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"I've heard many times that although democracy is an imperfect system, we somehow always muddle through. The message I want to give you, after long and hard reflection, is that I'm very much afraid it is no longer possible to muddle through. The issues we deal with do not lend themselves to that kind of treatment. Therefore, I conclude that our democracy must grow up. I'm not going to give you a magic recipe on how that will happen—I wish I had one—but I offer some thoughts that I hope will stimulate your thinking.
What's principally lacking on the federal scene, it seems to me, is the existence of respected, nonpartisan, interdisciplinary teams that could at least tell us what is possible and something about the pluses and minuses of different solutions. Take energy, for instance. What I would love to see established, with the National Academies or any other mechanism to confer respectability, is a team that will ... say, 'Okay, there are lots of suggestions around, and most of them won't work. But here are six different plans, any one of which is possible. We'll tell you what each one costs, what's good about it, what's bad about it, how dangerous it is, and what its uncertainties are.' At least each option would be a well-integrated, clearly thought-out plan. I do not trust democracy to try to put together such a plan by having each committee of Congress choose one piece of it. Suppose Congress designed an airplane, with each committee designing one component and an eleventh-hour conference committee deciding how the pieces should be put together. Would you fly on that airplane? I am telling you we are flying on an energy plan, an inflation plan, and so on that are being put together in exactly that way.
Unfortunately the original 1980 article that this was excerpted from is paywalled.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @06:05PM
This is the same Utopian Progressive nonsense that we have fought for a century. There are no 'disinterested' academics who can provide 'the facts', only different groups of political partisans, one of which is trying to skip the normal political arena by getting themselves declared 'the experts.' Even if we could all agree on the facts, even if we could all agree on which facts were important to the issue at hand, it still doesn't solve our problem.
Currently we have two or more utterly opposed philosophical systems who do not even agree on what "good" and "evil" are. They do not agree on what the goals are. No possible board of experts can solve this problem.
The sausage making we see in Congress is the attempt of both sides to get enough done to win reelection. But it isn't Democrats vs Republicans. It is Congress united as the Uniparty vs the voters. Different members adopt differing positions based on what will get them reelected. Ignore the party label, a Congresscritter from IA supports ethanol subsidies, one with a big military base in their district supports keeping it open and probably supports expanding it. But no big problem can be solved while Congress, as a body, wants one set of goals and the majority of the voters want something completely different. And of course while significant (often majorities in a district) want wildly different things. We no longer have any sort of consensus on what basic direction is best.
Which is why I so often say this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot (or at least really warm), so we can get resolution on the question. Because until that happens we remain paralyzed and incapable of action. And after that big throwdown the Libertarians probably want a go at the survivor.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:01PM
this fight between Americans and Progressives
Those aren't mutually exclusive.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday January 01 2017, @07:15PM
You don't believe people, whether in academia or not, can sometimes be impartial, and can sometimes find and report the facts without political bias? The record of progress in the sciences is a gigantic rebuttal to that overly cynical assertion.
> this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot
WTF? That's your means of solving this dilemma? Force? Might is right?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:22PM
Yep! jmorris is the first name that comes to my mind when I think "political theory" and "without bias"! I mean, the whole "not a democracy" thing is such a new and searing insight, not some hackneyed point that has been bandied about by the forces of evil since the establishment of American Constitutional Democracy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 01 2017, @10:45PM
Yeah J-Mo has one thing in common with his oogedy-boogedy nightmare man Marx, and that is that both of them are born critics :) Which is to say, while they may be insightful about pointing out what's gone wrong, for the love of Cthulhu, do NOT listen to their proposed solutions!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:37PM
> this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot
WTF? That's your means of solving this dilemma?
And your solution is? We have two groups who want utterly incompatible things and now that the Right has found its balls again, neither side is likely to submit without blood. Somebody has to lose, to be willing to revise their victory conditions. This is worse than the 1850s where it was basically just a single issue dividing the country, now it is basically everything. The two primary groups can't even agree on basic morality, on the purpose of government, what each thinks "progress" even is.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @12:12AM
now that the Right has found its balls again,
I thought the right found balls when it started teabagging them? Am I wrong? There was a whole Dick Armey of them, at some point. And, jmorris, you evil fuck, are you supporting the Dylan Roof or Charles Manson model for the decisive action that will provoke the coming conflict? Perhaps Harper's Ferry? You lost, jmorris, you just haven't realized it yet. Yes, the South will lose again!!!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @06:18AM
The right found its balls all right; they're spread out on the right's collective face, as the right cracks its own ribcage to bend over far enough to deepthroat itself.
Christ, you never mentally made it out of junior high's locker rooms, did you? Sit down and shut the fuck up and let actual rational adults handle this. You're insane, not just an asshole like Uzzard but actually insane. We've seen what your way of doing things leads to. You try to dress it up with big words and witty retorts and pseudo-profound quotes, but your facade cracks every few posts and we get a glimpse of the wild-eyed lava-faced maniac under the surface.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:15PM
Someone predicted that he's a Russian shill, wouldn't be too surprising to me. His posts support the worst ideas and would likely lead to civil war. Sounds pretty good to a Russian spook I'm sure.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @10:45PM
He hasn't got the intelligence or the coherence. No, this is one of our good ol' boys, probably a bit inbred and definitely a bit nuts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday January 02 2017, @12:27AM
The record of progress in the sciences is a gigantic rebuttal to that overly cynical assertion.
Not at all. There is almost no political or economic consequence to whether or not string theory is a scientific theory, or naming another species of beetle. But once there is such consequence then we get the usual biases. This record of progress in science happens despite that bias, not because it doesn't exist.
Economics, for example, is notorious for being corrupted and biased by real world interests. It still manages to make progress despite those obstacles.
this fight between Americans and Progressives needs to go ahead and go hot
I have to roll my eyes at that one too. What benefits would there be to a "hot fight"? The charm of the modern democratic systems are that they allow people of quite different viewpoints to work together. Peoples' beliefs and self-interests aren't going to resolve through escalation of conflict. It'll resolve through experience and compromise, finding out what works and fails.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:20AM
fuck me khallow, just when i think i finally got you pegged (no giggling at the back there!) you come out with this. you almost restore my faith in humanity.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @06:13AM
Who are you and what have you done with the real KHallow?! ...please tell me you shot him through the brain stem and dumped the body in a wood chipper a la Fargo.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @03:34PM
Economics isn't a science. Don't muddy the issue by trying to lump it in with the sciences.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 03 2017, @01:40AM
Economics isn't a science.
The obvious rebuttal is that it checks off all the boxes:
The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02 2017, @04:18PM
Hmm the shills are playing off each other! What does this meeeean??