Technology

I guess the main difference is that I think things are salvageable

To be honest, I think we are very ideologically aligned. I agree that government power is something that should be used with very precise care. Look at what happens for example when we introduce Pell Grants, giving lower income kids the opportunity to go to college.

That sounds great, right? Who doesn't support that? Well, I sure want poor kids to be afforded the opportunity to go to school.

But look at what actually happens. Now you have a whole new class of people with a sizable chunk of government money. The demand for college goes up. Tuition rates skyrocket. The few thousand you get from the Pell Grant is now meaningless and it counter intuitively costs you more even with the grant.

Who benefits? Not the kids. Not the working class. The college administrators.

Kamala was campaigning "taxes incentives for first time homeowners!" Great. Who is going to say to no to that, right? Support young families. Sure.

What would inevitably happen? Large increase in spending => large increase in price. So if they get a $10,000 tax credit but the houses are $15,000 more expensive- what's the difference? These are arbitrary numbers, obviously, and not borne out of some analysis.

But who would benefit? Not young families. Banks and land owners.

Government action, usually disguised as something to help is almost always going to be twisted to hurt average people.

But yes, I agree 100%. I rather like Chomsky's take on this. I'm not an anarchist but he has advocated before for a system where every single use of government power should be consistently and continually challenged. Every single time the government spends a dollar, it needs to be transparent and justified and there needs to be a way to challenge it.

The thing is, government spending is not inherently a bad thing. Government action sometimes is exactly what is needed. For example in an economic crisis, government stimulus can be enough to turn things around or at least ameliorate the situation for the working class.

But and the big but - and the but that basically had made me lose all faith in democracy over the last 10 years or so is the way you put it

But no, “drugs bad,” and the public wants to control “bad” things

Politicians do not do what is rational. They do what is popular. These are two separate things entirely. And even worse, they can modify what is popular with a variety of mechanisms. For a simple example- look at the death tax. You ask average Americans whether they support a death tax, they will say of course not. It sounds absurd, right?

If you call it an inheritance tax, all of a sudden majority of people support it.

So yeah, I think you're right in that we more or less align on what the ideal system should be but you still believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment and believe that egalitarianism and liberty is possible.

I think humanity is brutal and stupid by nature and we are bound to be ruled by people with strength. I think all government systems eventually deteriorate into fancy feudalism.

For a bit of an absurd statement- I think what we need to do is create a constitution that is very explicit. And then what we need to do is let an AI enforce it. Assuming the AI is objective and not able to be influenced, I think then and only then would we have a free society. And the irony is- we wouldn't be in control of it.

Maybe I'm just a pessimist about human nature. Don't misinterpret me, I consider myself a humanist. I like humans. I feel empathy for others. I want the best world possible for everyone.

But I think humans in a group are stupid. The crowd is like a locust swarm, destroying without thinking. It's sad