[function_seven]

Lifespans weren't that much shorter in his day (provided you made it to 5 years old).

He's not describing something that is "true" or not, but rather what ought to be. I think it's just as relevant today as when he wrote that.

[PoachedSausage]

I agree that it ought to be that way, however those with power tend to want to hang on to it. How do you solve it? The US has a term limit for the President, but you can stay in Congress/Senate/Parliament for life if re-elected.

[Melting_Harps]

> but you can stay in Congress/Senate/Parliament for life if re-elected.

It gets even worse when you look at the actual approval ratings and re-election numbers, this a system created to serve career politicians and nothing more. When you see the approval rating is in the lows 30s, abut approval rates are in the 90s, something is definitely wrong as in need of a massive correction.

Andrew Yang found this out the hard way and his lobbying efforts in Washington to help get the 2nd stimulus checks approved can be pretty much summed up as congress was oblivious that the People needed further financial assistance. That is how far detached they are from reality, I think this recent stunt pulled in the capital by blind ideologues served as a warning to how fast things can devolve.

The US experiment showed great promise and had amazing prospects for a desirable model that Human Civilization could aspire and achieve, but much like its predecessor (Rome) it too decayed into oblivion due to the inherit and predictable fact that power corrupts. Human's cannot to be trusted with such power and to believe otherwise is to fall back on to this absurd notion of a chiefton caste system, that really on serves the upper tier of Society and creates a poorly incentivized system that ensures by the time you're even a possible candidate you're already so marred by the corruption you're just as bad as you what you wanted to change.

I really do want things to get better, not just in the US, but on the entire Earth as we have such a limited window of opportunity to live up to our potential as Species; but so long as we abide by these whimsical make-believe popularity contests--with people we frankly couldn't or wouldn't leave our pets under even the most dire circumstance--who then in turn act as the arbiters of everything aspect in Life that matters and use the pubic purse for personal largess we will always succumb to the same result.

Software engineers at FAANG really should be working on a protocol of governance that automates all the decision making congress could and would do with it's priority on rolling out a proper beta in the next 5 years, that could actually be suitable challenge for them to redeem their squandering talents and skills instead building this horrible panopitcon.

Remember, those rabid Q-anon/conspiracy guys are just as much your fault as they are Trumps/Fox news when you look at what most of you people do everyday. And it isn't until they do something as stupid as they did this week that it becomes obvious to those who did it.

But, hey: it's just money, right?

[tsimionescu]

> Software engineers at FAANG really should be working on a protocol of governance that automates all the decision making congress could and would do

Technocracy is much worse than even representative democracy. We could barely even imagine the horrors that would come from being subject to laws generated by rigid computers.

[Melting_Harps]

> Technocracy is much worse than even representative democracy.

I never said anything about implementing, simply creating a proof of concept would be enough to show that we have tools to make them irrelevant should be enough of a deterrent effect and should in some ways ensure we don't have a repeat of 2020 again. And start to test it to the low hanging fruit: UBI and Universal medicare is is overwhelming supported by the majority of the populace, yet the regulatory capture (who themselves benefit from State issued medical care and salary even in stalemates along in with all the 'contributions' from donors and are exempt from insider trading conflicts of interest cases) refuse to even consider it on either side. Hell, even the $2000 stimulus seems to be defied yet again by this time a Democrat, Joe Manchin, despite the highly contested Republican majority in the Senate. Again, its all theater, and no one there has the best interest of the people in mind regardless of party affiliation.

There has to be some incentive here and all I'm asking is for a better stick if 'representative democracy' is to remain. Furthermore a trawler of all known conflicts of interests of every politician should appear via QR code every time they speak in the house.

We talk about how all of these jobs/Industries are going to be automated and are never coming back, but I have a very hard time understanding that the most corrupt of all (politics) is some how a given that it will remain intact. We deserve better and those in FAANG really should be self-reflective after what occurred and start asking what they could do to prevent it instead of just deplatforming, which is really the worst thing possible as it only emboldens those q-anon imbeciles into thinking they're 'being censored for telling the truth.'

Those riots we saw last year are really just waiting to happen again as we've seen that nothing has changed since then, and now the Trump factions now think they have a just cause and a martyr to back their 'cause' this really is a ticking time bomb.

[tsimionescu]

I think you're right about the problems you see, but technology is in no way near to being able to help.

Technology at this time can only be used to enact decisions that humans have taken after deliberation. We're nowhere near to creating an algorithm that could be trusted with deciding if we should go for Medicare for all or stick with the system we have (I'm absolutely in favor of the first one), to what extent speech should be censored online and how, or nay other political decision whatsoever.

We are absurdly ill equipped technically for even attempting to attack such a problem. I for one am thankful that no one is yet trying to sell such bullshit.

No machine messiah can help us - we need to get our acts together as humans and fix some of these ills.

[Melting_Harps]

> No machine messiah can help us - we need to get our acts together as humans and fix some of these ills.

Its impossible to expect the very cause of the issues, Humans, to solve an issue with any realistic timeline as we are drawing ever closer to our own collective demise as a Species.

We've proven that much: we knew about climate change since the early 2000s and did nothing it was seen to adversely effect the economy, we knew about the dangers of nuclear plants like Fukushima in 2011 and did nothing and now it continues to spill nuclear waste into the Pacific unabated while Japan plans for the Olympics, we knew about our over reliance on fossil fuels and pesticides but our voracious and seemingly insatiable need to consume cheap trinkets from the China and reliance on nutrient deficient and processed foods that made the CCP and Big Pharma even more powerful and did nothing.

No, I think its clear tech may not be the entire answer (Human conduct is ultimately dependent on free will and compliance) but is the only thing that scales enough to align certain incentives in such a way to actually make progress, we just need to iterate in such way that we start from low hanging fruit on to more important substantial policies.

And that in turn means phasing out the Nation State model as that seems to be the source for most of these problems.

[tsimionescu]

Then the answer is extinction. Current tech is completely incapable of even attempting to help. We may as well try to solve the issue of governance with steam engines or the wheel - they're as close to being helpful as any other tech we have today.