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Robin Hanson wrote an article recently on how his politics have drifted. For those not familiar with his he was one of the early rationalist adjacent that likely filters a lot of people here. As a GMU professor he blogged like the rest of their Econ department and marginal revolution which was much bigger for leading people to SSC. Also early intellectual promoter of prediction markets like in the ‘90s and use to co-blog with Hal Finney.
A few highlights: “ While it is okay to fiercely resist the immediate decline of a cherished value today, like say democracy or gender-equality, 3 top LLMs agree that is now taboo to explicitly work to help your culture persist, reproduce, and have continued influence centuries into the future.”
“ I’m not especially into liberty, democracy, legal due-process, or immigration, beyond their instrumental values in achieving other things.”
A lot of comments on cultural drift and risks with that. The second comment strikes me because I feel like I’ve been thinking about those issues a lot lately. And I feel like I too am moving to a political philosophy of common goodism and the other ideas are just means to achieve the good. Perhaps this is just the standard libertarian to fascism pipeline but I do think a lot of people are questioning whether America is still on a workable path. It’s easy to be a liberal-libertarian when society is broadly good/stable but in harder times more pragmatic ideas emerge.
Then he just comments on things everyone else has noticed - parasitic classes in big cities (often unions) just crushing QOL for the non-rich.
I use to read Hanson a lot, but I only read him a few times a year now. Some of his early insights turned out coming true. It’s interesting to me how minds that shared a lot of common thinking patterns end up developing similar conclusions today. Democracy, Liberty, due-process, and immigration were likely things I viewed as very positive a decade ago. Now I would likely consider them unimportant.
Hanson
The devil is always in the details. Democracy, freedom, and due process are abstract concepts, ending them won’t intrinsically cause any issues. But what concretely do you (or Hanson) propose to replace them, and how? For me, just what is enough for now, because I haven’t heard a good proposal yet.
Personally, I still hold “democracy is the
bestworst government except for all others that have been tried”. I’m not against dictatorship, if the dictator is competent and has a good successor strategy. But who does, and how do you get this person in charge and ensure they’re not overthrown?Likewise, the problem with taking away citizens’ freedom is that what’s done instead isn’t better. Communist governments were ultimately less productive and lost to capitalist ones. We already don’t have total freedom (because that’s impossible), and maybe we need more laws restricting more freedom, for example drug use and being a nuisance in public or to service workers. But what kind of restrictions are you really talking about? Criticizing leaders? Free speech? Then what do we do when leaders start making bad opinions and decisions (since, like everyone, they’re not perfect), going further and further astray like a stalling plane (with no one to correct them, how would they avoid this)?
You may argue we’re already going astray; but there are forums like these, my argument is if opposition was illegal things would degrade faster (and I’m optimistic there will eventually be a course correction in either scenario, but only the latter requires a revolution). You may point to China; but before today’s government, China suffered the “Great Leap Forward” which caused more proportional death than any democratically-caused disaster (at least that I’m aware of); it’s still suffering from centrally-planned failures like its housing; and what do you think will happen when Xi Jinping dies? I think Singapore is the strongest counter-argument; but seeing the War on Drugs and vast difference in culture, I don’t believe America (individualist and expressive) can reach their (collectivist and routine) stable equilibrium, nor any European nation for nation-specific reasons.
Lastly, the illusion of autonomy is important: it makes people happy and complicit, and permits extreme outliers which may be vital. For example, instead of explicitly limiting peoples’ calorie consumption, it would probably be better to just provide free GLP-1s and encourage them via propaganda (in this case outliers probably wouldn’t be vital, but they’d be few enough they’d negligibly affect public resources like healthcare, while appealing to fat enthusiasts). More generally, instead of officially eliminating basic values like democracy to massive resistance, enabling extreme failure modes, why not just manipulate people and use procedural tricks to achieve the same outcomes? I mean, most nations already do that today…
In fact, I speculate a reason people are disillusioned and ironically proposing authoritarian measures is because we live in unofficial creeping authoritarianism. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but especially without a good proposal, it hints that we shouldn’t accelerate into that path.
What if, instead, we propose and start implementing ways to restore unofficial liberty, democracy, and due process? (I threw myself into the immigration storm last week; I won’t suggest what to do here except not deport massive numbers of integrated citizens or decades-long immigrants, because explained in that thread, I doubt it can happen in a democracy with free press that remains a democracy with free press).
Here to deliver my periodic reminder that we do not live in "creeping" authoritarian, the vast majority of countries considered democracies went full totalitarian merely 6 years ago.
This may be a contributor to your specific problem, as again the vast majority of pro-immigration self-described (though I would say they're not) liberals supported this totalitarianism. They provide no explanation of why it's acceptable for the state to lock down everyone including immigrants for the greater good, yet it is unacceptable to deport immigrants for the greater good.
Now, some did oppose this (Hanson included) but even among that subset, vanishingly few were screaming from the rooftops about what was taking place, and treated the enormity of what was happening with the enormity of a response it deserved. And fewer still do.
Or to generalise to something that the average member of the public would find more relatable, governments demonstrated they have the power to just do things, so why can't they just do things about immigration too? Unlimited state power is already out the box. That it's too expensive, too hard, or violates limited government won't be accepted as an answer by the public until there is some sort of reckoning for 2020.
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Somewhere in the last 250 years, freedom became synonymous with democracy. Before the United States, freedom was considered to be attained when you were under the rule of the (relatively autonomous) lordship of one of your countrymen or clan. Tyranny was to be ruled by an outsider, who may set up puppet members of your tribe but whose commands were dictated by the foreigner.
Because democracy became synonymous with freedom, democracy is seen as an end in and of itself. But this is incorrect. Democracy is a means to good governance: to prosperity, well-being, and good order. If democracy is not providing good governance, democracy is no longer a reasonable means. It is the height of hubris to think that democracy is the final state of government. The world has seen city states, empires, democracies, monarchies, dictatorships. Additional governance structures will evolve, some of which will almost certainly improve on democracy.
For myself, I desire freedom. I desire the ability to walk my clean streets in safety. I want my neighbors to look and act like me, to believe in similar things, to hope in similar things. I want my children to grow up around adults who will seek to instill similar morals and myths. I want to be led by someone who genuinely has my best interests in mind, and not simply simpering for my vote. I want to be free of the tyranny of the election cycle.
I actually equate freedom with something completely different and it seems to be incompatible with modern state. I think freedom is to have taxation on level of 1 or 2% of GDP like in 1775 USA. I see it as ability to sell and purchase goods and services without constant oversight of taxman. I see it as being able to have contract without tyrannical book of regulations that are impossible to read withing my lifetime. In a sense of freedom, I think that the modern people are completely cucked and lulled into absolute egregious compliance.
Hence my last paragraph: I think the real issue isn’t that freedom (and democracy) are failing us, but that we’re losing freedom and democracy without realizing. Those who advocate for authoritarianism really want more freedom and power for themselves, which they’re more likely to end up with in a functional democracy (for example, to pass and enforce laws for decent neighborhoods).
To some extent a modern state has to be less free and some definitions of Democracy. The Commons are much bigger today and there are a lot more regulations that need to happen to make society work. And everything happening all at once to. Relate a modern economy is more complicated than any one person can track at once to vote so you have to outsource a lot of decision making.
1-2% of GDP tax rates are a thing of the past. It’s likely much smaller than we have now but 1-2% of gdp to state capacity wouldn’t work at modern living standard. You actually do need a FAA. Though the TSA and the rest of the parasitic class attached to it probably not. Someone has to coordinate the commons.
Like one example today is the skascraper that had structural issues in NYC and maybe might collapse. I think they have $700 million in it. A libertarian world I don’t think can deal with that coordination. You can wipe out the builders money but if it collapses it’s probably 10-40 in damages and then the builders just bankrupt.
Yes, to be clear I’m not against taxes or regulations.
I think the important part is that richer and more influential people and organizations should have strictly more taxes and compliance overhead (and not in the sense “both rich and poor can’t sleep under bridges”). Today we have situations where working-class citizens pay more taxes than rich locals via offshore tax havens, and small businesses suffer from unnecessarily difficult regulations (not protecting anyone) while big businesses fail audits then suffer less than it would take to pass them.
More generally: it’s important for everyone to contribute and compromise for society, the problem is when people asking/enforcing don’t evenly contribute and compromise themselves. I think growing lack of effort and honor within the working class should and would be fixed by seeing more effort and honor from their leaders.
Once everyone has to suffer evenly from laws regulations etc., they become more permissive, because everyone wants as much freedom as possible for the choices they want. Almost everyone agrees that (for example) murder is wrong and building safety is important, few would accept safety for living in a panopticon.
I think that this is feature and not a bug. For instance it is legally and financially high-risk situation to hire random bum to get him mow your lawn for cash. This simple interaction is covered by literally thousands of pages of regulation. You have tax liability, you have premises liability, you have equipment liability, you have environmental liability and million of other things. The system is designed that such a simple and age old interaction is basically impossible.
This is the litmus test of how tyrannical the government is. It basically forces local bum to begging, as he is incapable of getting regular job, not to even talk about being able to do the paperwork necessary to be a small business operator. And you as a customer cannot profit from this opportunity and you are forced to contract companies who have to finance all that regulation. Large corporation can utilize economy of scale, their operations can afford regulation compliance, which only incentivize them to lobby for more. Alternatively you just do it yourself, which in this tax and regulation environment seems to be more and more attractive, incentivizing autarkic economies.
On an intuitive level, the modern society especially in the west is absolutely unfree under pretext of safety.
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I desire freedom over democracy and realize they’re orthogonal, but in practice, I see no better system to guarantee everyone’s freedom.
How would you ensure the party in charge gives you clean streets and similar neighbors without accountability at least to yourself (e.g. by voting yourself)?
And of course everyone wants to be more free than others, so how would you ensure you’re on top? Personally, I’d do the usual: propose a system based on Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance which looks good enough to convince others but ensures I’m content. Most people are only convinced to join a system if they have some political influence, so to get enough support to put your system into power, usually it needs at least the illusion of democracy.
Case in point, my understanding is that most feudal lords abused their serfs. I’m sure it was better in small clans and pre-US American villages, but only because everyone knew each other, and more importantly an ordinary citizen could physically confront their leader(s), so they were still accountable.
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It's almost as if the cliche of conservatives being enamored extreme conformity is correct. I thought Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers were hyperbolic and insulting notions of what conservatives want. Maybe not?
"I want my neighbors to look and act like me" might mean automatons if you're egregiously uncharitable, but it's more likely to mean "I don't want the tyranny of the bottom decile, and actually I like a quiet neighborhood instead of morons blasting shitty music at 2AM."
People that don't want to walk clean streets in safety are just virtue signaling morons that deserve to be mugged, repeatedly, until they wise up and stop being doormats that make everyone's lives worse.
This is a pretty uncharitable take accusing someone else of an uncharitable take. "I want my neighbors to look and act like me" comes off as I want my neighbors to be my same race, and socioeconomic status, go to the same church, and believe in the same creeds as me. That is conformist, extreme might be hyperbole but it is undoubtedly a conformist opinion on the level that conservative often decry when assigned by outside interlocutors.
"I enjoy having a distinct culture of my own" is hardly the same as being the Stepfords or actual aliens! These are not even in the same realm of degrees of uncharitability.
I didn't say it's not conformist, but neither did they! They accused conservatives of being fucking BRAINWASHED AUTOMATONS. Come on. This is absurd.
Also, progressives kick anyone out of their coalition that doesn't agree on like two topics. They are equally if not more conformist, just with funnier hair colors.
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But is the problem here democracy?
I’m sure most people want quiet, clean, safe neighborhoods. Even hardcore leftists become tough on public obnoxiousness and crime when it directly affects them. It’s possible to pass laws and fund police to enforce them. Some neighborhoods already do.
Why haven’t most places done this? Honestly, it confuses me. Maybe the incentives that select people to run for office and win select against those that target obvious issues in favor of culture war ones. Still, I haven’t seen any evidence that the issue is democracy or would go away in another form of government. It may be enough to figure out whatever the (democratic) places that manage to be quiet, clean, and safe do.
Democracy as an Ideal Form, no. Democracy as it exists in the real world, yes.
Not be large cities?
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I think most people would prefer clean streets and nice things versus whatever freedom means.
Isn’t that what Heaven is suppose to be? Ruled by a dictator but nice things?
A dictator who also occasionally sends people to Eternal Tortureland.
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You replace them with what they replaced: republicanism. That means layers of representation, and it means not everyone gets to vote.
The amendments 14-19+24+26, where 14/15/19/24/26 all expand voters indiscriminately, and 16/18 are centralizing authority and control, with a special place in hell for 17 which allowed the fedgov to fully control the states.
The people who vote need to have a stake before they are allowed to vote, other wise they will just vote themselves other people's money, and in the case of immigrants, all of their cousins be allowed to become voters, too, so the whole clan can vote themselves other people's money.
Democracy is not the solution, it is the problem. If you have a solution to the problem of voting yourself other people's money, then I'm glad to hear it, but it's the obvious consequence of expanding the franchise in misguided worship of Demos.
Then the problem becomes, who gets to vote and how do you decide?
Non-citizen immigrants already shouldn’t be voting. Children of immigrants, maybe if they have ties to their origin country, but otherwise they have no less of a stake in their host country than anyone else.
The median voter will vote for themselves to have other people’s money, unless the selection process is very careful and has a way to prevent corruption (which seems unlikely because the selfless voters will be taken advantage of by definition; it must prevent their selflessness from being misallocated to parasites). Even when voters benefit someone else, they’re still benefiting themselves, just next prioritizing who they prefer over who they don’t: e.g. when high-ranking Democrats support immigrants over ordinary citizens, they still put themselves first. I think it’s more important to figure out why the under-prioritized group (ordinary citizens)’s votes aren’t working to keep their money and fix that; if you only deprive a different group of votes, they may still be under-prioritized (e.g. Democrats may redirect money from immigrants to citizens they think will vote Democrat, but they’ll give no more to citizens they think will vote Republican).
Also, how do you divide the layers? In the US gerrymandering (and FPTP) have locked Congress from doing anything and entrenched ideologically extreme candidates. But I think this easier and something simple would be good enough like: (pick n) 1 candidate for n-2n people and each candidate has vote power proportional to how many they represent.
This becomes an easier problem to solve if you permit multiple votes per person. Then you could, e.g., divide the total income tax collected by the number of registered voters, and give each voter a number of votes equal to their shares of taxes paid, rounding up, with a minimum of one and a maximum of, say, 10. Rough figures put that share at about $15,000, so for every $15,000 of federal income taxes paid, you get an extra vote, up to 10, which would correspond to an income of around $500K. This would weight the franchise in favor of those with skin in the game without giving wildly disproportionate power to the ultra-wealthy. (This would also have the side benefit of incentivizing cleaning up voter roles, to decrease the denominator of the income contribution and raise the price of additional votes for the wealthy).
There are issues with this.
And even if you just count taxes paid and don't count services received, many of the issues still apply; for instance, the government can make you pay the equivalent of taxes by forcing you to spend the money yourself, or forcing a company to spend it (and then the company passes along the cost to you). Or the government can manipulate "who pays the taxes" through accounting tricks (like whether a stay at home spouse files jointly).
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I think this system makes a underclass strike or revolution more likely, but maybe not, looking at the current system where everyone’s vote counts only in a weak official sense.
The bigger problem with it is that the ruling party can entrench themselves by making it easier for supporters and harder for opposers to earn money. How would you prevent that?
Adding +1 vote for each child under 18 would also create good incentives and add balancing power to those who choose family over income. I think the problem you describe isn't too large a problem, as market forces would be constantly fighting against it.
Would they? The government controls the market. They don’t have to completely disenfranchise the opposition to maintain a supermajority: just tip the scales so for example the bottom 25% in income (unexceptional) supporter is much richer than the top 25% (unexceptional) opposer.
I think this is a great idea even today, because governments aren’t prioritizing young people enough, it appeals to both sides (conservatives = more children, liberals = empowering women), and has a decent-sounding justification (the baby deserves representation, and the mother usually cares about them, so she’ll vote in their interest).
But I doubt it would offset the imbalance from giving richer people more votes: most people prefer income over votes since it benefits them more directly, so those having more children would be the rich people (with enough income to raise them in living conditions they consider decent, like today).
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There is no utopia. There will always be problems. I would rather have those problems you described than the ones we have today.
They absolutely have less stake in the host country, it's absurd to say otherwise. The very fact of having a backup means you have less at stake.
Virginia decides who votes in Virginia. Texas decides who votes in Texas. And so on in that fashion.
In multiple generations they won’t have a backup, few countries permit great-grandchildren to remigrate.
But even immigrants themselves, if their origin country hates them or is a true shithole, and they can prove this (e.g. they’re an activist), they have no backup, and credible reason to have negative allegiance towards it.
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Truer words have never been said.
I don’t believe this is true in all environments. It is better for European societies, but a lot of other areas seem better with other systems. The Monarchy has worked well for the Saudis. Africa hasn’t been great with Democracy or much of Latam.
It’s not the overwhelming thinv that Capitalism has had over communism.
Democracy has been less bad for Africa than the actually existing alternatives, which are Soviet-style communism and military juntas. There is an open question about whether British colonialism was better, but it isn't clear if Britain still produces competent colonialists.
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Locke for the West, Hobbes for the Global South.
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I actually forgot the last part: “others that have been tried”.
Maybe in the future we’ll have a better government run by and/or with the assistance of AI. But not today: LLMs are too suggestible, so in practice I’m confident it would be hijacked by humans.
Well, the joke was that the original quote says "...the worst..."
And this is why I don’t speak much publicly. “I’m sorry that happened, your feelings are completely unjustified…wait wait I mean justified, sorry again, sometimes I get mixed up you know”.
I’m curious how much other people think (or write or say) the opposite word without realizing. For me it’s frequent: I recall several earlier cases, usually when speaking. I think it’s interesting, a glitch in the opaque process that is human thinking.
Mine is getting the relationship between things backwards. It's indistinguishable from yours when it's like "1 is more than 2", but very different when it's "Alice is Bob's brother".
I also do that: “Russia should be allowed to defend itself from Ukraine…wait, I mean the other way, Ukraine from Russia”
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All the fucking time (though the substance might be a bit different — often it’s a phrase rather than a word).
In recent years I’ve started analogising it to my Wernicke’s area throwing an LLM hallucination.
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The only dictator I would be comfortable with is myself, and given that a) that cannot be guaranteed, and b) would be a terrible idea, am therefore against a dictatorship.
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