ChristianKl comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong

82 [deleted] 05 September 2010 06:08PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 06 September 2010 12:51:12PM 2 points [-]

I am speaking from a limited kind of experience -- talking to young people, friends of mine, who are just starting or about to start careers in public service.

The experience I'm speaking comes from having a father who is a parliamentarian for the city of Berlin.

my point is that they're usually not as well-informed or well-thought out as their critiques.

How do you know that their critiques are well thought out? Most critiques from radicals that I read don't contain an analyses of the root courses of the problem they are criticizing. A naive understanding of bureaucracy leads you to believe that expiration dates for laws would help. Cries to get politicians to do something about bureaucracy lead to the adaption of expiration dates for laws in some parliaments. The politician can tell his voters that he enacted a law to reduce bureaucracy and his voters are happy.

The "radicals" didn't have a well-thought out critique of bureaucracy that included an understanding of how bureaucracy develops.

But I've been frustrated to find that "Washington kids" focus very heavily on polls and parties.

Yet most radicals focus a lot more on visible problems. They rather analyse police brutality than focus on the problem that politicians are too focused on polls and party conflicts.