[Cialug] Telecom Immunity

[Nathan Stien]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:55 PM, Stuart Thiessen
<thiessenstuart at aol.com> wrote:
> Just my 2cents.
> <off-topic relevance="related to previous comment">
> The rule of law only works when both the leadership and the people are
> willing to submit to the law. When we adopt a whatever-benefits-me
> mentality, then the rule of law becomes meaningless because those in power
> will do whatever benefits them. Frankly, I see this whatever-benefits-me
> mentality pervading American society and it will hurt us. This is true
> whether it comes from the people or the leadership.
> The Soviet Constitution is a case in point. The Soviet leadership did not
> deny themselves what they denied to the general population. The current
> situation in Zimbabwe is another example.
> America was successful in the past because we did our best to follow a
> whatever-benefits-us-as-a-nation mentality. We weren't perfect, but that was
> the general trend ... until now. Now it is a
> "whatever-benefits-my-special-interests-and-hurts-my-ideological-opponents"
> mentality ... on all sides.
> </off-topic>
> Call me a cynic, but that's what I see.
> Stuart

Stuart, I'll see your delightfully off-topic $0.02 and raise you $0.02 more. ;-)

I must respectfully disagree with your analysis of the problem.  If
you think there were any number of idealistic
whatever-benefits-us-as-a-nation politicians holding power our
history, cynical is the last thing I would call you.  I do not believe
such persons have ever held significant power here, particularly
because our political system unintentionally but predictably selects
against them.  As far as I can tell, there was no golden age of
civic-minded rulers here, not even in the beginning.

The US constitution, for all its faults, has fared a lot better than
the USSR's because of the superior incentive structure it established.
 It's all about the decentralization, separation of powers, and
checks-and-balances.  The founders realized that power attracts the
worst sort of people, and tried to design a system such that the
power-hungry bastards would all be at each other's throats, preventing
any one bloc from getting too much power.  It was a Real Good Try, but
it has clearly been breaking down for a long time.  The
congresscritters and other politicians long ago figured out how to
collude (cf. "logrolling") to scratch each other's backs and otherwise
obviate the checks.

And they are essentially bound to do this as a matter of
politico-evolutionary fitness.  A politician who does not scratch
backs very well does not tend to have a successful career.  If you
don't play ball, you get shut out.  Any would-be politician's devotion
to "will of the people"* is pretty irrelevant if they are locked out
of the process by the incumbent power blocs.  There's precious little
room for idealism there.  I do not regard this as particularly
intentional or malicious, but something more akin to an "invisible
hand" effect.  Perhaps the "invisible fist" would be the better term
here regarding government actors, since this effect tends to be
deleterious for most of us.

The current administration's antics are just the latest chapter in
this story; it may be vivid and fresh in memory, but I contend that it
is nothing fundamentally new to our politics.  In my view, these types
of problems are bound to arise from the incentive structure of our
democracy**.


Notes:
*: I am skeptical that there is any one policy or set of policies you
can point to as the "will of the people".  We are a diverse lot, and
we have diverse Wills and diverse notions of The Good Life.  A
majority-rule scenario will even in the best case still only serve
just the one-size-fits-all "will of the more politically powerful
people".  Whether that's a feature or a bug on balance seems pretty
debatable.

**: Please do not read this critique of our democracy as an
endorsement of any other particular political system; I would easily
prefer the US over any dictatorship, kingdom, or caliphate.  I'm just
trying to be honest about what I see as the faults of our system.