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by AnimalMuppet 2027 days ago
"Interesting" in what way? (No, I'm not going to go look based on that one word.)
1 comments

His mapping of the structure of our current governmental system was eye opening to me. I liked the explanation of the prescriptive (planned/written) vs. the descriptive (actual/unwritten) constitution. I also liked the idea that organizations that aren't officially part of the government are effectively part of it without having any accountability.

https://graymirror.substack.com/p/3-descriptive-constitution...

He's certainly not for everyone, but the most common criticisms of him I see are usually pull quotes taken from Wikipedia.

Well... Isn't this old news? You could read for example Foucault and have a similarly enlightening but more cohesive reading experience.

But maybe immersing yourself in the rohrschach/barnum-effect nature of these texts is more fun.

So old we use Latin terms to describe it, like de jure and de facto.
His imagination is limited. He is a statist and thinks if a persons opinion doesn't matter (subjects of the state) Then they have ultimate freedom. He equates having zero power as freedom.
Isn't that a valid way of thinking? I think most Chinese citizens are in many ways more free than American ones. Obviously in other ways not so much, but it isn't obvious that it's all for the worse. For instance, they don't have to pay attention to politics nearly as much as Western citizens do. Look at the state of our politicized society, how much stress it generates, and how much better your life would be if you didn't have to deal with politics invading every aspect of society.
But the Chinese have politics invading many aspects of society anyway, but lack the ability to do anything about it. Is that less stressful, or more?
Less, because the way it invades those aspects is direct, and not indirect through other human beings. In our society, for power to work it has to convince the population of what power wants, which means that the political invasion happens by other people caring about politics. In a country ruled by a dictator, that isn't the case, because the dictator doesn't have to convince the population of anything, he just does it, and if it works and it's better then good, and if it doesn't then he can try something else (without having to reconvince anyone that now this something else might work).
And if what he tries is working for the dictator and not the population?

And China's social credit system looks like "indirect through other human beings", at least in part.