| This is very fair and I generally agree. Don't read following as a caricature/driveby, really appreciated the thought and framing and it wins out over what I'm about to say, I'm just putting my thoughts after 2 minutes musing as concisely as possible: There is something to be said for that's how stuff works today. i.e. "a complex apparatus of legal jousting and machinations by small groups of people" can be reframed from (my rewording) "confusing thing I'm excluded from" as "people who give a shit doing the work to change things" - if it was popular to get rid of food stalls in LA*, should be pretty easy, people are pretty plugged in these days There's the impossible extreme of "we live poll everything all the time", and you've made me really curious about a shift in that direction looks like. * it wouldn't be, they're not, like, disheveled people slaving over a stove with unclearly sourced hot dogs. Generally, juice and fruit outside park entrance, ethnic food under tent next to sidewalk, miniature hot dog stand at sporting event. If someone said something like they did in real life, you'd ignore it because it's fringe, or, tell them to move to Newport Beach (ritzy suburb). Even just ~15 years ago, in Buffalo, it was perfectly polite to say "sounds like you should move to the suburbs." |
I think there's much less to be said for that than we currently are trying to say for it. :-)
> "a complex apparatus of legal jousting and machinations by small groups of people" can be reframed from (my rewording) "confusing thing I'm excluded from" as "people who give a shit doing the work to change things"
Maybe to some extent, but overall I think not really. The thing is that the people working to change things are not, as far as I can see, actually working to find out what people want and then do that. Instead there are different groups each working to implement what they want, and it is a matter of who shouts the loudest and fights the hardest.
> There's the impossible extreme of "we live poll everything all the time", and you've made me really curious about a shift in that direction looks like.
Yeah that's a direction I think we should move in. I mean not exactly live poll, but the point is I think policy decisions should be structurally much more anchored to people's desires on individual issues. Right now our political system is mostly "vote for someone and then live with whatever they decide for two years". Representative democracy makes sense but increasingly it seems the perspectives and incentives of the representatives are out of sync with those of the citizenry. I think there should be a healthy role for direct democracy, a way for people to override or modify the representatives' decisions, basically saying "I may still be okay with you representing me, but you were wrong on this issue so we're going to change that one."
> they're not, like, disheveled people slaving over a stove with unclearly sourced hot dogs. Generally, juice and fruit outside park entrance, ethnic food under tent next to sidewalk, miniature hot dog stand at sporting event.
Well, maybe, but that too is a decision that should be based on what people actually want. Like maybe people are okay with the stands in certain locations, certain types of foods (e.g., meat vs. fruit), certain numbers of stands, whatever, but not others. And if that's the case it is those preferences of the population that should be aggregated to arrive at a decision.