You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

army1987 comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census Survey: Call For Critiques/Questions - Less Wrong Discussion

20 Post author: Yvain 19 October 2012 01:12AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (479)
Tags: meta

Comments (479)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 October 2012 08:34:30AM *  3 points [-]

besides the fact that none of them is a third world hellhole, so none of them is probably ruled terribly badly

Or just that ruling an already-developed country isn't terribly demanding. I mean, Belgium didn't become a third-world hellhole despite this.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 October 2012 08:47:08AM *  9 points [-]

Related to your example: The Art of Governing without Government

Belgium "had no government" for 535 days. Lots of people use the same words to describe the situation in Belgium.

The odd thing about this period of no government was that Belgium’s government was very busy. For example, the non-government nationalized one of the country’s largest banks. Less importantly, your humble blogger had numerous meetings that were attended by representatives of Belgium’s non-government.

How is this possible?

The answer, of course, is that Belgium’s government functions fine – fine enough to bail out a huge bank! – without significant input from elected officials. If elected officials are around to validate the decisions of the permanent government, that’s great. If not, the government gets on just fine.

Call it the art of governing without government.

Moldbuggian models of politics FTW.

Comment author: CronoDAS 21 October 2012 02:26:43AM *  1 point [-]

I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of government working for them, and that ain't bad.

-- Jack Nicholson, as President Dale in Mars Attacks

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit