I don't know, isn't history really just a series of specific people doing concrete actions?
Do you think on some level the idea of some abstract 'government' taking care of things is just a narrative we apply to make ourselves feel better?
Sure individual decision makers in that government can concretely affect reality, but beyond that are we just telling a story and really nobody is 'in control'?
The more we remember the possibility of true collective self determination, the more likely we are to survive all this mess we're making.
These days we are constantly bombarded by this contradiction of individualism being primary and desirable, but at the same time impotent in the face of the world this individualism has wrought. And its all a convenient way to demoralize us and let us forget how effective motivated collective interest is. Real history begins and ends with the collective!
Yes. There is a reason that when Britain felt threatened by the turmoil in France they didn't just bar unions or political clubs. They banned "combination" almost entirely in general.
tl;dr: Nobody is steering the ship because they don't know they're on a ship. Or that the ocean exists.
It's hard without doxxing myself or calling out specific people and organizations which I'd rather not because I'm a nobody and can't afford lawsuits, but for various reasons I ended up political education and marketing for civics advocacy. Ish. To be semi on topic, I know some people who are published in the WSJ (as well as the people who actually wrote the pieces). I'm also a 3rd generation tech nerd in my mid 30s so I'm very comfortable with the digital world - easily the most so outside of the actual software engineering team.
I've spoken with and to a lot of politicians and candidates from across the US - mostly on the local and state level but some nationally. And journalists from publications that are high profile, professors of legal studies, heads of think tanks, etc.
My read of the situation is that our political class is entangled in a snare of perverse disincentives for action while also being so disassociated from the world outside of their bubble that they've functionally no idea what's going on. Our systems (cultural, political, economic, etc.) have grown exponentially more complex in the past 30 years and those of us on HN (myself included) understand this and why this happened. I'm a 3rd generation tech nerd, I can explain pretty easily how we got here and why things are different. The political class, on the other hand, has had enough power to not need to adapt and to force other people to do things their way. If your 8500 year old senator wants payment by check and to send physical mail, you do it. (Politicians and candidates that would not use the internet were enough of a problem in 2020 that we had to account for it in our data + analyses and do specific no tech outreach). Since they didn't know how the world is changing, they also haven't been considering the effects of the changes at all.
Furthermore, even those of them that have some idea still don't know how to problem solve systems instead of relationships. Complex systems thinking is the key skill needed to navigate these waters, and none of them have it. It's fucking terrifying. At best, they can conceive of systems where everything about them is known and their outputs can be precisely predicted. At best. Complex systems are beyond them.
Add to this that we have a system which has slowly ground itself to a deadlocked halt. Congress has functionally abandoned most of its actual legislative duties because it's way better for sitting congresspeople to not pass any bills - if you don't do anything, then you don't piss any of your constituents off. Or make mistakes. And you can spend more time campaigning.
I left and became a hedonist with a drug problem after a very frank conversation with a colleague who was my political opposite at the time. I'm always open to being wrong, and hearing that they didn't have any answer either was a very 'welp, we're fucked' moment. I'm getting better.
As a software developer who found myself elected to state level public office and had to spin-up my education around the legislative process and all of politics, I concur.
Their are only a couple of things I'd add.
As much knowledge as I brought in about technology and the idea of being aware of system thinking, I also brought in a great amount of ignorance about all the other areas that are legislated (healthcare, interplay between local, state, and fedearl issues, budgetary concerns, tax policy, banking, etc.). Good legislation is truly collaborative.
Sadly, for the second part, good legislation is rarer than it should be as much of legislation is about politics and perception of the voters. And voter perceptions are not necessarily logical or reasoned.
This makes it all the more important, IMHO, that everyone who is reasonable, logical, and educated spend their precious, valuable time involving themselves to advocate for elected officials who behave similar in what is essentially a zero-sum game.
p.s. Have faith. I saw enough during my time that gave me reason for that faith. (But that faith requires time and effort -- we don't get good government or democracy for free.) I'm glad to hear you're getting better.
I'd say much good legislation is collaborative, but some necessary legislation is not. FDR's changes for instance. Industry did not want it. Arguably health care in the US needs this too.
Isn’t history full of examples of governments being slow and seemingly incompetent? Standard Oil was broken up many years after everyone knew that they were a ruthless monopoly which made too much profits. Note also that it didn’t take senators to figure out the monopoly, it was everyone, including the voters, who did.
There is one big benefit that democratic governments have though. They have a monopoly on physical force.
Government does not actually “do” the executive action in everything. But government is a rough and messy consensus on the set of rules and constraints within which the “specific people doing concrete actions” act. Large scope actions that impact the public need to be within such rules and constraints. Historically CEO’s of large corporations have quite often acted so as to ignore said rules and constraints primarily for rapid aggregation of monopolistic power and concomitant profit. There is harm from monopolistic power in new and emerging industries hence government action via enforcement of rules and constraints is important. Individuals eg in the office of the AG may be the “specific people doing concrete actions” but they do it on behalf and with the full power and authority of the US Govt which acts through “specific people doing concrete actions”. It’s not an either or.
> I don't know, isn't history really just a series of specific people doing concrete actions?
That is like saying: “Aren’t human brains just series of neurons, firing at specific moments.”
History is as much—if not more—about interactions between people, feedback loops, collective actions, collective reactions, environmental changes, etc. I would argue that the individual is really really insignificant next to the system this individual resides under, and interacts with.
I think you're agreeing while arguing against my point :-)
Like what is collective action, really? It's as you say - a series of individuals interacting, setting a course in a feedback loop, and then more people getting on board with that. It doesn't just happen, it takes individual instigators. It also doesn't just self-propagate. You need individuals, typically the same individuals, to show up regularly and consistently and make sure stuff happens and people are doing what they need to be doing.
What you are arguing for is a philosophical position called atomism or reductionism, (which contrasts with holism). It is a rather old school philosophy honestly (with holism also being old school, but not quite as much) as we are are learning more how important interactions are really to study anything honestly.
Modern philosophy of science kind of rejects the notion that you can study anything really by only looking at the atomic structure of it. This is to say, you can’t really study history by only looking at the actions of individual actors. Even in particle physics you have the 4 fundamental interactions, you have virtual particles, etc. not just. This isn’t to say that fermions and bosons aren’t important, it is just that it is hard to describe any physical phenomena without looking at the interactions between them. And in fact, by studying those interactions, you can derive certain laws and behaviors. History is no different, except the complexity is many many orders of magnitude greater.
Is one difference in the analogy that individual humans have independent agency and do concrete things in the world, where particles don't have agency, and don't really 'do' actions in a sense that is meaningful outside of the system they're in?
I guess by questioning the analogy I get back to my point. Things don't happen in history because of (truly) random behaviours converging on some emergent effect, like in a system of particles. They happen because specific unique (wrt the system) individuals make decidedly non-random decisons to affect reality on purpose (even if cause and effect are not that predictable it still holds that the actions are purposeful and do affect reality) in some way.
I question your assumption that in history “things don't happen in history because of (truly) random behaviors converging on some emergent effect.”
Firstly there is currently a debate among quantum physics as to the true randomness of what we observe[1][2]. Turns out we don’t actually need true randomness in our models, they just need to appear as if they are random, in other words, the chaotic nature of the system is more important than true randomness.
Secondly, society is an emergent effect of individuals behaving in a chaotic manner. So is zeitgeist. To study history without looking at societal changes over time, and without accounting for zeitgeist, is bound to yield a pretty limited insights.
I am aware that my analogy between quantum mechanics and the study of history is flawed. The latter is infinity more complex than the former, and deriving laws and creating models is a good fit to study the former but extremely difficult to study the latter. However my point is merely pointing to the fact that atomism (and holism for that matter) is an incomplete philosophy of science, that doesn’t even work in our most fundamental scope. One should be cautious when applying it to the study of history.
Or to put it in other words: While ρ(λ | ab) ≠ ρ(λ) is a real possibility in quantum physics likewise it is highly likely that the probability of individual acting in society is not independent from the probability of the same individual acting outside of the influence of that society. In your original point government may very well be like the ab in this famous conjecture. I would be careful when removing it’s influence.
PS: Sorry to cite youtube videos, but I’m not a physicist and these videos are the only way for me to understand the science. Otherwise I would be citing something I don’t understand, which I don’t want to do.
I think the parent point is that democracy is an illusion in that only few people have any real power, and the masses choosing government representatives is very different from the masses choosing policy.
Did the population at large want National Health, sanitation, vaccination and the EPA? Or did a small group of people in government decide that was best for everyone. I suspect the latter, especially when looking at the National Health system that doesn’t seem to help as well as other systems. You’re right it’s not all “the feels”, but a lot is about making the population feel like they are looked after without doing much to actually look out for their best interests.
I’m not saying they weren’t popular, but that if you had actually implemented what the public wanted then you would have ended up with universal healthcare.
Same with the EPA. It’s an improvement, so people like it, but it’s not what people actually want.
The actions that idnoviduals take on behalf of government are a direct reflection of the "abstract" policies and laws of that government. If you cannot discern this from 20th century history I don't know what to tell you.
Policies and laws aren't abstract, they're a good example in fact of what I said - things that have a concerete effect on reality typically authored by a small number of specific individuals within a government.
Yeah I think so, I also misinterpreted your quoted 'abstract' I think :-)
Basically my main point (or question really, I am not sure in it) is that we should resist thinking about government as an abstract entiry different in character from any org - really what it does or looks after is just, in the end, some small set of humans doing some actions that have some effect.
They're democratically elected yes, but that is a bit meaningless in the practical detail of any one given situation. In a sense it's not different, safer, or better, than some company led by some small set of individuals also makikg concrete decisons, for any one concrete decision.
Maybe democracy and policy has some aggregate influence over all decisions, making them lean in a certain way. But it's not like 'the government' as an entity is one thing led by a concrete conciousness or plan. Does that make more sense?
Do you think on some level the idea of some abstract 'government' taking care of things is just a narrative we apply to make ourselves feel better?
Sure individual decision makers in that government can concretely affect reality, but beyond that are we just telling a story and really nobody is 'in control'?