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

[William Flynn Wallace]

To an outsider it is obvious that the US should update its constitution.
But I guess that is not likely, is it?
anders

Oh?  What do you suggest?  The electoral college for one, I suppose.  But
that's rather esoteric for most people.

bill w

On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 1:45 AM, Anders <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> On 2016-06-05 00:03, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
>
> Still, trying to steer towards extropian themes: the way of handling
> disasters is to (1) avoid them happening, (2) make actions during the event
> to mitigate damage, and (3) have good recovery options. It might be
> interesting to analyse the problem of political systems going into
> headspins this way. anders
>
> Russia has been dysfunctional for nearly 100 years.  Surely they have
> tried to tweak the system many times, to no avail.  Why don't they change?
> Why don't Cuba and North Korea, seeing as how these countries are in
> permanent disaster?  Is it just that they are ruled by strongmen who
> control the military?
>
>
> 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?
>
> --
> Dr Anders Sandberg
> Future of Humanity Institute
> Oxford Martin School
> Oxford University
>
>
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