Re: Bad govt represents bad people?

[jkreznar@ininx.com (John E. Kreznar)]

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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.

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