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There are people who believe that the political polarization now afflicting the United States might finally start to subside if Americans of both parties could somehow become more empathetic. If you're one of these people, the American Political Science Review has sobering news for you.
Last week APSR—one of the alpha journals in political science—published a study[$] which found that "empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity in the electorate and in some respects even exacerbates it."
The study had two parts. In the first part, Americans who scored high on an empathy scale showed higher levels of "affective polarization"—defined as the difference between the favorability rating they gave their political party and the rating they gave the opposing party. In the second part, undergraduates were shown a news story about a controversial speaker from the opposing party visiting a college campus. Students who had scored higher on the empathy scale were more likely to applaud efforts to deny the speaker a platform.
It gets worse. These high-empathy students were also more likely to be amused by reports that students protesting the speech had injured a bystander sympathetic to the speaker. That's right: According to this study, people prone to empathy are prone to schadenfreude.
This study is urgently important—though not because it's a paradigm shifter, shedding radically new light on our predicament. As the authors note, their findings are in many ways consistent with conclusions reached by other scholars in recent years. But the view of empathy that's emerging from this growing body of work hasn't much trickled down to the public. And public understanding of it may be critical to shifting America's political polarization into reverse somewhere between here and the abyss.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday November 11 2019, @09:13PM (16 children)
Unfortunately, it's worse than that. It's a system design problem, and the current system is inherently biased towards two parties.
Additionally, it has recently been proven that even under a system of guaranteed fair trades and no variation in trading ability and equal start, over time economic wealth will tend to be accumulated first by an oligarchy and then by a single entity. Naturally, no actual system has these qualities, so they needed to be show via a simulation model, but given the model with those characteristics, that was the result. And even a minor initial advantage resulted in a quicker outcome of that result.
Please note that this model was designed so that there was no variation in ability, and various tests of edge cases only altered initial access to resources.
In other words, a genuine free market will inevitably lead to a monopoly, even with no cheating or taking other advantage of the monopoly. (The model guaranteed that all trades would always be considered fair by both parties.)
So you don't need to postulate "evil actions" on the part of monopolistic entities to get the result of increasingly dominant monopolies. Of course, "evil actions" can act to increase the speed of convergence.
The modelers decided that the 1950's US economic policy was about the best that was practical. That wasn't proven, though. And the source that I read didn't say which year in the 1950's, so there's a lot of plausible variation.
This matters because economic dominance is used to decide political policies. And the point is you don't need to assume "crooked politicians" to get bad results from that. People who just want to insist that they have the right to make a fair trade are sufficient to produce that result.
Now every political theory that I've looked at has severe problems, which tend to be ignored by the partisans. Instant Runoff Voting tends to eliminate the lack of minority viewpoint represented by the "two party system", otherwise know as "first past the post", but it you think that's a solution to all problems you're lacking insight. Consider the current mess in Britain, where there are about 5 political parties represented in Parliament. (Someone with more practical experience with an IRV system could probably retail some quite horrendous problems.) Most political theories are so bad that nobody ever really tries to put them into practice. (E.g., I don't believe there's ever been a Marxist government on a national scale. Other forms of communism can work on a local scale, and have, repeatedly, in the past, but they don't tend to survive large amounts of external trade without the presence of a charismatic leader.)
So. I'm not convinced that Democracy can scale to large nations with fast communication. So far it doesn't seem to, but possibly there is some revision of the laws that would make it possible. And certainly it often fails on a local scale unless there is an external force ensuring that it doesn't. Perhaps the problem is that it just always needs that external force, and that's why nation level versions seem to degenerate into oligarchies or tyrannies.
HOWEVER, even if there were a "genuine democracy" working, it would still have to deal with the problem that when most people don't want to accept an urgent problem as being real, it can't solve the problem. And when they want to insist on an unworkable solution to an existing situation, there will be an attempt to enforce that unworkable solution.
Crooked politicians don't necessarily make things worse. They may, but they may also be the only possible way to deal with some problems. It's the system design that's the basic problem.
FWIW, I've gotten so cynical about the current system that I think we'd get better results by making a huge bag of all the names of "qualified" candidates (this had better include well over half the population) and drawing office holders at random. Clearly power would need to be decentralized, but it already needs to be decentralized. That is one of the real problems with the current system in every government I've looked at.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 11 2019, @09:54PM (4 children)
Only if commoditisation is taken to an impossible theoretical extreme (all suppliers' goods are equally available to all consumers, which would be an unstable equilibrium).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:53AM (3 children)
Sorry, but that "only" needs justification. I'll grant that only the theoretical case was proven, but the general mechanism appears quite robust. And, in fact, in every existing system that I know of, the leverage wielded by those with more power at the start of examination is used to tilt the balance more in their favor. This has been widely observed previously. The new part of the result was that even fair trades tend to favor those with more access to resources.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:16PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:46PM (1 child)
What they show is that given reasonable presumptions, dominance develops into monopoly even with fair trades being required (and obeyed). And that normal deviations from fair trades increase the rate at which dominance develops into monopoly, i.e. sole control. And that this holds all the way from a random deviation at the initial state through total dominance.
Deviations from the model where only some entities have access to certain resources would increase the rate of development of monopolies, but *might* lead to multiple different monopolies. (As far as I know the model didn't address that point, and the requirement that all trades be fair might reasonably lead to that result. Of course, in the real world the requirement that trades be fair doesn't exist, at least not as they defined fair. [Is "Give me all your money and I won't shoot you" a fair trade? If not why not? But they didn't allow coercive trades.])
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:36PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday November 11 2019, @09:58PM (5 children)
Well, I guess it depends on what you think the root cause is.
All politics will always be a mess since humans are involved so the question is what system manages that best.
So, if you think the root cause of the current crop of issues is CAUSED by the stranglehold of two parties then having five parties is automatically an improvement. I tend to think it is a root cause because two entrenched parties rarely need to compromise to wield power whereas a British style parliamentary system REQUIRES it. So I'm a supporter of electoral reform like IRV.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:56AM
The IRV is an improvement, but it doesn't solve the problems, or rather it solves one set of problems and introduces another set. (They may be lesser, of course.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:48AM (3 children)
Actually with a Westminster type Parliamentary system, compromise depends on whether the government has a majority or minority (assuming party discipline so they vote as a block). And even with a minority, compromise doesn't have to happen. Here in Canada, we just elected a minority. No one can afford another election right now and the 4 progressive parties are united in not wanting the right wing party to form government. They'll be some compromise but not enough and the real problem is the right wingers are flipping out and making unreasonable claims on compromise, namely do it our way with just over a third of the votes or we'll break up the country.
It's hard to compromise when one side wants it all and puts all the blame for their failed policies along with economic bad luck on the other side with the politicians fanning the flames for more power.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 12 2019, @04:57PM (2 children)
So why can't the other 2/3 form the government instead?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:34AM (1 child)
They will, but the government is supposed to represent the whole country, which seems to be more split then ever
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:20PM
That is something that has been bothering me about U.S. politics for awhile: nobody understands how to compromise anymore. Instead now it's just about getting 50%+1 vote and just ramming through whatever you want, while telling the other 49% to go fuck themselves.
er I mean, "yay democracy"
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday November 12 2019, @07:03PM (4 children)
Decentralizing power is perceived by the forces of centralizing power as 'terrororism' or 'subversion.'
Try resisting 5g, national emergency warnings on netflix, or the national ID card, you will not be seen as a simple believer in decentralization.
Then once you succeed at decentralizing one thing, the rest of the central system sees you as cancer, not just as a problem, but the entire idea you started has to be erased so it doesn't give anyone else ideas.
It is difficult to imagine a world where someone decides to make randomly selected politicians. In a certain way it is kindof romantic, like that president Dave movie, but that is just not how power works. The miltary could always take over and then institute something like that to give the appearance of civilian leadership for propaganda purposes, but the fact of the matter is that the randomly selected people would not be up to the task, they would be looked down on by the military, not lead by their commander in farce.
I am curious why you don't see changing the finance rules as a solution? Seems a candidate can be watched closely enough for what they spend and election laws are pretty easy to change into something sensible, compared to a constitutional convention. But we have two political parties who are integrated into the state and oligarchy, and they already control how the votes are counted/tallied, in secret, by consultants something that is generally ignored.
Reversing any of their dictates on how elections are run, is difficult. And you would have to argue with a foreign countries that are infiltrating the united states by abusing our attempt at multiculturalism, and they really enjoy the obvious flaws in our system, many of which they designed themselves with their own lobbyists.
Financing and eliminating foreign interference are the first steps, that might some day lead to a ideas like your improvements but there is no direct route.
At the moment we are a lot more like the civilians in the Aliens comic series Rogue, who have a colony in the vicinity of the marine base, but when the commander goes mad, he feeds the colonists to the xenomorphs as part of his sick experimentation and plans to take over the earth. When a few marines escape the base upon learning about said sick plans, thinking they can just run to the colony for safety, they discover the colony is overrun by xenomorphs...have a bad time.
Which is to say, this centralization makes it really easy for madmen to take over, and for aliens to take over. Or an AI to take over. Or for someone to make a huge mistake. Or for war to break out between opposing lunatics(see erdogan and trump), or alien factions, we can't even see because it is so easy to present an absolutely false yet believable facade over video.
Until one day when everyone is truly asleep, and the system can just honestly declare itself a totalitarian xenarchy, and we are back where we started but with fancier phones we can't seem to detach from our heads.
Resistance is futile....
Well, not quite yet. I'm still typing aren't I?
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 12 2019, @08:27PM (3 children)
You seem to think I'm talking about "randomly selected politicians", but I'm talking about a random selection from a group consisting of over half the population. Calling everyone in that group a politician is only valid if you stretch the word beyond all useful meaning.
OTOH, your point that there's no plausible way to enact such a government is valid.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:09PM (2 children)
Fair, I didn't mean to say pre-select from random self-described politicians, I get what that the point is to get leaders who don't want to be leaders but who are called to greatness by chance from the pool of eligible.
Nowadays I would bet you that the pentagon has a list of every high school student in the country who has a propensity for leadership.
Your high school class could also be the one who decides who would be a good person to be a potential leader, they know by 12th grade who is who.
After high school everyone scatters and everything gets chaotic. This ability of high schools to represent a community and allow kids to grow up together and really know each other is what private and charter schools really attack. That way the private schools can simply be seen as the preselected group and the kids of rich kids, in my experience who are frequently cruel and arrogant, will continue to rule over faux-capitalism.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 13 2019, @05:36PM (1 child)
The high schoolers would select less than half their class as "potential leaders". I'm sure the military would do likewise.
I was thinking that it might be reasonable to eliminate people who couldn't learn to read and couldn't learn to add from the pool. Or who couldn't speak the currently dominant language. Also anyone younger than 21. (Sorry, teenagers, you haven't seen enough history yet to be properly cynical.) Something that in combination might eliminate perhaps 1/4 of the people as "not suitable".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:03AM
This leader selection algorithm, if you could screw up this algorithm for another country, you could just walk it in and take it over. The whole sheep led by wolves thing.
In my opinion, that is what israel has done to the united states through their bribery of the republican party, which you can see in the quality of our current 'leadership'.
That is what facebook allows cambridge analysitica to do on a person by person basis, the people who are the best leaders of the country should be given lives of absolute hell so that they can barely exist, and the internet makes that very possible.
I suspect the strongest potential leaders in the united states are homeless and dying in large numbers from fetanyl sold to them by whichever division of the fbi or cia is handling that sort of thing nowadays. But if you can believe the official story of 9/11 and that saddaam hussein/assad/qadafi/bagdadi/mrbean is a clear and present danger, you will get a scholarshiop to westpoint.
That clears the way for people who have no leadership qualities, trump and biden, to run amok and sell the country out further down the river, as we are seeing in the daily news.