From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 15 2002 - 19:18:16 MDT
On Monday 12 August 2002 20:46, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 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.
Psychotic is perhaps too strong a term, but I cannot think of another that is
sufficiently strong. And, no, it isn't an either/or picture. There is a
continuous gradient, and in more than one dimension. But there is a large
difference between being driven to achieve goals, and being willing to
sacrifice everything else that might be valued in order to achieve it (the
direction in which politics appears to be increasingly headed). Someone who
will do that is normally termed a fanatic, and I don't believe that most
people consider fanatics to be sane. (I could be wrong here, in which case I
am misusing the words, if not the meanings.)
>
> > 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.
There is a difference between doing immoral things in order to achieve moral
ends (a justification that is itself not well reasoned, but possibly with
sufficient care justifiable) and doing immoral things in order to achieve
probaly neutral ends (there is clearly nothing morally superior in any one
particular individual holding an office). I suppose that one could claim
that the intended moral end is in actions yet to be preformed which require
holding the office. This would be extremely difficult to justify,
particularly considering the probabilities of failure at each intervening
step, but it is conceivable that such a justification is possible. But to
execute immoral actions to achieve immoral ends is not conceivably
justifiable. So the only possible counter would be to prove that a) the
actions were necessary and b) the thus-far unrevealed moral ends will be
obtained.
>
> > 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?
No. I logically cannot be certain of that. What actions are moral are
tightly bound with my own ideological allegiances. However, I can say that
none of the major candidates for president (I don't know about the minor
candidates) have caused me to consider them as sane moral entities. And I
don't really think that anyone else could point to actions that they have
taken which justify the suborning of the elections (which two of the sides
engaged in). Nader wasn't much better with his after the election
justification that "Now things will get so bad that everyone will realize
that we were right all along."
>
> > 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
I'm not really saying that things are intrinsically much worse than they were
in the past, except that the pyramids have gotten higher, so the figures at
the top had to be even more insanely monomanaic in their struggle for power.
The essence is the same, but when you scale it up, it gets worse.
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