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Preface: There's grounds for a significantly more reasoned writeup but I'd like to discuss this with you guys so I'll write a barebone intro to the topic.
Democracy's biggest and most consequential inherent flaw, besides its apparent difficulties in remaining democratic, has to be the fact that it'll naturally tend to favor short term problem solving, short term solutions, and it will lean on short term results to justify its actions. And the population systematically eats that shit up, even some of the smartest of people will blame (or praise) the incumbent politician or party or the previous one for the shit that's happening. For all of it.
Right now, the government of my province is gutting the fuck out of education to tackle the debt, a long term problem, with short term measures. Not higher education quite as much, where grown adults at least can make some decisions, but elementary and middle school. Here, a vast majority of children go through the public system which has historically been viewed reasonably favorably, as an alternative that is not cripplingly inferior to the private system (which has left my little cousin dumb as fuck and his parents poorer by tens of thousands of dollars).
Nonetheless, the alleged economic problems of these last few years have convinced the government of my province that the way forward was to cripple our public schools by lowering the funding to school boards, which have passed the cuts down to the schools. The school admin/management wouldn't want to cut their own stuff, so it's the nontenured teachers getting the axe, along with the support staff like healthcare professionals and learning disability staffers. And so we cram 40 children into the same classroom, we put excellent students in the same classroom as the ones with learning difficulties (who no longer get the personalized help they need), and as a result brilliant kids don't get the stimulus they deserve and the other kids don't get the attention they need. Everybody loses.
At the end of the day, the government passed a special law that prevents teachers from striking, make a few concessions to get the parents to stop whining, it quiets down and 3 years down the line it's election time, everybody has forgotten it and wow, the government is running a budgetary surplus (!!!). It must mean that the government handled its finances properly. 4 to 8 years later, the party which gutted education is gone, is remembered as the party which rationalized public spending while reducing the tax burden for everybody at some point in the past, flaunting conservative fiscal ideals at the time, but they've since increased their spending, curiously a few months before the election time!!!
The party loses its elections, everything goes back to normal, and 15 years down the line everybody wonders why the province is starting to show signs of weakness. Why can't we compete with other provinces, let alone some countries, economically? "Well, it must be because of the current government's policies", people will systematically say. And everyone forgets that you've been pouring buckets of 20-25 year olds without the proper tools in a globalized, cutthroat world, which will chew up those kids who could never compete because they've been a step behind their whole lives. And all that so some political party could look good to the credit houses once in 2015 and maybe 2016.
I've used the education example because it's what's happening here now but it's like this, in all matters and always. And I've been thinking about it because I can't think of a solution. Everything people says should be a solution to this crisis in democracy is clearly strongly tied to one ideology or the other. Austerity has shown to be a very costly endeavor due to the fact that cutting spending often comes with severely reduced incomes and nothing is gained at the end of the day, especially since the incurred protests have costs of their own and the political cost of austerity measures largely "forces" governments to spend public money unwisely (and steal public money quietly). Contrarily, spending public money to stimulate the economy works as a seasonal influx but to systematically pour money in the economy has shown to have serious diminishing returns. Without getting into the specifics of the free market vs regulation and all that, it seems to me like one way or the other government will wash their hands of long term problems created by their policies, since they know that they'll be gone by the time the symptoms start to show. And no one's going to be reelected on long term results.
So what the fuckerino.
 
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For what it's worth, English is my second language, I'm not using a spell checker and I think "favorably" is googlable enough to be acceptable to use. I don't think I'd fail my primary school ESL class and there probably are more egregious typos and mistakes in what I wrote.
Nonetheless I haven't read enough about this whole ordeal (or about Ontario in general) to understand how Kathleen Wynne is incompetent or how her sex ed curriculum is bad. The first articles I pulled up largely mentioned religious nutters. I think it could be interesting if you would elaborate on how Ontario's situation pertains to this discussion though, I would stand to learn a few things 
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english is my 2nd language as well. however, i do speak the queen's english. where i live 90% of the primary school kids didn't attend due to the sex-ed crap. she is taking really middle of the road voters and making them anti-liberal. she is also explicitly backing Justin Trudeau. This is an idiot move because she is going to have to deal with someone not named Trudeau as prime minister.
the best 2 premiers ontario ever had were Bill Davis and Mike Harris. When it came to federal matters they kept their kept their mouths' shut. Wynne should learn to do the same. Until then, whoever the PM is .. will always be sticking it to her in some way or another.
after its all over and Wynne is no longer in politics , look for her to whine about how its still an "old boys network" in politics.
There are lots of unwritten rules when it comes to dealing with the Feds.. and Wynne is not following them. I provided the simplest and most obvious one in this post. When I have more time i can rattle off a few more simple unwritten rules she is not following.
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(wall of text incoming)
Lots of assumptions here. Just to be clear though, I perfectly agree with the underlying premise that your provincial government handled the education issue poorly, and that the austerity vs stimulus decision is definitely difficult. But it's too much of a stretch to lose faith in democracy.
For one, despite all the flaws in the system, I think democracy, in general, handles these kinds of problems better than any alternative system. In a democracy, yes the proposed solutions are ideological and shortsighted because the government wishes to be reelected, or the opposition wishes to enter government. But what happens in more authoritarian systems? The government doesn't have to care whatsoever because all it has to take care of are the elites it depends on for support and it can afford to simply ignore the rest, and failing that it simply censor/repress any public protests. And this is besides doing all the distracting tactics that democracies can also use when there's public unrest - ie. increase unrelated public spending or stirring up cultural/foreign conflicts.
Basically, just about every other type of government is either more ideological, or suffers from even more corruption, nepotism, or factionalism. I actually think democracy's strength lies not in its long term decision making, but in the benefits it brings to the mid and low level bureaucracy - more professionalism, responsiveness, and respect for the rule of law. Your overall long-term school policy might suffer (brilliant kids in the same room as the slower ones because of austerity) but at least the system is fair (school admins don't take bribes to elevate the undeserving, school doesn't kick out unfavored minorities).
About the larger issues, like austerity vs stimulus, well, that issue isn't unique to democracy, every government has to handle it. Usually the democracy's solution will be more moderate than the non-democracy's, because they need to compromise at least a little to pass anything, and if the party in power's solution turns out to be lousy, at least they will be kicked out relatively quickly and painlessly - elections are set in advance, no revolution required.
Lastly, just one quibble, I don't know what you mean by democracy's trouble with remaining democratic. There are pretty much more democracies in the world now than ever, and even most authoritarian counties have at least some aspects or trappings of democracy. Pretty much the only major countries that have gotten significantly less democratic in the last 20 years or so are Russia, Thailand (hopefully temporary), and Venezuela, and some counties have made just as dramatic improvements, like Indonesia, Tunisia, and Nigeria.
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I never meant to do the apology of authoritarian systems or to say that I was losing faith in democracy. In fact, it's the very opposite. I think democracy is the best system given my ideals, but it's one that stands to be improved upon, especially now where even some of the "best" and most consolidated democracies like Canada and the US and much of Europe are facing a crisis in that people are getting disillusioned with it. More and more, it seems like economic interests are silencing people, mostly indirectly but sometimes very directly. We can vote, but we don't because at the end of the day, money counts for too much in elections, politicians are bought, they often reach their seats and they "owe" some corporations for their victory. Big decisions don't seem to be taken for the greater good, or for the good of the people.
You bring up good points and those are all things that show how democracy, even when it's faltering, has a marked advantage over authoritarian regimes which explains how even despite all the scandals and corruption we're seeing in our countries, we still have a standard of living much higher than that of those regimes (which is a simple but largely accurate analysis).
Yet I don't mean to compare democracy against those regimes. I'm here looking at democracy and it has all these advantages, but it has this one glaring flaw, this one huge issue that prevents it from making some very important decisions rationally, and I'm wondering how you could institutionally make it better. Is democracy doomed to be forever held back by this? What's the solution?
And it's the question I'm throwing out there. How do we fix this? Does it even need fixing? Is it an inefficiency like any other that doesn't really matter? Does it lead to an eventual collapse due to an accumulation of bad decisions?
On September 12 2015 08:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
english is my 2nd language as well. however, i do speak the queen's english. where i live 90% of the primary school kids didn't attend due to the sex-ed crap. she is taking really middle of the road voters and making them anti-liberal. she is also explicitly backing Justin Trudeau. This is an idiot move because she is going to have to deal with someone not named Trudeau as prime minister.
the best 2 premiers ontario ever had were Bill Davis and Mike Harris. When it came to federal matters they kept their kept their mouths' shut. Wynne should learn to do the same. Until then, whoever the PM is .. will always be sticking it to her in some way or another.
after its all over and Wynne is no longer in politics , look for her to whine about how its still an "old boys network" in politics.
There are lots of unwritten rules when it comes to dealing with the Feds.. and Wynne is not following them. I provided the simplest and most obvious one in this post. When I have more time i can rattle off a few more simple unwritten rules she is not following.
Unfortunately that gives me very little information... you could be right, and I'd never know. Not sure what's into the sex-ed class that's so bad. I've had sex ed, can't complain about it. Is there a class about fisting or something? Hardcore fisting?
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On September 12 2015 09:42 jubil wrote:
(wall of text incoming)
Lots of assumptions here. Just to be clear though, I perfectly agree with the underlying premise that your provincial government handled the education issue poorly, and that the austerity vs stimulus decision is definitely difficult. But it's too much of a stretch to lose faith in democracy.
For one, despite all the flaws in the system, I think democracy, in general, handles these kinds of problems better than any alternative system. In a democracy, yes the proposed solutions are ideological and shortsighted because the government wishes to be reelected, or the opposition wishes to enter government. But what happens in more authoritarian systems? The government doesn't have to care whatsoever because all it has to take care of are the elites it depends on for support and it can afford to simply ignore the rest, and failing that it simply censor/repress any public protests. And this is besides doing all the distracting tactics that democracies can also use when there's public unrest - ie. increase unrelated public spending or stirring up cultural/foreign conflicts.
Basically, just about every other type of government is either more ideological, or suffers from even more corruption, nepotism, or factionalism. I actually think democracy's strength lies not in its long term decision making, but in the benefits it brings to the mid and low level bureaucracy - more professionalism, responsiveness, and respect for the rule of law. Your overall long-term school policy might suffer (brilliant kids in the same room as the slower ones because of austerity) but at least the system is fair (school admins don't take bribes to elevate the undeserving, school doesn't kick out unfavored minorities).
About the larger issues, like austerity vs stimulus, well, that issue isn't unique to democracy, every government has to handle it. Usually the democracy's solution will be more moderate than the non-democracy's, because they need to compromise at least a little to pass anything, and if the party in power's solution turns out to be lousy, at least they will be kicked out relatively quickly and painlessly - elections are set in advance, no revolution required.
Lastly, just one quibble, I don't know what you mean by democracy's trouble with remaining democratic. There are pretty much more democracies in the world now than ever, and even most authoritarian counties have at least some aspects or trappings of democracy. Pretty much the only major countries that have gotten significantly less democratic in the last 20 years or so are Russia, Thailand (hopefully temporary), and Venezuela, and some counties have made just as dramatic improvements, like Indonesia, Tunisia, and Nigeria.
@remaining democratic: That depends entirely on how you define democratic. You could easily argue that the US are a noble republic nowadays, with many of their presidents and candidates coming from the same families. It's argued in the more educated circles of Germany that Germany is to heavily controlled by the political parties, which goes even more so for the people in the political parties. Just recently a high ranking person from our biggest party (which Angela Merkel belongs to) has stated that they wont put people who arent pursuing the parties goals in all their points into leading positions (given, after they had difficulties to push another support package for Greece through the parliament mainly because people from the party didnt like it). That isnt democratic at all.
Another big point is the general lack of interest in politics, which makes democracies hard to sustain. I cant speak for the US or Canada, but at least in Germany the participation for Parliament votes has shrunken further and further. It's even worse for the German states, where it's not rare that only half of the population even vote.
On September 12 2015 10:05 Djzapz wrote:
I never meant to do the apology of authoritarian systems or to say that I was losing faith in democracy. In fact, it's the very opposite. I think democracy is the best system given my ideals, but it's one that stands to be improved upon, especially now where even some of the "best" and most consolidated democracies like Canada and the US and much of Europe are facing a crisis in that people are getting disillusioned with it. More and more, it seems like economic interests are silencing people, mostly indirectly but sometimes very directly. We can vote, but we don't because at the end of the day, money counts for too much in elections, politicians are bought, they often reach their seats and they "owe" some corporations for their victory. Big decisions don't seem to be taken for the greater good, or for the good of the people.
You bring up good points and those are all things that show how democracy, even when it's faltering, has a marked advantage over authoritarian regimes which explains how even despite all the scandals and corruption we're seeing in our countries, we still have a standard of living much higher than that of those regimes (which is a simple but largely accurate analysis).
Yet I don't mean to compare democracy against those regimes. I'm here looking at democracy and it has all these advantages, but it has this one glaring flaw, this one huge issue that prevents it from making some very important decisions rationally, and I'm wondering how you could institutionally make it better. Is democracy doomed to be forever held back by this? What's the solution?
And it's the question I'm throwing out there. How do we fix this? Does it even need fixing? Is it an inefficiency like any other that doesn't really matter? Does it lead to an eventual collapse due to an accumulation of bad decisions?
Fixing some of the issues are really simple on paper. Create an anti-corruption law, that puts politicians into prison if they ever receive a bigger sum of money (and keep it) from a company or a workplace at a company that benefited from one of their laws and you would be rid of most of the company based corruption.
The big problem is pushing those through, bc most politicians that could actually do that are getting paid by companies.
Tbh I think the entire re-election system needs to go, increase the number of years a ruler is ruler and get rid of stimuli for re-election. Ideally break the parties grip on the government (I like Turkey's idea where the ruler is supposed to be without party, despite it not working), and break the grip of companies and lobbies on the government. The government needs to be independent to make good decisions and the election system is only there to guarantee that the people who can make good decisions get there.
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I'm personally rather in favor of longer terms provided that the politician can't run for a second term, but this leads to certain other problems. For instance, if you have a 9 year term with no possibility of reelection, then it allows the politicians to slack off and not to care about the repercussions. Perhaps more importantly, it leads to a loss of institutional memory where the constant swaps will lead to some coherence in the administration of the public affairs. This can be mitigated by holding elections every X years (3 in the cases where terms last 9 years), where a third of the seats would go up in elections.
As for the idea to break the grip of companies and lobbies on the government, it's a nice ideal but I agree with you when you say that the issues are really simple on paper. You can't do that, and even if you could, you'd still have private interests making their way into the public sphere. The notion of governance is a bitch to deal with but it's a real thing. At this point, it's clear that the government has to deal with pressure from civil society, it's inescapable (and not necessarily undesirable, frankly). The problem is that everyone wants things and they want them fast, and everyone is complaining... And I can hardly blame them, I myself am pretty active on the local political scene.
I think you've brought up good points but nonetheless it's a complicated issue, and even if we had some pretty interesting integrated solution, we'd still have to fiddle with those rigid structures that can't even be bothered to change old electoral systems that no longer make sense and haven't for decades.
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To bad Canada doesn't have proportional representation (PR), because it really does make it a lot easier to start a new party and start getting elected. And getting a new party into parliament (whether provincial or national) is the best way to start changing things.
The commercial media have been a significant factor in limiting debate in the post-WW2 period, but I think now that we have the internet it will possible circumvent this to some extent. At least in countries that have PR. The major problem is not the voters voting for things they don't want (they do this a lot), it's about them not knowing what each party stands for and for this I mostly blame the media. This is one of the major factors in the decline in voter participation I think. Another, bigger, factor is that there is very little differentiation among the parties in what people actually care about which is chiefly economic issues.
I don't follow Canadian politics too closely but from what I can see I'm hopeful that PR will have a good chance of being implemented there soon.
As for "unaligned" leaders I really don't recommend it except in cases where those leaders are basically only there for "break glass in case of emergency" type situations - like Canada and most other constitutional monarchies.
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the government passed a special law that prevents teachers from striking
Wait what? Could you expand this, i would like to know more about what this is. For example can you now lose your job if you strike? go to jail?
Between that and the jobs act, which made it so that in my country you can fire an employee without a valid reason, its like being in 1899 all over again.
I don' t wanna word politics, but economically, the system is unsustainable because people conduct their lives that way. If we want more, we produce more waist, if we don' t re-use or recycle, we produce an eccess that serves in the negative.
Produce 10, consume 75, trow away 65. This is the individual that is not self-aware of how he materially lives. Produce 20, consume 35, trow away 15. This is what we should be looking at. In Canada there is the Valhalla movement i read about, and it seems to think along these lines.
Another reason why the economy is depressed, is not cause there is no money or riches, but that in the last 40 years the riches have been concentrated in few hands, while all the other people become more poor and the middle class dissapears. One sustainable future is to cut out those who concentrate these massive capitals. To do that is to reclaim the production cycle, to create and develop things ourselves once again. And this those not mean trow away our jobs and become farmers. it means to produce our ideas where we can and what we can.
http://www.instructables.com/id/11-Uses-for-a-wire-coat-hanger/
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On September 12 2015 15:49 Korakys wrote:
To bad Canada doesn't have proportional representation (PR), because it really does make it a lot easier to start a new party and start getting elected. And getting a new party into parliament (whether provincial or national) is the best way to start changing things.
The commercial media have been a significant factor in limiting debate in the post-WW2 period, but I think now that we have the internet it will possible circumvent this to some extent. At least in countries that have PR. The major problem is not the voters voting for things they don't want (they do this a lot), it's about them not knowing what each party stands for and for this I mostly blame the media. This is one of the major factors in the decline in voter participation I think. Another, bigger, factor is that there is very little differentiation among the parties in what people actually care about which is chiefly economic issues.
I don't follow Canadian politics too closely but from what I can see I'm hopeful that PR will have a good chance of being implemented there soon.
As for "unaligned" leaders I really don't recommend it except in cases where those leaders are basically only there for "break glass in case of emergency" type situations - like Canada and most other constitutional monarchies.
Proportional representation is rarely brought up at the federal level, but here in Quebec it is often raised and pretty much systematically dismissed by the party in power which benefited from the "first past the post" electoral system (as evidenced by the fact that they're in power).
That being said I'm not a huge fan of the PR because while it eliminated the massive disconnect between what the electorate wants and the representation, it also leads to some fairly funky governments with difficult cohesion, unless there's at least some culture of cooperation which I wouldn't assume to be true for Quebec (I mean, it's already a shit show...).
I could stand to go back to reading about voting systems but from my perspective the single transferable vote would offer both stability and would solve many of the problems of 1stPP. You don't completely solve representativity but by allowing to vote for a hierarchy of parties (where if your first choice is eliminated your vote is transfered to your second choice) allows people to vote for who they really want instead of voting strategically.
On September 12 2015 16:04 pebble444 wrote:Wait what? Could you expand this, i would like to know more about what this is. For example can you now lose your job if you strike? go to jail? Between that and the jobs act, which made it so that in my country you can fire an employee without a valid reason, its like being in 1899 all over again.
Public employees in Canada, at least in many cases, are susceptible to special laws to make them go back to work. They can strike, but for instance you may have seen the police in Montreal who work but they wear funky pants. University teachers can strike, but historically what happens is that after a few days the provincial government here will pass a special law which fines them for like $500/day if they don't go back to work and they'll fine the teacher associations $10000/day if they tell their members not to show up for work.
There is no such law that can be applied to workers in the private sector.
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The Canadian system of putting children through 4 years of mandatory drunkeness, partying and fornication after high school is worthless anyhow. In higher education we can learn a few things from the Germans.
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There's plenty of room to try various structural changes to how a democracy is set up. Things like voting systems, as you mentioned, have barely been explored in practice, despite numerous interesting prospects being available.
There's really very little experimentation in government design, people stick very heavily to the existing designs.
If more small scale trials of some of the many possibilities were done, we could find some that work well in practice and get a number of improvements to the overall system.
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On September 12 2015 11:08 Djzapz wrote:
I'm personally rather in favor of longer terms provided that the politician can't run for a second term, but this leads to certain other problems. For instance, if you have a 9 year term with no possibility of reelection, then it allows the politicians to slack off and not to care about the repercussions. Perhaps more importantly, it leads to a loss of institutional memory where the constant swaps will lead to some coherence in the administration of the public affairs. This can be mitigated by holding elections every X years (3 in the cases where terms last 9 years), where a third of the seats would go up in elections.
As for the idea to break the grip of companies and lobbies on the government, it's a nice ideal but I agree with you when you say that the issues are really simple on paper. You can't do that, and even if you could, you'd still have private interests making their way into the public sphere. The notion of governance is a bitch to deal with but it's a real thing. At this point, it's clear that the government has to deal with pressure from civil society, it's inescapable (and not necessarily undesirable, frankly). The problem is that everyone wants things and they want them fast, and everyone is complaining... And I can hardly blame them, I myself am pretty active on the local political scene.
I think you've brought up good points but nonetheless it's a complicated issue, and even if we had some pretty interesting integrated solution, we'd still have to fiddle with those rigid structures that can't even be bothered to change old electoral systems that no longer make sense and haven't for decades.
I think most of the time the people who push through and become ruler do so because they want it the most and are willing to sacrifice the most for it. I dont think slacking off after election is a big problem, at least here the chancellor doesnt make enough money to be worth the stuff he has to deal with. I see the problem in the fact that you cant get rid of retards and people trying to become dictators after half the time, which you can in re-election systems. Bad rulers just dont rule shorter than good rulers in no re-election systems.
Then again who gets re-elected mostly depends on how the media judges the ruler, not how good of an administrator/diplomat/wise man the ruler actually is (mass media on average has no clue). Which in turn "forces" good man to make bad decisions to get re-elected >.<
On September 13 2015 00:39 zlefin wrote:
There's plenty of room to try various structural changes to how a democracy is set up. Things like voting systems, as you mentioned, have barely been explored in practice, despite numerous interesting prospects being available.
There's really very little experimentation in government design, people stick very heavily to the existing designs.
If more small scale trials of some of the many possibilities were done, we could find some that work well in practice and get a number of improvements to the overall system.
Well the people that are in the position to push these changes through are the same people profiting from the old system. And they need to push it through with majorities (of people who profit from the old system as well), so good luck :/
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On September 13 2015 06:12 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2015 11:08 Djzapz wrote:
I'm personally rather in favor of longer terms provided that the politician can't run for a second term, but this leads to certain other problems. For instance, if you have a 9 year term with no possibility of reelection, then it allows the politicians to slack off and not to care about the repercussions. Perhaps more importantly, it leads to a loss of institutional memory where the constant swaps will lead to some coherence in the administration of the public affairs. This can be mitigated by holding elections every X years (3 in the cases where terms last 9 years), where a third of the seats would go up in elections.
As for the idea to break the grip of companies and lobbies on the government, it's a nice ideal but I agree with you when you say that the issues are really simple on paper. You can't do that, and even if you could, you'd still have private interests making their way into the public sphere. The notion of governance is a bitch to deal with but it's a real thing. At this point, it's clear that the government has to deal with pressure from civil society, it's inescapable (and not necessarily undesirable, frankly). The problem is that everyone wants things and they want them fast, and everyone is complaining... And I can hardly blame them, I myself am pretty active on the local political scene.
I think you've brought up good points but nonetheless it's a complicated issue, and even if we had some pretty interesting integrated solution, we'd still have to fiddle with those rigid structures that can't even be bothered to change old electoral systems that no longer make sense and haven't for decades. I think most of the time the people who push through and become ruler do so because they want it the most and are willing to sacrifice the most for it. I dont think slacking off after election is a big problem, at least here the chancellor doesnt make enough money to be worth the stuff he has to deal with. I see the problem in the fact that you cant get rid of retards and people trying to become dictators after half the time, which you can in re-election systems. Bad rulers just dont rule shorter than good rulers in no re-election systems. Then again who gets re-elected mostly depends on how the media judges the ruler, not how good of an administrator/diplomat/wise man the ruler actually is (mass media on average has no clue). Which in turn "forces" good man to make bad decisions to get re-elected >.<
But at the end of the day we're not talking about rulers necessarily, we're not just talking about leaders. We're talking about MPs who go sit in parliament and get bored of it. Here in Canada, we have 2 rooms in Parliament, the Senate and the House of Commons. The senate is not elected, the members are picked by the prime minister, and many of them were into politics before, now they're senators and they don't show up to work. They don't have to so they don't, and it's because they don't have to worry about being reelected.
Many MPs actually are like that in the house of commons too. They don't care so much, they show up to vote on the issues when their party say it's important to show up.
Plus slacking off doesn't mean just being lazy. When I said that they were slacking off, I referred to how rulers stop caring about what people think, since once elected they only partially need the people's approval. Reelection is good in a way because it forces politicians to respect peoples wants because if they don't they'll fail at being reelected, or they'll harm the party's chances in future elections. If they don't have to worry about reelection, then they can lie even more, they can fail to do anything about their electoral promises, and if people are mad then tough luck!
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Democracy only favors short term problem solving because that's what people in general favor. If they favored long term solutions then that would be the basis by which they'd elect someone or blamed current issues. You can see this in the way most people live their lives on a day to day basis.
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On September 13 2015 14:44 demonym wrote:
Democracy only favors short term problem solving because that's what people in general favor. If they favored long term solutions then that would be the basis by which they'd elect someone or blamed current issues. You can see this in the way most people live their lives on a day to day basis.
In general, isn't that because of instant gratification? With long-term solutions, I generally think of not having a good time in the near future, but it will hopefully pay off much later. With how long each term last, even if a politician honestly thought of looking far beyond his term, the people wouldn't think the same as you said.
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In general, isn't that because of instant gratification? With long-term solutions, I generally think of not having a good time in the near future, but it will hopefully pay off much later
Some of it is the inability to rationally think in the long-term, some of it is not being in a situation that permits them to think long-term and some of it is an unwillingness to even try to think about it.
The inability to rationally think in the long-term is often because they don't have the ability to remember much past a certain point (if you have a bad memory it's difficult to extrapolate into the future based off of your experiences).
Being in a situation that doesn't allow you to think about the future is usually because they're already struggling too much just to make it from one day to the next, they don't have the luxury to think ahead, right now is hard enough.
Usually people who are unwilling to think about the future are unwilling to do so because they think they think they won't be able to do anything about it anyways and they don't like how that makes them feel, which is hopeless.
I remember talking to my step-father about how things seem to be going downhill and he basically just said humans are a disease and it's ok if we die out so we should just grab what we can now while the good times last. I wish I was making that up but the more I asked around the more I began to see that similar attitudes are not that uncommon, that things are going to turn bad and we won't be able to do anything about it so just take what you can now.
There are also issues with thinking in terms of long-term versus short-term because as you mentioned it's usually a contrast of a bad immediate vs a good future and vice versa which is usually unrealistic anyways because it doesn't account for the limits of what one will be able to endure but is also wrong in that thinking ahead doesn't have to work that way. Decisions that can lead to a better future can also lead to a better present but thinking about just the future and just the present forces you to ignore one or the other which makes figuring out such ways harder.
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north korea has it right. go dictatorship!
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Thinking long-term is a presumption upon future generations, and assumes that we operate under a completely different ideology than we do. Romans whose proudest boast was that they have upheld the ways of their fathers we are not, nor can we readily believe in a succession of five-year plans which will advance us to a materialist nirvana. The collapse of religion, the failure of secular culture to deal with the fundamental problem of death means that short-term thinking is a psychological prop to the living, rather than a hinderance. Nor can we seek immortality through children in an age of progress, where children are perpetually encouraged to be ashamed of their parents.
The doctrines of liberty destroy orientation. The doctrines of equality destroy ambition. In the perpetual battle between reason and emotion, reason has defeated itself by insisting on its own abolutism, and has thereby reasoned itself into absurdity. Great rationalists are the most prone to emotional hysterias because otherwise they would be forced to face the chasm of their own nullity. Long-term thinkers are the most prone to short-term thinking, thereby proving the cosmic equilibrium of all things!
Try as I might, I cannot take the idea of political remedies seriously. These are personal problems writ large, and the options available to heroic civilisations are not available to us. The answer begins with fixing yourself. When you realise that most of the things you do are actually some form or other of short-term thinking, from indulging in a Triple Chocolate Sundae to posting on tl.net, you will begin to see that you cannot even master in yourself the problems you alledge to stand before society.
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EPT
