From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 21:46:52 MDT
Charles writes
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> > It is obvious that some types of businesses ( record and motion
> > picture industries but especially the former very much among
> > them) have tremendous political clout for ramming through
> > legislation that is seriously counter individual rights and even
> > (Berman proposal) seriously and obviously unconstitutional. As
> > both an Extropian and a cyber-utopian of many years it utterly
> > disgusts me that those who are supposedly protecting our rights
> > and looking out for our future would sell us out for a handful
> > of campaign contributions. When some congressperson actually
> > proposes that some citizens be given legal leeway to attack the
> > property and tools of other citizens on mere suspicion with no
>
> It is appalling, but it was also predictable in advance. Centralizations of
> power attract those who are more interested in power than in the ostensible
> job that the power was centralized to perform. As far as I can tell, this
> rule is invariant.
Up to here, I think that you are absolutely correct.
> The extant counter examples of which I am aware merely demonstrate that
> those who wanted to get the job done were both motivated enough and
> sufficiently convincing to access the controls of power before the
> psychotics.
Psychotics?? In this sentence, you paint an either/or picture. The
motives of those who run for office, as well as many great historical
leaders born to royalty or nobility, are quite mixed. They're driven,
as the rest of us are, by wish for fame, money, admiration, power,
job satisfaction, conscience, greed, idealism, and game playing, to
name a few. So it's certainly not a question of some types of people
gaining access to "the controls of power" before some other sort.
> In this context, an analysis of the recent elections (last 20 years or so)
> would show that as the elections became more expensive to win, the winners
> tended to be less sane (they had to promise more and more to their supporters
> to extract the cash from them).
George Washington used to disburse large amounts of liquor the
day of an election, and I don't know of any notable politician
more high-minded and restrained than he. It's all a matter of
degree, and I don't think that the senate's millionaires are
any worse than the senate's poorer members.
> This matches what I have observed, down to
> the Senator from Vermont being the sanest member of the Senate (he didn't
> need to over commit himself to his supporters in order to win). It doesn't
> explain such aberrant cases as Senator Hollings (S.C.), but I suppose that
> even lacking a requirement for extreme commitment wouldn't keep someone with
> such a temperament from seeking the office.
Are you *entirely* sure that your perceptions are not affected
by your own ideological allegiances?
> I certainly hope that someone can punch holes in this analysis, because II
> find it quite depressing. And it seems to indicate that without immense
> improvements in social dynamics large groups of humans will inevitably be
> psychotic or Monarchy/Aristocracy based.
I don't think that they'll be worse than in the past; if anything,
better. I take it that you've studied the political figures of
the nineteenth century? And the fifth-century Athenians? Very
little seems to change IMO.
Lee
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