[ExI] hypocrisy?

[William Flynn Wallace]

Ben, you have an overlap in your post.  Politicians are low and so are
lawyers.  Of course the percentage of politicians in legislatures and
Congress that are lawyers must be pretty high.  That is a major reason in
my opinion that they just can't compromise.  Everyone is an enemy trying to
stifle one's efforts at passing legislation.  I have no idea how to get rid
of the confrontational nature of our governments.  It's all about money
because they have the sole authority to spend it, and money is power.  And
who doesn't want power?  Someone suggested awhile back that all elected
politicians should be multimillionaires or better, so that could take a bit
of the personal accumulation of money out of the process.  I think a lot of
the members of Congress are millionaires aspiring to be billionaires, which
is why they get friendly with real billionaires who can donate campaign
money and maybe pass along some investment tips.

So it's 'follow the money' - business as usual.  Probably can't be fixed.
bill w

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:27 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 24/12/2020 18:37, bill w wrote:
>
> Ben, I have long wondered if politics is a high profession or a low one.
> I think it can be and we have some good people - who are greatly
> outnumbered by the corrupt ones.   bill w
>
>
> Do you take the aphorism "power corrupts,.. etc." seriously? I do. Any
> serious political system should take as an axiom that people or groups in a
> position of power will abuse that power if they can, and have built-in
> safeguards against it. We're a long way from that.
>
> I've known precisely one principled politician, someone who genuinely
> (afaik) wanted to do good rather than just gain power or feather their own
> nest. They didn't last long. I can't say whether that was because they
> weren't very good at it, or because the system works against such people,
> but I have my suspicions. They gave it up with the stated reason that they
> realised they weren't getting anywhere and never would.
>
> I have no doubts that politics is one of the lowest professions there is,
> if not the lowest of all*. I would rate it even lower than the legal
> profession or journalism. If that's not damning, I don't know what is.
>
> * I'm not counting religious posts here, of course.
>
> --
> Ben Zaiboc
>
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