this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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67
What can we do to re-shape society for the better? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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If top of the society is immoral psychopaths with power, and most of the society is composed of people with good intentions, then there is not much hope for "beta uprising" until things go way beyond point of recovery, because powerful psychopaths will not let their power get taken away.

Not sure if this is just evolutionary biology, but this cycle of psychopaths at the top has been going on since when, at least ancient Egypt. And in all these thousands of years, the system that enables this cycle got way more reinforced than it got dismantled.

So is it maybe better idea to put benevolent people's energy towards designing and preparing a new societal system that will have built-in mechanisms for preventing corruption and malevolence? "prepare" as in get ready to implement for when the current messed up system is about to grind to a halt and collapse? Well, it would be best to figure out how to go full Benevolent Theseus™ by replacing parts of currently failing system with the corruption-proof ones.

What are some resources related to this topic? Recearch on societal dynamics, designing political systems, examples of similar revolutions that already happened, etc. Post any links that you consider relevant

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Have y'll tried letting the smart people make decisions?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is called "technocracy", and while it's cool on paper, it leads to a disconnect between the people in charge and the actual problems of the people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

The Simpsons showed us the flaws of this idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Agreed. The GiEC did an amazing job all these years. Too bad no one is listening to them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

And GIEC/IPCC is a consensus body that is consistently behind the curve on the science.

Imagine if we’d just listened to scientists directly. We could have gotten started on tackling climate change before the Rio conference in 1992 even took place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yup. Look at how the best-and-brightest theory worked out in the mid 20th century--e.g., the Clintons. Technocracy doesn't work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Uh, the Clintons weren’t the smartest amongst us. Smarter than some sure, and that’s a pretty low bar these days, but I lived through that era. We were not governed by our smartest, by any stretch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yup, but it's a question of whom society recognizes as smart. Bill and Hill met at Yale. They sold us a bill of good with free trade. They thought they could get away with Hillary crafting a national healthcare system, almost in secret, and that everyone would accept it b/s she's brilliant. Obama, Columbia/Harvard/Univ of Chicago, bailed out bankers, not home owners. That was a disaster.

The term, best and brightest, came into common use in describing to the Kennedy adminstration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_and_the_Brightest They really bungled Vietnam.

I don't know that we've ever been governed by the best and brightest. Sometimes I think we're governed by the most venal and greedy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

It’s objectively not, though?

If it were, well, that’s been explored in Idiocracy.

The point isn’t that we should give the reins to the “smartest”, but the actual smartest, for a change.