Re: Bad govt represents bad people?

[sw@tiac.net (Steve Witham)]

>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

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