| The problem is to gain political power you have to out compete others for money and votes. Understanding a problem, and being able to hold on to power while making the hard decisions is a classic unsolved problem in politics. But it's infinitely harder with very few (two!?!) high centralized litmus-tested groupthink political parties, incentivized to lock up power unilaterally, and marginalize the power of other parties, not skills conducive to governing. And also infinitely harder with unlimited spending by corporations (who are not citizens, and don't share the interests of citizens), where tiny groups of executives get to leverage all their companies resources toward tilting the political field in their favor, in order to get massive bonuses for feeding insatiable shareholder demand. But without reflecting any of the decency that shareholders might actually have. It's the moloch beast. The whole system is the problem, but it's near impossible to improve the system's design because it will fight that at every step. It mindlessly cares about its own survival. Which is how it came to be. Even if every single person in the system actually wants to do the hard things that will keep the planet in good shape. |