<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">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.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">So it's 'follow the money' - business as usual. Probably can't be fixed. bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 5:27 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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On 24/12/2020 18:37, bill w wrote:<br>
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<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)">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</div>
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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
* I'm not counting religious posts here, of course.<br>
<pre cols="72">--
Ben Zaiboc</pre>
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