[ExI] political disaster was: request to tone down politics

[BillK]

On 5 June 2016 at 07:45, Anders wrote:
> Blaming political ideology does not work as an explanation, since they were
> not exactly in a great state before shifting to socialism (Russia a
> collapsing monarchy, Cuba an authoritarian dictatorship, North Korea
> occupied by the Japanese and Soviet Union). Plus, other basket cases like
> Haiti has never been socialist.
>
> Now, I know political science has a fair bit of knowledge and theory about
> why dysfunction tends to run deep. One clear issue is that institutions tend
> to be weak and untrustworthy, the incentives for rulers and ruled are such
> that corruption and distrust (or even outright theft) becomes rational. Some
> failure modes involve tribalist politics, making joint government hard.
>
> To an outsider it is obvious that the US should update its constitution. But
> I guess that is not likely, is it?
>



To another outsider, :)  the US Constitution seems to be used in much
the same way as the Bible.
Ignore the bits you don't like, or interpret it in a convoluted way to
make it say what you want it to say. You can also claim that procedure
X is not mentioned in the Constitution, so must be allowable. If all
that fails, still do what you want to do and hope you don't get caught
out. Owning the legal system helps as well.

BillK