad government is just representing bad people gives it more credit than is due.
John Kreznar responds-
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.
Yah. I just meant "bad" to stand for something we were discussing: people who want to benefit from your being taxed, or restrict your freedoms gratuitously.
Majority or not, the constituents strongly influence the bureaucrats.
Right, the problem is more than just people in government. I was just contradicting the idea that (as Tim May says) people get the government they deserve. Certainly not all people, maybe not most "deserve" this deal.
A good recent example familiar to readers of this list is the EFF with its shrill and incessant campaign
Yeah, I said that cleverness, etc. helped to influence but left out persistence, volume, high profile. But not representativeness.
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.
Yup. Whoops. There's a footnote in one of Bruno Bettleheim's books-- he says professional organizations resemble the guards recruited from among the prisoners in concentration camps. They both start out wanting to defend their fellows from the tyrants, but through compromise they end up being the ones who deliver the tyranny.
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''.
You're right, the problem is bigger than government. Also, I was using "government" in the sense of "whatever way protection services are arranged for" rather than "government as we know it". (But I've blabbed enough about that usage.) --Steve - - - - - - - - - - It is said a Shao Lin priest can walk through walls. Looked for, he cannot be seen. Listened for, he cannot be heard. Touched, he cannot be felt.
Steve Witham writes:
Right, the problem is more than just people in government. I was just contradicting the idea that (as Tim May says) people get the government they deserve. Certainly not all people, maybe not most "deserve" this deal.
To clarify my meaning, "people deserve the government they get" is short for saying that the evil, repressive, godforsaken government than everyone complains about is mostly their own doing. Majority rule, the will of the herd, etc. I certainly wasn't saying that *all* people asked for it. This seems quite obvious to me, that the problems of America and other such countries is not that some evil government was, say, imposed by conquest from the outside, but that the voters got what "they" asked for. ("They" being most of them, more or less, but not "all" of them.) I find it useful to remind people of this point, that they get the government they deserve, as a reminder that asking for the government to "do something!" or saying "there ought to be a law!" is exactly how we got into our current mess. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
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sw＠tiac.net -
tcmay＠netcom.com