Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

I'm curious if there are any good ideas on how to improve current political systems?

"History doesn't work like that."

Are you claiming that there is no way to improve upon the current political system, or that there is no way to improve on the current political system that's worth the time and effort needed to get it implemented?

Don't be mistaken, I have no blanket pessimism. I think that there are probably concrete, local, ad-hoc ways to find out and set up better systems of policies, e.g. whether a viable and true Universal Basic Income could be a good replacement for the welfare state - I have absolutely no opinion at the moment - and if yes, how could it be instituted. And if life becomes stably better through good concrete policies, that would be cause enough for joy.

However, better political systems are located one or two meta levels above the systems of policies, as most pe... (read more)

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Or maybe that the improvements require a complex set of seemingly unrelated changes to occur. For example, Adam Smith explained that the main driving force of change at some point was the appearance of new things to buy for the very rich people, as this allowed a novel redistribution of wealth and power. (I am not quoting the ful argument here, and I am not claiming that the described factor was the only driving force of change, or even that I can claim on my own that it was the main force)