non_radical_centrist
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User ID: 1327
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I agree, especially in practice that's probably how you'd do it instead of slicing a country up into radically different country types. But I think some division to do experiments would be good still, for when X and Y both have small changes to implement but in opposite directions.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
https://josephheath.substack.com/p/a-critical-theory-of-or-for-america
I think Canada is moving to build more housing, despite Trudeau's lip service to protecting housing prices. There's just a delay between realizing there's a crisis and actually getting housing built.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I admittedly underestimated the amount of continuing Irish terrorism then. I would still predict that the amount of continuing Palestinian terrorism after any Ireland-like peace deal would be far greater and at a level that would make decreasing tensions impossible.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
The two problems I see there is a) figuring out who exactly is virtuous and wise, and b) protecting the state from the virtuous and wise making well intentioned mistakes. As I laid out, something like socialism can seem quite appealing even to a wise and virtuous person, but have disastrous consequences.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
What is really the best way for a government to decide policy?
Imagine you’re the absolute monarch of a country in an alternate world that’s somewhat similar to 18th century Europe. You have just inherited the throne from your father who passed away, and have the authority to implement whatever changes you want. The peasants and the nobles and the military are all feeling happy after a couple decades of good harvests and no plague so there will not be any resistance to what’s seen as your divine mandate to rule, for the short term at least.
For the past couple centuries your country has been Mercantilist, with policies like heavy tariffs and state granted monopolies, both to raise revenue for the state and to protect domestic industry against your international rivals. There are also policies like price caps on bread to help the people and make sure they don’t starve. The state spends most of its revenue on its military for national defense, but also spends a substantial fraction on the construction of roads, plumbing, and grand monuments. Lots of people have complaints about poor service and high prices from the monopolies, and get upset at occasional bread shortages. A lot of people would like to participate in the skilled trades like smithing or woodworking but because there’s such limited economic activity and because guilds have a monopoly on such positions most people are subsistence farmers. Overall people are mostly content with the system because they don’t know anything else and with the recent decades being fairly fortunate there’s never been a major failure of the system. All the other significant countries in the world that you know of follow the same model, and you don’t have any good or reliable records of how any historical systems might’ve worked.
You’re an ethical ruler who wants the best for your people, and are considering how to go about some changes to make things better. A couple of scholars have come to beseech you to make major changes to the system, based on their theoretical ideas that they’ve come to from reasoning on first principles. Since there are no records of alternative systems to do empirical research on, all their ideas are purely theoretical. One proposes what we’d call laissez-faire economics and libertarianism, to dismantle the state monopolies and tariffs and price caps and guild system, and to keep only a minimal sales tax necessary to fund a military for national defense and maybe a few other issues of national interest such as road building and education. They say that the people exercising their self-interest will result in more of what’s needed most, and distribute goods and services to those who need them the most. It will also result in competition that ensures the cream rises to the top. It all sounds very convincing and with no academic background yourself, it sounds very plausible it would make life much better.
The other scholar proposes something very similar to what we’d call socialism, saying that the nobles and wealthy merchants are exploiting the working classes. This scholar tells you about the labour theory of value, that all added value beyond what’s found in the natural world comes from people labouring to turn natural resources into goods people want, or labouring to provide services. That nobles and wealthy merchants only have such large amounts of wealth by exploiting labour and skimming that value by charging more when selling the goods and services than they pay their labour. The academic tells you that all workers should own their means of production, such that everyone working in a guild workshop should mutually own the workshop and divide all profits between themselves, and the same for all peasants working a piece of farmland, and the same for all other economic activity. They say that not only will this be more just, giving workers the fruits of their own labour instead of it being drained away by a parasitic upper class, it will also greatly increase economic productivity because people will be focused on producing what’s really needed and production can be centrally organized based on what’s rationally needed instead of what’s merely profitable for the parasitic class. They say that without competing firms each wasting resources on secret research or trying to out-advertise each other, resources can be cooperatively spent on stuff that is actually useful to society. This academic also sounds like their theory will very plausibly make life better for everyone.
How do you decide which policy to undertake? Today, outside the hypothetical and knowing what I know now from empirical results of stuff like the USSR’s failure, I would strongly support the libertarian side if I was the monarch. Even if you’re a socialist and believe the empirical record shows the opposite for whatever reason, I think this thought experiment still applies, since you have the same problem of trying to figure out how to make the government arrive at the correct decision. How do you decide on such a big decision with such limited evidence of what’s actually better? If you just stick with Chesterton’s Fence and don’t make any big change, you’re stuck with Mercantilism, which is arguably worse than either the alternatives. If you embrace democracy and let the people decide, either in a direct democracy referendum or with representatives in a Congress or Parliament, they will quite plausibly make the wrong decision, and the people will make life worse for themselves. If your outsource your decision to “the experts” and try to be meritocratic, it’s also quite plausible “the experts” will be just straight wrong, since experts have their own biases and limited evidence to work from. I’m a fan of prediction markets and futarchy, but those can come to the wrong decision too- if they say one option has a 90% of being better, then you could always land on the 10% chance, or the people predicting could just be miscalibrated, or you could have asked it the wrong question like “What option will raise GDP more” instead of “What option will raise GDP per capita more”.
I think you’d have to be willing to run active experiments in governance and economic structure to determine the best outcomes. Like you assign 1/3 of the country to be libertarian, 1/3 to be socialist, and 1/3 to stay mercantilist, and you wait some period of time to see which turns out the best. But that has its own issues, namely that you’re quite possibly ruining many people’s livelihoods for the sake of an experiment. It’d be very tempting to just go ahead and give everyone your best guess of what’s the best outcome. But I think that would be wrong, because it would have such extreme consequences if you guess wrong. Even just running the national experiment for a short period wouldn’t be enough, because it may take some years for something like socialism to show its cracks. People under socialism may continue to work hard for some years because they’ve always been used to working hard, it may be some years before technology and consumer preference shifts in a way a central planner can’t predict, they may be able to cover gaps with debt financing for years only to enter a crisis when they enter a downturn and can’t get anymore loans. There could be a similar situation where libertarianism appears to go strong for several years before collapsing into corruption. Or perhaps one or both systems would need to take some time to ramp up, and for the first few years appear to have worse outcomes than Mercantilism.
I think, both to be morally just and in order to view people’s true preferences, you need to always ensure freedom of movement. Beyond that, you should divide the country into portions, as fairly as you can, and run different theoretical political/economic models in the different portions. If one model appears to be doing better, perhaps expand its borders, but don’t shut down weaker models entirely, since they might just need time to ramp up, and any truly bad consequences are mitigated by people being always allowed to move away if they need to. Which models to actually use should be decided using prediction markets- ensuring that anyone making those decisions has some skin in the game, and that if they consistently make good or bad predictions about outcomes, that record is tracked. The invention of models can be left to academics, or anyone else, theorizing, and if it gets enough backers then those backers can bet it up on the prediction market as worth trying. What exact question should be used to measure success I'm not sure of, but probably something could be come up with that captures the concept of "Is this theoretical system worth trying out".
Prediction market FAQ for anyone unfamiliar with the concept: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Most peoples are able to achieve 100% peace. Maybe not 100% agreement, but 100% willingness not to join partisan terrorist groups when they lose the vote. I don't think Palestinians would, I think at least 0.1% would commit terrorist attacks in a way most peoples wouldn't. And unlike other peoples such as the Irish, just being given their own state and some concessions wouldn't be enough to mollify them, I think they'd keep doing it until they controlled all of Israel/Palestine.
I think that 100% peace would never happen either. I also think Palestine will never defeat Israel militarily either, that if they did it'd be just as big of a humanitarian crisis, and keeping this miserable status quo for the next centuries isn't the best was can do. That's why I think the best outcome would be a refugee process where Palestinians officially don't get the right of return, and are relocated to other countries. Hell, I think it'd be cheaper for a lot of places if there was some international cooperation to build the Palestinians a nice artificial island they can live on far way from Israel.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I've been more convinced by Richard Hanania.
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/israel-must-crush-palestinian-hopes
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-palestine-cant-deliver-peace
The tl;dr of those two pieces is that first, Palestinians really, really hate Israelis, even more than Nazis hated Jews, and the conflict will not be able to be diplomatically resolved. And second, even if through a mass PR campaign and enormous concessions Israel managed to get 99.9% Palestinians to accept true peace in the form of either a one or two state solution, just .1% of Palestinians sticking with Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be thousands of active terrorists, which is unacceptable to Israel.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I just finished The Forever War. I thought it was interesting but ultimately worse than Starship Troopers. It was far too cynical in my opinion.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I think any long form writing like that is fine to post in the Culture War thread, and that's probably where you'll get the most serious responses if you want some critical analysis of your reasoning skills. I think this community is tight enough we don't need to be rigid about "ONLY culture war in the culture war thread!!"
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Do any other languages have a swear like the n-word, where there's one taboo word that's far more taboo than any other? Even other slurs like cunt, jap, or faggot, while more taboo than fuck or shit, aren't on the level of nigger
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I think most published series have a lot cut by editors to keep pacing tight. Serials obviously don't do that. Worth the Candle and Worm, another famously long web serial that iirc is also about 1.7 million, definitely suffer in my opinion from significant sections that probably could be largely cut and have any plot progress moved into brief sections within other arcs.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Very likely that's a portion of it.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
And also have a system where if the legislature ignores the bill entirely or can't come to a consensus on it then the court publicly admonishes them for being incompetent
I don't think that'd actually do anything, both sides would just blame the opposing side for being partisan in refusing to update the law to their own preference.
A system I've seen casually proposed that's somewhat related that I like the sound of that for every law on the books, some legislater needs to take responsibility for it and say "That's my law", and at any time that legislater has the power to repeal the law if no one else is willing to step up and claim responsibility for it. That way if there's an outdated law, it gets repealed automatically when the legislater leaves office if no one's willing to take it up. And every legislater needs to think carefully about the laws they take responsibility for, because if it causes some big problem, the blame will be on them personally.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I forgot about the method I like for that. For that, I prefer a system like reddit gold. Let people spend money(or some other form of limited rating) on their favourite works. I really miss the days of reddit silver, gold, platinum, it was great for spotting under rated works on /r/anime and /r/manga that only got a few upvotes but managed to impress someone so much it they'd spend money on the thread.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Legislators are free to update legislation anytime they feel like it, they don't need special permission from the judiciary. And I think I have heard of cases where the Supreme Court recommends Congress update relevant laws in the end. The trouble is that leglistatures can be very disagreeable and unable to pass a law, so how to actually govern gets left to the courts while the legislature is deadlocked.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I generally prefer social media review systems to be simple like/dislike for that reason, either you like something or you don't. 5 star systems lead to too much confusion over what different ratings mean. Then ideally people are allowed to sort the results of a search by any metric they like, such as best like:dislike ratio, most total likes, best like:views ratio, etc. based on whether they want a guaranteed good experience or if they want to try to find a more niche product that they'd personally love or whatever else they're looking for. And if something does well along every metric you can be very confident it'll be excellent.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
It technically depends on the elascity of demand, but pretty much nothing has demand so inelastic that there'd be no cost decrease at all
No one likes illegal immigration, so that's a moot point.
I think everyone would prefer if those illegal immigrants were legal immigrants, but there are some people who's order of preferences are legal immigrants > illegal immigrants > fewer/no immigrants, and some people who are fewer/no immigrants > legal immigrants > illegal immigrants.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I probably should've predicted it would've been total toxoplasma bait, but I definitely didn't forsee it being that extreme of toxoplasma bait or receiving that universal of condemnation by motteizans.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I don't want meritocracy, equality of opportunity, judging the content of someone's character.
Why not?
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Why should an opoid addicted piece of white trash who was born to two parents who were white trash deserve American citizenship more than a Venezualen who fled socialism and crossed the Darien Gap just to participate in the greatest nation on Earth? That's purposefully inflammatory I know, but I do strongly believe that immigrants to America will rarely make natives lives worse, and often will in fact improve their lives through providing stuff like cheap farm labour. That's not an universal law, I look at Europe and see how terrible they are at integrating immigrants and wouldn't propose they open their borders because I don't think they could handle it. But immigrants are an amazing source of strength for America, one that should be harnessed.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
Also you've posted about 7 or so articles--I was going to say "only 7 or so" to make my point that that's not a large number to start making assumptions about people,
Yeah it's hardly a large sample size, but I think it's a pattern that's common on pretty much all the internet. And I'm not discouraged by it, more just that I think it's a bit of a shame that lower quality but controversial posts get way more engagement than higher quality ones. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not just comments and that there are more unique readers of the controversial links than the high quality ones too. But of course I do the same, it can be very hard to tell from a link and maybe a short blurb if it'll actually lead somewhere high quality, versus when there's 100 comments on a link you know there's at least something there.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
I think I was aware at least 80% of the facts covered in the article.
I don't think the degree to which gender and sexuality are largely, but not entirely, biological is common knowledge. Maybe most of themotte have already familiarized themselves with the science though, if any group's likely to have it's motteizens.
non_radical_centrist
5mo ago
The Icelandic essay was also about historical legal practices and historical libterarianism. I think that's quite relevant to this forum.
But yeah I get the reasons why what I consider excellent pieces didn't generate much discussion. I'd just hope the motte would be a bit of a higher standard than twitter in what generates discussion
There is an issue when some of the petri dishes go down a route the rest of the country finds abhorrent, like slavery or crimes against humanity. I think against that, there needs to be some democratic calibration of the nation's values, and some careful questions posed to prediction markets about what initiatives are worth taking. And if a region rebels against the system and starts doing things against the nation's fundamental values, hopefully the rest of the nation hasn't neglected their militaries and can put a stop to it.
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