[stoicShell]

The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve.

It's a simple projection from voter space to elected space. As a former pol.sci. student/researcher, I've grown disillusioned by the fact that representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended — the projection is flawed with regards to the conduct of affairs.

I don't know why:

- might be that voting is skewed by marketing (permanent campaign) money, government is too corrupt and establishment too entrenched, the "conspiracy hidden in plain sight / normalcy" idea;

- could be that democracy simply doesn't work as a system, or maybe not anymore, because the "average" is somehow not good enough — that was certainly not my belief, not for a decade, but I had to come to terms: it's a question worth asking, I assure you. Just considering the quality of information and the noise/signal ratio throws a huge wrench in the mechanics of any sane decision-making process...

- ... (many more hypotheses)

Regardless, this may help us craft the next-new-better political system, which might or might not be a regime of increased freedom compared to now (my guess: much more in some domains, much less in others, and not everyone will like the distribution).

I mean, look where we are. We had 15 years to get ready for such an event since coronavirus of the 2000's — tons of reports and words of good will. “Guys, we're not ready for a massive outbreak!” — everybody and their Bill Gates said so! But alas, the political fantasy kept going and it's all been just words. It wasn't that hard to stockpile masks and various supplies for when the day comes...

It's a sad day in history when we must face the consequences of our choices, but it's like a cycle... We get too complacent and something slams us, again and again and again (give it 3-4 generations apart to "forget", it's as if written language doesn't exist).

I'm jaded at the irony of our collective behavior, and sad for all those who will suffer and leave. Hopefully this will be a painful but learning experience that will last. I'm sad to report that it almost exclusively takes real pain, real hurt for societies to learn anything meaningfully in the face of history, of evolution. So, here we are, destiny.

[Natsu]

> The saddest truth is perhaps that functionally, we have the leaders we deserve.

The public at large are terrible bosses. We're disengaged and bad at measuring what our employees (leaders) do, so style trumps substance and it's hard for us to tell if any of them have a measurable impact.

We have little ability to get to the truth of what's going on and are deliberately dissuaded from this with huge omnibus bills and whatnot. News has become about narratives instead of substance, with hardly anyone caring to look at the underlying evidence of anything, letting liars get away with so much.

We constantly raise standards with no way of enforcing them. Naturally, cheating is the only way to appear perfect, driving out very good but imperfect people in favor of massive liars who cheat. We're also not good at holding anyone in politics to account. Everyone knows that Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself, but only some low level guards will be held to account for it most likely. The general public has no idea what to do and the leaders are too happy to sweep it under the rug.

So you're probably right, we have the leaders we deserve in some sense. The general public makes for terrible bosses, which is probably why too many people work under bad ones.

[sumedh]

> representative democracy, in our day and age, quite evidently no longer works as intended

What is your solution, almost all dictators are not benevolent.

[stoicShell]

That's true and I'm certainly not advocating for dictatorship. There is a vast space of possible regimes and political systems in between total freedom and total slavery, though... ;-)

Look, I won't pretend having "the" solution because it doesn't exist until we actually implement something, then iterate our way into a more-or-less final form that works. That's how we went from absolute monarchy to representative democracy, but if you trace the roots of that process, you've got a solid century of experimentation and much, much thinking (pretty much all the great names you know from 15th-16th-17th century were on some side of that equation, informed the discussion and ultimate "object", regime, that appeared).

So what will it be? Well I could write some anticipation sci-fi to suggest possibilities that are non-dystopian (well, not so much that it's unbearable) and come with a ton of benefits, and obviously some drawbacks / limits / undesirable side effects to be managed, adjusted.

The question is what the political will of the People actually wants— it's a question we each have to answer for ourselves —and what is possible, without breaking the machine, what will be desired, refused or simply ignored by 'elites' who, like it or not, have the fuel to make-or-break such 'evolution'. Now add an 'r' to the word and you increase the range of possibilities, but risk as well.

Here is my personal feeling: I think such events as COVID-19 will spark the kind of seed that eventually grows to fundamental political change; I however think we're still half a generation away from that — give time for Millenials 1982-1999 to rise to power, as they have the right mix of "values" (philosophy, circumstantial world experience / view, etc) to move beyond the systems that govern us today — and have for 70 ±10 years already!

I had a hunch post 9/11 that this century would see regimes evolve either towards more political freedom (towards more direct democracy) or towards a more authoritarian form of society (wherein social peace is obtained at the cost of some freedoms). It turns out that I was wrong, it wasn't either/or but both combined in a weird way: political freedom was gained but used to promote clowns to power (#all.over.the.world.the.2010s.are.insane.historically) instead of e.g. tackling massive, pressing or idealistic projects (people be lazy, rite). Whereas actual sovereignty (the one you learn in constitutional law, the real kind of political power) definitely shifted towards authoritarianism under various disguises — populism is one form, China's and Russia's "restoration" of authoritarian federal powers is another, and some self-proclaimed SWJs may not be far either, in their own "inclusive" way (kinda like dictatures are all "Democratic Republic").

What this tells me (I've long studied that evolution but again it's really just my personal view) is that societies are simply not mature for the new "space of possibilities" (think positive variables, opportunities e.g. via tech, think also negative variables, constrains of climate and viruses for instance). It's just too much power, too early, so we basically just F it up like kids with a problem a tad too big for them.

But that's history. We do things and then we figure out how to deal with them, there's no reversing that causality. Hopefully we won't ravage ourselves and this Earth in the 20-60 years it'll take to adapt to this rather sudden paradigm change — think 1980-today, that's just 40 years ffs, and think of the mindset then and now... And you kinda need "natives" of an era to meaningfully internalize its reality, process the whole damn thing in "system 1" like human beings do, and eventually sometime between 20 and 80 figure out ways to make life better. Rinse and repeat with their newborn grand-children to solve the new thing that's arrived by then.

As for what that will actually look like, your guess is as good as mine. I'm partial to freedom personally, but I think it's worth choosing your battles, too. That's when it becomes political thus where we stop: a good regime doesn't favor "opinions" but rather the expression thereof, in a healthy and productive manner (able to reach decision; ideally promoting some degree of consensus, kept in check by some other legitimated power, etc).

Just know that, when we want to, it's relatively doable to write a rather good constitution (and we have, many times throughout the last century). The real tricky issue is not to technically implement the ideas, the hard part is what ideas, what system you actually want to create. Again, many possibilities, some of which were abandoned by history but are now possible because modern tech (notably complex voting systems that yield much better representation of opinions and hierarchies in complex, multi-dimensional systems, e.g. to distribute might and resources between cities, or agencies, or any such module. There's about 1 century of great science that we're barely using for the benefit of the public, troves of innovation in the political realm. Just so much apathy for change in those who man these offices).

(It's honestly a fascinating topic of inquiry if you like systems, puzzles, cybernetics (different name for systems theory), all things mechanical in nature that must work with a "real-world" chaotic human environment.)