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Book Club Redux
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@ADreamOfLiberty
@WyIted
Tell me what you think of this argument?
(just listen to that one essay on corruption)
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@Greyparrot
On limiting to single terms: Not really getting to the heart of the problem. It simply shifts the window of corruption to before an election, which in theory is a disadvantage to corruptors since may have to guess which candidate might win. In reality though they will simply approach them all, and in heavy corruption they'll be part of a cabal that routes partners to major party nominations.
Paying members of congress 10 million per year: Again, it mitigates potential corruption. However it also creates new causes of corruption. When being elected has such rewards there will be plenty who seek to win merely to be paid and they say 1/3 of people will kill for a million dollars.
The key to getting people to behave well is to motivate them to behave well with their own self-interest. That's actually a point against having a single term. Relection gives politicians a reason to stay popular instead of just walking the line of corruption openly or having some other bizarre agenda.
Carrot or the stick. Either find a way to make corruption risky, pay peanuts, or outbid the corruption. Towards that end imagine something like: You only get one term, and you don't get most of the money unless the majority votes that you did a good job at the end of your single term. Or make it continuous so that the more people who approve of your job the higher the payout.
That of course relies on the premise that public approval is the opposite of corruption, and that is not always the case. There is no substitute for sound moral analysis and the way to integrate that into government is via bills of rights which need to be much more broad, binding, and final.
Money is not the only thing that corrupts, power corrupts: Absolutely true, and too often ignored. Money only motivates people because it is economic power. The power to give you a vacation, to spend more time with your family, to help the homeless near your house. Power isn't good or evil, but it feels good whether you use it for good or evil and nobody wants less.
People who see that there are a thousand overseas US military bases and think it should be 2000 don't view themselves as corrupt, but they are dangerous.
We don't need old money or useless people: Insofar as it makes sense to limit the pool to a certain kind of economic behavior I think we would see significant improvement in the quality of our government if we did limit candidates to "self made men". People who seriously increased their assets since turning 18. Say +500% with a minimum of a million. This requirement would exclude Biden, however Trump would easily qualify even at the left-tribes suspect evaluations of $3B net worth / $60M inheritance.
The road to Utopia is the road to Hell: I have been accused of being a utopian thinker and not without cause. I would disagree with this statement in general framing. I would point out that if things keep getting worse, maybe you're not on the road to utopia. Communists, fascists, nazis, John Locke, Adam Smith, Voltaire, they all had their theories about how things will work and how they ought to work to make things better.
The difference is that when you try a little bit of communism, fascism, or nazism things get a lot worse and when you try a little bit of John Locke, Adam Smith, Voltaire things get a bit better (you know, like having people not stave, ending slavery, and industrial revolutions).
I have a utopian vision, and I even think there would be band-aids that need to be ripped off to get there quickly; but what I definitely don't claim is that partial progress towards the ideal would accompany an average negative slope in quality of life or individual justice. If the theory is right then the closer you get the better things will be. No leaps of faith required.
Paying members of congress 10 million per year: Again, it mitigates potential corruption. However it also creates new causes of corruption. When being elected has such rewards there will be plenty who seek to win merely to be paid and they say 1/3 of people will kill for a million dollars.The key to getting people to behave well is to motivate them to behave well with their own self-interest.
Wouldn't having something at stake such as a 10 million dollar job force those officeholders to guard against the vast amount of honest competition for that job?
As it stands, the only competition for those underfunded jobs are those who can successfully form corrupt ties that make those jobs worth it in their "self-interest"
If it's a choice between the tax-payer paying a Senator 10 million dollars or a defense contractor, knowing that they WILL eventually get compensated, that's a no-brainer. It also provides a new risk/reward calculus for Senators when deciding to take corrupt money or not. I made a thread before about this saying if you want CEO type people in the government, you need to provide equal compensation.
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@Greyparrot
As it stands, the only competition for those underfunded jobs are those who can successfully form corrupt ties that make those jobs worth it in their "self-interest"
Well, there are some principled people but it appears rare.
Wouldn't having something at stake such as a 10 million dollar job force those officeholders to guard against the vast amount of honest competition for that job?
There would be more competition, but the two party system is a powerful filter. Most candidates remain obscure without support from within party hierarchy.
The only difference I see here is that the corrupt private entities wouldn't have to jump through hoops to pay bribes. See:
Now:
Evil Inc. (A local branch of the deep state) Hey Bob, if you run for office we'll donate to your campaign and pull strings so you have a good chance of winning. All you have to do is vote our way sometimes.
Bob: What do I get out of it?
Evil Inc. *sigh* fine, we can arrange to have your family members get easy absurdly high paying jobs, give you insider trading information, buy your sons art, and maybe some direct cash if we can hide it.
After:
Evil Inc. (A local branch of the deep state) Hey Bob, if you run for office we'll donate to your campaign and pull strings so you have a good chance of winning. All you have to do is vote our way sometimes.
Bob: So you'll get me a job that pays $10mil and all I have to do is vote your way? Sign me up (wrings hands evily)
Evil Inc. In case your thinking about double crossing us, we'll just leak this arrangement. (Also double crossing is possible currently too)
There is still a corrupt motivation: get in office, and still a corrupting agenda: vote X way. All that changes is that the office itself becomes sufficient motivation to enter the corrupt deal.
It also provides a new risk/reward calculus for Senators when deciding to take corrupt money or not.
Yes it shifts that curve to the impediment of corruption. I agree.
I just can't get excited about it with the glaring error being that the senator can steal money. So long as that is happening someone will find a way to make it worth his while even if they have to buy him out before he's elected.
I made a thread before about this saying if you want CEO type people in the government, you need to provide equal compensation.
Well that makes sense in the context of government projects with resources and goals. What lawmakers should be concerning themselves with is justice, not economics. The separation of economics and law is a necessary step on the road to my utopia BTW.
I don't want project managing senators. I want project managing project managers and I want savy investors to be the ones to help the public evaluate the feasibility of different plans for government action.
Of course they should be compensated in proportion to their success and if government (the people) can't bring themselves to offer competitive compensation then they obviously don't care about their money. They'll learn, they just need to be given the reigns for a while.
Are you just hinting that this video has to do with Democrats?
Lol.
Some of these controversies he brings up I completely forgot about .
Here is one that he mentions that I agreed with when I was a brain dead liberal.
He mentioned that liberals wanted to treat terrorists like criminals and not enemies of the state and actually go over to Iran and start arresting Al queda and bringing them to the United States for trial. It is embarrassing that I believed that
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@WyIted
Lots of people believed the government wouldn't target their own civilians as enemies of the state. There was really no way Sowell could have predicted a time when the political parties sought to openly jail each other's oppositions. Who could have possibly known Obama's policies to bring foreign terrorists to a Federal Court was just priming the people for a time when the Federal Courts would be hauling in "domestic terrorists"
Magnus Carlson couldn't have seen that far ahead.
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@Greyparrot
I think pat Buchanon did. I wanted to suggest one of his books, but only death of the west is available on youtube.
I am 2 hours into the book. I wanted to just listen one hour at a time instead of all at once for the Sowell book just so I can digest what he is saying.
I remember these arguments he is rebutting in hour 2. Not all from the opposite angle. It was a time ever I was moving from being a liberal to a libertarian so kind of a I'm a Flux phase.
I can say though that I was fully fascist as a liberal and I don't even think me as a liberal could stomach the modern democratic party because thy went beyond how fascist even I was.
I wanted to ban cigarettes for example. Just an outright ban, fuck your freedoms. I would have wanted to ban guns entirely. I was opposed to abortion even as a liberal. I was like it's one thing to take somebody's freedom for heir own good but murder is a step too far.
Yeah so as I was becoming more liberal and less of a fascist liberal I remember Maki g arguments that we need to arrest terrorists that we should treat them gently when in prison and I would have also advocated for just disbanding our nuclear capabilities. I really wish somebody would have given me this book when I was in that phase embarrassing myself