Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Sat, 7 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 07/12/2024 17:24, D wrote:

It would hardly be the first time in human history that we go through some kind of dark age, only to come out of it and eventually pick up speed towards new highs.
 I think perhaps the future consists of multi-polar, virtual communities, hiding in plain sight. The wokists do their thing, crash a society or two, get thrown out, things start to improve, until the next group comes along, generating an anti-group and so on.

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A quick glance at the 'iron law of oligarchy' is revealing.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

Thank you, very interesting. I think in todays world, if you widen the concept of oligarchy to mean the "political class" is not far off the mark. We have politicians who have never been anything else, and the political office sometimes (or the job at least) is going from father to son for generations.
I have often suggested that democracy should be reformed, so that you are only allowed one term of office in the public sector, and that's it. In addition to that, the salary of the job should be the average of the country, and should have as a requirement to speak english and have an academic degree.
The idea is to rule out stupid people, to stop people from accumulating a network and power base from hanging around the public sector for decades, and to ban people who are in it for the money.
I also like the greek way of assigning offices by lottery, and (if we insist on taxes) that only people who pay into the system, have any say about the system.
I predict that no current politician would ever dream of changing the system in that way. ;)

 Meanwhile, in cyberspace, all the cool kids gather, learn, help each other out.
 

Or get cancelled because their views represent a threat to the established elites.

Ohh... you are talking about the internet! I'm talking about the freenet! ;)
Jokes aside, the regular internet is more or less dead, and is just a tool for crowd control.
I find it fascinating that small slivers of freedom exist such as usenet, mastodon and private mailinglists and chat servers.

Of course, since we have about 190+ countries or so, some will be more successful than others, and the interesting thing there is if they will be pressured by the failing ones to submit and share their wealth or if they will manage to somehow stay independent. I think the size of them would determine the outcome. Monaco and Liechtenstein have been able to survive longer than some modern european democracies, so it is not impossible, although difficult.

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One of the great reasons I dislike the European Union is precisely because it seeks to impose, by force, a monolithic 'European culture' whereas in times of crisis, the last thing you want is to  be on a ship with no watertight doors - if the ship gets holed, down we all go.

This is true! Let a 100 governance system blossom, and let's see which ones are successful. My bet is on the market being the most ingenious and best system of managing scarce resources, ever invented. So far, it seems to be in the lead. ;)

We don't know the right answers, we have to experiment. And some experiments end in failure. Communism ended in failure.
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But why then are we so keen  to reintroduce it?

Don't ask me. It is one of the tragedies of our current day and age. Maybe Milei will manage to pull a miracle out of Argentina and show the world what it has forgotten? That markets and liberty works.