felis-parenthesis
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User ID: 660
felis-parenthesis
1d ago
Luévano v. Campbell turned civil service appointments into a racial spoils system in 1981. America has already gone back to a spoils system.
felis-parenthesis
1d ago
One obtains a stronger rebuttal by pointing to the dynamics.
Stage one: Politicians seek out and appoint competent administrators to civil service jobs
This isn't formalized and the incentives for politicians are to game the system, leading to stage two
Stage two: A spoils system where government appointments are cycled in and out with every new administration as payoffs to supporters.
The disadvantages of this become increasingly apparent, creating pressure for reform and eventually the Pendleton Act
Stage three: A permanent civil service. This provides a reservoir of experience, damping down swings of the political pendulum. But it is also a source of inertia (perhaps I mean viscosity?) which leads to stagnation. Which tendency will grow with time, leading to the downfall of the Pendleton Act?
Neither. Ambitious men are always seeking power. Traditionally by standing for election. If they win, they have limited time to do something before standing for election again. Ugh! Perhaps there is more power to be had as a member of the permanent bureaucracy. Ambitious men game the new system created by the Pendleton Act.
Stage four: The civil service the fourth branch of the Federal Government, and answers to on-one.
A new President is elected to change the course of the nation, away from the iceberg, towards the rocks :-) But he finds that the fourth branch insists on steering towards the iceberg, and the Pendleton Act gives them real power.
Stage five: err, I don't know
The point is that we should expect bad reforms to fail because they are bad. And we should expect good reforms to fail because of the passage of time. Good reforms work well, curing the problems caused by people gaming the old system; that is what we mean by a good reform. But a good reform changes the system. It may take a generation before people work out how to game the new system, but game it they will. We should expect that no reforms withstand erosion by human cunning.
felis-parenthesis
9d ago
I like piano music. If a professional is playing it, then Scriabin, such as Fantasie Opus 28. If I'm playing it for myself, then it needs to be within my technical ability, for example Clementi, Opus 36 no 3 which has an impressively high ratio of happiness&fun to technical difficulty.
felis-parenthesis
10d ago
I'm more interested in what happens when there is a change of government. The link about the Államvédelmi Osztály was interesting because of who Arrow Cross was.
Arrow Cross were right-wing thugs. After the left come to power, were they taken out and shot? No, they got demoted to junior thugs. They beat up the people that the new left wing government told them to beat up. Only if they were disobedient would they face harsh punishment.
felis-parenthesis
10d ago
Repeating myself
They may win power, but not have the numbers to hold on to it.
Think about what happens after the Kronstadt rebellion. The soldiers mutiny, and overthrow the Tsar. The Bolsheviks take power. The infighting starts. Where do they find the men to stab their colleagues in the back on their behalf?
It is not about the overthrow of the old regime, it is about the worst people rising to the top of revolution and needing henchmen to do deeds that are repugnant to the earlier idealistic revolutionaries.
felis-parenthesis
11d ago
I’m very much in favour of anything that limits a government’s power
That cuts both ways. Do you limit government power by permitting the government to accumulate a reserve army of brutal thugs, or by preventing this by murdering the nascent reserve army in its crib?
I've mentioned Communist revolutionaries. See https://theworthyhouse.com/2024/11/19/on-the-1956-hungarian-revolution/ for an interesting, horse-shoe twist
The chief instrument of this terror was the secret police—the ÁVO, an acronym for Államvédelmi Osztály, Department of State Protection.
It filled its ranks primarily with two disparate types of people—hardcore Communists, many or mostly Jews resentful towards non-Jewish Hungarians (again of which more later), and former Arrow Cross toughs, usually from the countryside, whose past could be held over them and whose predilections toward violence were of use to the new regime.
But one could read about Oskar Dirlewanger and where he found the men to staff the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirlewanger_Brigade
Coming up to date,
The Wagner Group has been recruiting large numbers of prisoners for Putin's war in Ukraine.
https://www.newsweek.com/inside-wagner-group-criminals-contractors-putins-war-1770392
I must stop writing this comment before I sink too deeply into despair, both about where government power comes from, and the level of counter-ruthlessness needed to oppose it.
felis-parenthesis
11d ago
The dark meaning of mercy for the villain is the same as the dark meaning of opposition to the death penalty. Brutal thugs are not executed, but given long prison terms. Warehoused. Saved for later. This reserve army of brutal thugs is a valuable resource for avant-garde revolutionaries. Think 1917 Russian revolution. Its was a close run thing with a brutal civil war. Typically the avant-garde don't have the numbers. They may win power, but not have the numbers to hold on to it. They need to put boots on the necks of counter-revolutionaries. Since their tests for counter-revolutionariness have too many false negatives, they have to go large and put boots on the necks of the general population. Where do they find the feet to fill the boots? They release brutal thugs from prison to provide the muscle for the NKVD, KGB, Stasi, etc.
It is a very dangerous game. The avant-garde revolutionaries need to retain control of their brutal thugs. The thugs need to be kept divided. If some get ideas above their station, others are sent to kill them. But the Russian revolution and the French revolution both ate themselves. One faction within the revolutionary avant-garde sends their tame thugs to kill a rival faction within the avant-garde. The death toll rises and Stalin or Napoleon comes out on top.
I'm unclear on the causal connections here. Perhaps opposition to the death penalty is all high minded mercy. When the revolution comes, it is an unfortunate accident that the revolutionaries are gifted a reserve army of brutal thugs to help them consolidate their power. Or perhaps there are some strategic thinkers covertly funding the merciful people naturally inclined to oppose the death penalty. The money boosts the opposition to the death penalty, enough for mercy to defeat prudence.
It is not just domestic revolutionaries that one has to worry about. When the USSR took over Eastern Europe at the end of WWII, releasing brutal thugs from prison, to provide the muscle for the secret police, was one of the techniques used to impose the new communist governments.
felis-parenthesis
23d ago
I've already seen how this goes. President Trump signed an executive order banning men from women's sports. He made the signing into political theater by having girls crowd round his desk as he signed, giving away the pens that he used, and making a show of making the signature extra special.
He will do the same with his own pardons, giving a little speech about each pardon, condemning the corrupt legal system, and boasting of putting things right by exercising his power of pardon.
Then what? There may be a precedent of voiding pardons that were (a) auto-penned (b) President Biden doesn't step up to say "I commanded that, it is not a case of some-one else borrowing the auto-pen to create a fake pardon behind my back." Such a precedent cannot be used to void a pardon personally signed by President Trump as part of broadcast political theater.
felis-parenthesis
24d ago
My Kodak DC220 sits unused on my bookcase, only barely hidden by my untidiness :-)
felis-parenthesis
30d ago
Ahah! Search terms, which lets me find https://np.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/1ixtk0y/am_i_the_only_one_feeling_uncomfy_with_posts_of/ which works on my machine :-)
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
I cannot get the link to work. I'm expecting something formatted like
I'm seeing
https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/s/2Ax2KXHCWr
which takes me to a submission page. Guessing that the "s" is for submission, I hand edit the "s" to "comments"
https://old.reddit.com/r/ArchitecturalRevival/comments/2Ax2KXHCWr
but that just gets me "PAGE NOT FOUND"
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
If Woodrow Wilson were drawing up a new Fourteen points for today, he would emphasize the right to self-determination of the people of Crimea. Western war aims include conquering Crimea to annex it into a Ukrainian land empire, perhaps as some kind of successor to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Wilson would denounce that as immoral.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
The most interesting questions arise from the idea of the memetic immune system. What pressures does natural selection exert on the memetic immune system?
An egregore is in competition for minds with other egregores, much as a fox is in competition for rabbits with other foxes, but with a twist. Human minds are not its food, but its substrate. Call an egregore fertile if it encourages the women it occupies (cordyceps?) to have many children. Call an egregore barren if it discourages this. Natural selection works on egregores to improve their own reproduction, we might call this their infectivity, but also to be fertile rather than barren so that they have more substrate to infect. Meanwhile natural selection works on the human genome, hoping to generate subtle memetic immune systems that are vulnerable to fertile egregores, but resistant to barren egregores.
You could go all in on reductionism and say it is just natural selection, but this will be an obstacle to understanding the tangled mess when people and egregores are evolving a subtle mutualism.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
Knowing that there is a real world, out there, beyond language.
Are the moon landings a hoax? Large Language Models can say what people say, perhaps rather more fluently and persuasively. If one is open to the possibility that there is more than one kind of intelligence, then LLM's have one of those kinds of intelligence, and in greater degree than an average human. But LLM's are rather stuck on giving their own opinion of whether the moon landings are a hoax, because they don't know whether the moon is real or fictional. Nor do the know whether the Earth is real or fictional. The whole "ground truth" thing is missing.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
The USA blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines was an act of war against Germany.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
I imagine that filing a lawsuit to overturn an executive order is a delicate business. If an ordinary lawyer tries it, their case will be promptly dismissed. Only the top, expensive lawyers get hearings for fancy legal theories leading to restraining orders against government actions.
Expensive lawyers. These lawsuits may become rare if the dark money from USAID and elsewhere dries up.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
Writing in 1844, Karl Marx describes the power of money sardonically
The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet.
Time has concealed the meaning of twenty-four feet, but Marx has already quoted from Goethe's Faust
“Six stallions, say, I can afford,
Is not their strength my property?
I tear along, a sporting lord,
As if their legs belonged to me.”
so we know what he is getting at. He needs young men to join his anti-capitalist revolution, so he makes it clear that Capitalism involves the young man standing in the gutter while his girlfriend rides by in a six horse carriage, being pawed by the ugly rich old man who owns it/her. Such powerful rabble rousing! Marx knew human nature and how love could be used to harness young men to his cause.
But 1844 is a long time ago. Would Marx use the same trick today? I doubt it would work. He talks to red-pilled young men and they tell Marx the received wisdom of today's youth: "She's not yours, its just your turn." In today's hook up culture, there is lust, but not love. Marx hoped that young men would die for love. But nobody dies for lust.
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
I read you article
Much of the concern centers on legislation in Congress that would remove the tax-exempt status of nonprofit groups that are found to be supporting terrorist organizations.
I partly understand the concern. Legislation may be much different from how it is described. Nevertheless "tax breaks for terrorists" is bad optics. Does any-one know the story behind this? The article discusses various groups
Groups that support L.G.B.T.Q. rights, promote gender equity and champion other progressive causes have cut staffing and announced that longtime leaders are leaving.
but doesn't join the dots on how accusations of "supporting terrorist organizations" could be weaponized against the groups mentioned. Perhaps there are other groups, not mentioned, that are more at risk?
felis-parenthesis
1mo ago
The top level comment is about the hostage puppy of tuberculosis treatment. Which suggests how it works. Corruption grows, shielded by hostage puppies. The puppies are very effective at shielding corruption. Corruption grows: 10% corrupt, 90% puppies; 50% corrupt, 50% puppies; 90% corrupt, 10% puppies; 99% corrupt, 1% puppies.
Eventually the anti-corruption campaigners have a vast amount of ammo; there just aren't enough hostage puppies to provide cover for all the corruption. The level of corruption at which the anti-corruption campaigners can break through is determined by how sentimental the general public is. The more sentimental they are, the better the hostage puppies work at shielding corruption, and the more complete the corruption has to be before the dam breaks.
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
But I see no reason that an ideological system involving uniting the elites to rule over the rest is a problem
My theory of how society works is that it depends on a competent ruling elite, but there are problems of ossification and egalitarianism, with ossification leading to the rise of egalitarianism. I'm going to make up illustrative numbers. The ruling elite is 10% of the population. Elites don't breed true, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Half the next generation of ruling elite are the children of the current ruling elite. So that is 5% accounted for. Where do the other 5% come from?
One in eighteen of the children of hoi polloi is talented. 1/18 of 90% = 5%. They are the scholarship boys, talent spotted, educated in grammar schools and inducted into the ruling elite.
My theory of how society works generates two opposing theories of how society fails. First ossification or the protection of the failson. Half the children of the ruling elite are downwardly mobile. As time passes the elite fail to change the heritability of the genetics, but they do change society to save their failchildren from social descent. The second generation of elite are 5% true elite, 5% ordinary, while the scholarship boys are locked out of upward mobility. The third generation of elite are 2.7% true elite 7.2% ordinary. (I'm assuming that the child of a failson has the usual 1/18 chance of being talented). Degeneration continues 1.8% elite, 8.2% ordinary; 1.35% elite, 8.65% ordinary. The asymptote is that the ossified elite regress to the mean and end up looking like the original society. The original society was 10% elite, 90% ordinary. Thus the end state of the ossified elite is 1% true elite 9% ordinary. Their badly governed society also has its hoi polloi. That 90% of the population spilts 9% true elite talent, locked out by the loss of social mobility and 81% ordinary. This either ends in revolution as the 9% fight for their place in society, or in collapse, because 1% true elite isn't enough talent to keep society functioning.
Second, egalitarianism. Meritocracy gets rejected. I like the way that @cjet79 puts it here "A job is work to be done" versus "A job is a ceremonial position". Jobs get redistributed to ensure fairness, ending the elites' lock on the best jobs. The 10% of prestige jobs get filled, effectively at random. 1% true elite, 9% ordinary people. There are too few talented people in the top jobs leading to collapse. It could be worse. Maybe, post-revolution the children of the previous elite are locked out of the top jobs. Of the 10% filling the top jobs, only 1 in 18 is talented = 0.55%. That is less than the 1% of a completely ossified society. Dysfunction and collapse come quickly.
The two tendencies, ossification and egalitarianism play off each other. In a partially ossified society, hoi polloi look at the elite, and compare the official story with what they see. Officially a job is work to be done and the 10% top jobs are filled on merit. But many of the elite are ordinary, and their jobs are ceremonial (except that sometimes a failson has a real job that he lacks the skill for, which is even worse). As the generations turn and ossification gets worse, every-one can see that many top jobs are ceremonial. Ordinary people resent that their children are largely locked out of these top jobs. Meritocracy is seen to be a sham for two reasons. Society is functioning poorly (due too little genuine talent in the ossified elite) which undermines the official position that jobs are given to the best candidates. Some jobs are all to obviously ceremonial and merit doesn't even apply. This boosts belief in egalitarianism until DEI seems reasonable.
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
I assume that covert influence operations are structured
90% food, medicine and infrastructure
10% subversion
and that looking inside the 90% food, medicine and infrastructure, it is actually 60% food, medicine and infrastructure 30% corruption and pay-offs.
Who's going to let USAID back into their country after that?
The locals who benefit from the 30% corruption and pay-offs would be keen to let USAID back in, and either don't care about the 10% subversion, or consider it acceptable if it means that they get their cut.
felis-parenthesis
2mo ago
uranium only has around 100 years of proven reserves,
That is a big part of your answer right there. There is an important distinction between reserves and resources.
Reserves are uranium ore that it is profitable to mine and process at current market prices with today's technology. Some reserves are being mined as I type; they are really there, with absolute certainty. Other reserves as less certain. One might want to drill a shaft and get some samples to check. Proven reserves meet a threshold for certainty set down by the financial regulators. Thinking of investing in a mining company? Reading about the proven reserves that they own? Proven is a term of art for investment grade certainty.
Resources are a guess about the amount of uranium that is actually there. In some sense. It needs to be possible to mine it and refine it, but it doesn't have to be profitable today. The guess work can include some guesses about technological advances in extracting Uranium.
It is the same for natural resources generally. The case of oil is notorious. Yes, back in 1920 we only have 30 years of oil reserves. (I've not checked the history, but it is well know that we have many times run off the end of oil reserves) Prospecting for oil is expensive. If an oil company wants to borrow money from a bank to build an oil refinery, the bankers will ask: will the oil run out. If the oil company only has 25 years of reserves on its books, it may be worthwhile prospecting for more. The bankers will take a risk, but for a price. How does the cost of prospecting compare with the price of risk? Bankers rarely look more than 30 years ahead. If the oil company has thirty years of reserves, paying prospectors to find more, and increasing that to 35 years, will not get the oil company a cheaper loan. It is not worth the money.
We only have thirty years of reserves because it is not worth looking for more, so we don't bother. Notice that the results of prospecting include discovering bodies of ore that fall a little short of what it is currently worth extracting. They count towards the resource. But not towards the reserve. However, prices can rise. If the electricity price rises, prices for oil and uranium to fuel power stations are likely pulled up. Now some of the resource becomes reserves. It is routine for reserves to fluctuate due to price changes elsewhere in the economy, independent of consumption and discovery.
You can build an argument for collapse around the idea that there are only 100 years of uranium resources. The logic of the argument is (maybe) valid, but since the premise is false the conclusion does not follow.
You can build an argument for collapse around the idea that there are only 100 years of proven reserves of uranium. Now the premise true, but the logic of the argument is invalid, and the conclusion still doesn't follow.
The equivocation between reserves and resources has been going on all my life, and I find most discussions of social collapse tainted by this.
Have I misunderstood the over-turning of Roe-versus-Wade? I thought that it was over-turned on the basis that abortion was a matter for States, not the Federal Government. So a Federal abortion ban would be struck down by the Supreme Court; no point voting for one.
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