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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Getting rid of apathy is the most important step. Too many people say “I’m not interested in politics”.
Politics is everything, it shouldn’t be considered as a legitimate choice to stay away from it.
Liquid democracy is a proposed way to do a direct democracy in a large country. It’s only been tried on very small scales (Google used it to decide which food to get for their cafeterias), so we don’t really know if it would work, but I like the idea.
I’d point out that there are countries which don’t have much corruption or governmental malfeasance. Nordic countries tend to score very well on the Corruption Perception Index, and also have good social safety nets and governments that (generally, for the most part) serve the people. They’re all small countries, though – I suspect that politics becomes an increasingly dirty business the more power a country has.
If you haven’t already, you might want to look into selectorate theory. It essentially shows not only how the psychopaths at the top stay in power, but also why attempts to reform the system often result in a new crop of rulers who are just as bad or worse than those they replaced. (c.f. Cromwell’s revolt, French Revolution, Russian Revolution). A proponent of selectorate theory would argue that the solution is not to remove the psychopaths – it’s to create a system where things in a politician’s selfish interest happen to line up with things that benefit the people. It’s excellently summed up by this video.
In terms of curtailing corporate power from the top down, studying the history of U.S. antitrust law would be a good place to start. Extra Credits has a good series about it.
One reform method that has worked before is unionization. The vast majority of worker protections came about because of labour action. Unions are a lot weaker than they used to be, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. If you can, unionizing your workplace is probably the most impactful action you could take to improve the existing system.
If your tastes are more radical, you could also consider mutual aid societies. A robust one could conceivably Theseus its way into failing institutions, or evolve into a provisional government if everything collapses.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Extra Credits has a good series
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Matt Stoller has a good newsletter about monopoly power https://www.thebignewsletter.com/
Liquid democracy
Isn’t it obvious this would turn into oligarchy real fast?
I don’t see it as obvious. If anything it makes it harder for vested interests to have an outsized influence, since there are no traditional politicians to bribe. What flaws do you see that I’m missing?
The proxy naming is not anonymous. In normal democracy if Elon Musk wants to buy votes he can in theory pay million people $100 each to vote the way he says that there’s no way for him to verify how they voted. I can take his money and then vote the other way. He wouldn’t know.
With digital voting systems (when those are correctly implemented) what you do is separate the vote signature from the vote’s content. I submit a encrypted vote and sing it with my certificate. It goes to system A which verifies the signatures but doesn’t have the decryption key to check how I voted. After verification the signatures are stripped and encrypted votes are moved to system B (which is air gaped). System B has the decryption key so it decrypts the votes and counts them but since it doesn’t have the signatures anymore it can’t check which vote is mine.
The proxy system cannot function as an anonymous system. Once I pass my vote to someone I also have to able to retract it. Let’s say Elon Musk has 1000 votes and I say I want to retract one. The system needs to be able to check that Elon Musk does in fact have my vote. This means that Elon can pay me for my vote and verify that he actually got it. Which means that rich people will buy votes form the poorest and have greater power than other people. Which will lead to oligarchy.
“Alpha psychopaths in power”, as you describe them, have always, and still, understand that their power exists entirely at the whim of the masses.
And so conjuring an excuse has preoccupied them since at least the dawn of history. “Ordained by god” was the go-to for several mellenia.
Now, it seems the tactic is just to manufacture division within the working class. Racism, ideological boogeymen (SOCIALISTS!!), xenophobia, rural/urban friction, and increasingly gender/sexuality, sexism… ANY way you can slice the common man into two segments and convince them that the OTHER side is bent on their destruction.
It’s great because it’s a machine that feeds itself. You see the two lines of people screaming at eachother, they manifest through their hatred the threat the other side fears.
As soon as the “betas”, as you put it, stop fighting themselves, it’s game over.
The solution is probably the least likely thing, though. People, even a small dedicated number of them, who can resist the urge to dunk on their ethically inferior “opponents”, and instead treat their “enemies” with dignity… who can view “the other” as a valuable human temporarily on the wrong side of an issue, then things can change. Daryl Davis (the black dude who keeps flipping KKK members) has it figured out.
It sucks because we have an example of how to do it (Daryl), but it’s hard. It’s slow. It isn’t funny, and it isn’t sexy. It demands so much more from you than taking a quick snipe and returning to your own echo chamber for accolades.
So yeah. The answer is plain, but our society does not actually value the efforts or skills that permit it. Possibly also by design of the ruling class.
Stop caring about intentions. Stop giving the stupid a free pass. Treat stupidity as a type of malice, and act accordingly.
I believe that this alone should be enough to address the sykos on power. Easier said than done.
Bonhoeffer says stupidity is a social thing. I mostly agree. Things didn’t turn out well for Bonhoeffer. Shoveling against the tide is exhausting.
I tend to agree with him and I think that the society where he lived is a great example of what happens when we let stupidity go rampant: Nazi Germany was a stupidocracy.
Stupid people will treat that as hostility and shut off their reasoning. That’s unfortunately how humans work - question their beliefs, and they will believe even harder and attack you for even hinting that their beliefs are wrong.
Sects are the obvious example of that behavior, but on smaller scales, we are all a bit like that.
The stupid already treat random shit as hostility, and they already shut off their reasoning (otherwise they wouldn’t be stupid). So there’s no change in that.
I believe that you’re right, when you say that we [humans in general] are all a bit like that. Even then, we’re fairly flexible - we only behave like morons when we get away with it.
How on earth would you decide who is stupid? And why are you the one to judge everybody’s intelligence? Fuck off fascist
Read the rest of the comment chain. As I already said, you don’t need to decide which sort of behaviour is stupidity or not; you just stop trying to decide what’s “intentional”.
In no moment I said or even implied that I shall be “the one to judge”. So stop making shit up.
And no, I am not fascist. Again, stop making shit up.
Also, you’re being a great example of what I’m talking about, because odds are that you’re full of “good intentions” behind your little witch hunt, but you’re effectively contributing with fascists by giving them a reasonable cover and desensitising people towards the word. Just like the boy who cried wolf contributed with the wolves.
‘Stop giving the stupid a free pass’ - the kindly explain to me who are these ‘stupid’ you are referring to in your original comment?
the[n] kindly explain to me who are these ‘stupid’ you are referring to in your original comment?
That’s the same as “I just made shit up about you, but I demand you to spoonfeed me because I’m entitled.” Sorry but the world does not revolve around your belly, and I’m not wasting my time with you, go be a self-demonstrating example elsewhere.
For other posters who might be reading this: what I’m considering “stupidity” and “the stupid” is already hinted by this, this and this. I can bring up some more formal definition if someone really wants, but the point is that it should not matter - take off “intentions” from the equation when handling people, stop giving people a free pass to cause harm because “oh no, that person is stupid, not malicious”.
No, I don’t let you off your self-constructed hook so easily.
From your other comments I can thus read:
- the intellectually disabled are not considered to be among the stupid (I wonder whether that includes people on the spectrum as that would luckily leave me out of your ideas of sanitizing society
- stupid seems to have to do with people’s behaviour being harmful towards others. Why of all available terms
That’s not sufficient information to start persecuting other people. And I don’t care if you cook up the definition of who is stupid all by yourself or if it’s you plus a select group of pseudo-enlightened friends. The underlying idea is ‘remove people who show unwanted behaviour’ - and I think that approach to running a society has a name.
Guillotine all the billionaires and redistribute all their wealth. That’s an important first step
That’s like cutting off the top layer of the skin cancer without addressing the underlying causes.
It’s a fun “fuck the man” statement that’s worse than worthless because it makes solutions seem like they need to be radical without actually proposing a real solution.
It’s been done before. How did that work out for Russia? Or China? Or anywhere else that the rich died at the hands of the poor?
What happened was that corruption was always the underlying cancer and it never actually went away, it just changed around what organ it infected as one was cut out and replaced by another.
Want to see billionaires lose all their wealth? Create a labor backed “proof of work” currency system they can’t buy into and stop considering their money to have value. No blades required. Just pay taxes on estimated profits so you play by the rules. What happens to a billionaire when the dollar value of a gallon of milk goes through the roof but the labor value for it remains constant?
Corruption loves to live among middlemen. And we live in an age where most middlemen can be cut out of transactions. And within the decade that’s going to be even easier.
What do you think is going to happen when open sourced AI lawyers can generate legal paperwork for cents on a dollar? How much does that benefit Walmart, who already have teams of lawyers on retainer? How does that help the people who work at Walmart? Or the local grocer they are trying to put out of business with unfair competition practices?
Transactional costs are about to go to shit. And with that in mind, I would encourage anyone here to read the economic paper from a century ago “the nature of the firm” positioning the entire existence of the mega corporation as worthwhile based on the existence of high transactional costs.
Corporations and billionaires are already screwed beyond measure. It’s just no one’s realized it yet because the Jenga tower still has pieces left so everyone points at the monolith and exclaims how it’s going to still be around for as long as it’s been standing.
Violent revolution is pointless and just going to set back the conditions for their own demise that the capitalist prisoner’s dilemma of competition is about to deliver.
Don’t sharpen a guillotine. Become better friends with your neighbors and network online with labor in the same sector to prepare for what’s ahead.
The chips are falling into place. I just hope people at large aren’t so caught up in their own BS that they pass up the opportunity that’s going to present, as I’m not sure there will ever be another like it.
I gotta admit…
Begin teaching media literacy and critical thinking skills in schools.
And budgets in home economics
The fact that a vast majority will ignore this discussion, is the same reason why most people will not organise towards a cause.
I have little hope in individuals.
Given up entirely, or are you hoping we all join a hive mind to solve our problems?
I believe that the massive scale of corruption that exists within the capitalist system necessitates rebuilding from the ground up. Part of the solution is going to be intentional communities (I hope anyway) where we’re building communities with the intention of solving some of these large scale problems (scarcity, pollution, racial injustice, etc) in the community. There’s a collection of already existing communities on ic.org where you can find resources on how to build a community or where to find them. There’s every flavor of community whether you’re looking for a commune, a spiritual community, an eco-friendly community, permaculture, etc.
Have y’ll tried letting the smart people make decisions?
Yup. Look at how the best-and-brightest theory worked out in the mid 20th century–e.g., the Clintons. Technocracy doesn’t work.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed. The GiEC did an amazing job all these years. Too bad no one is listening to them.
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Organize labor.
Evolve labor strikes from the dark ages with guerilla tactics.
In every company I’ve ever consulted for, there were bottlenecks where a handful of people in key roles not showing up to work would tank the entire operation.
Why the hell are we still striking with everyone walking out instead of everyone clocking in and getting paid and funneling money to keep key roles empty as the coffers burn while revenue drops and payroll still runs?
Why are strikes so often per-company (or worst per-store) instead of per-industry?
In the digital age organization is theoretically much easier than it has ever been.
And yet labor is still playing with the 1920s playbook while corporate is hiring specialized modern talent to combat it.
What about seizing the means of production?
Look at the actors strike, whining about studios using AI to replace them.
Why the hell aren’t the actor unions building their own AI platform for generative performances? It’d unquestionably be a better product working with talent than competitors ostracized by talent. Reminds me of when the MPAA fought against Napster instead of embracing the tides of change and as a result missed the boat on owning digital distribution platforms to Apple and others.
But no. People are scared of change and cling to the status quo even when that isn’t working very well for them.
Embrace change. Focus on progress. Evolve.
If the masses can do that faster and better than the boardroom (which really shouldn’t be that hard as those guys suck at embracing progress and abandoning status quo), then the masses are going to be holding the bag at the end of the changes coming.
If the masses can’t organize enough to stay ahead…
Well, we should probably all learn to enjoy eating cardboard and watching the world burn around us.
This is a question too complex for a Lemmy thread, here are some thoughts.
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Being a net positive will make things better, per difinition. That’s what everyone of us can do, regardless of what you are doing. Of course this requires a reasonable process of deciding what’s right, so take a look at the next point.
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Think. To think is naturally the greatest skill of any human. Our intelligence has been key since we started civilisation. Think about everything, be critical about any ideas. Only ideas supported by facts can be good ideas. This is how you find the stuff that makes your life worse. Does your city need to be designed like this? Does a omnipotent being make sense? Do I need to slack off today?
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Unrelated, but working together with others is beneficial to everyone. Cooperation is what got us so fary and what will bring us beyond the stars. One thing I want to point out specifically is that world federalism, albeit hard to achieve, is a worthwhile end goal.
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Go vegan!
solves nothing. you eliminate a negligible amount of carbon emissions. focusing on our individual impact is a waste of time when there are companies and their leaders doing orders of magnitude more damage.
Companies and their leaders are paid by individuals, lol. Going vegan definitely does help.
Even still, why did you only mention carbon emissions? The question was about making a better society. Did you forget that veganism is about animal rights?
Put people above animals, always and forever.
I do! But I also value animals, and consuming their dead corpses is completely unnecessary and on top of that is wasteful, hurting humans in the process.
going vegan doesn’t help animals much either. we live in an overproductive society that wastes most of what it produces anyways - even if your personal choice marginally reduces demand, the abuse is ongoing. we need systemic solutions. we need to destroy the meat industry. veganism will never be popular enough to create systemic change on its own.
How do you plan to destroy the meat industry without anyone going vegan? You realize the meat industry is funded by non-vegans, right? And tax payers, of course, who also eat meat and won’t support policy that challenges their freedom.
Destroying the meat industry isn’t going to have the beneficial impact you think it will.
Most of the food we grow we can’t eat, most of the farmland we use exclusively to support livestock isn’t suitable for anything else. These animals are eating food that is otherwise biological waste that will simply decay and contribute to carbon emissions.
I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement, I am saying elimination isn’t improvement, it only creates more problems.
This sets aside the problems created by eliminating animal fat and protein from our collective diet, which causes a health and nutrition problem on top of a pretty significant caloric deficit that again, we don’t necessarily have the agricultural land to replace.
If being vegan is your jam then more power to you, but it isn’t the answer for society’s problems.
While animals can eat waste from crops grown for humans, that’s a minority of their feed. Almost all new corn and soy cropland is cut to meet growing animal agriculture demand.
How does eliminating animal fat and protein cause health and nutrition problems? Humans are perfectly capable of living on vegan diets at all stages of life.
I think the best anyone can do is try to make life as good as possible in their mini sphere of influence, their personal bubble of friends and relationships. If everyone did that, society would be better. I’m not sure what to do about psychopaths in power. Maybe deal with the psychopaths in your personal world or aim to reduce your own personal behavior that’s harmful to others?
If CBT and DBT were taught to kids in school… man, what a change that would make. To be taught at a young age how to control thoughts, cope with stress, face emotions, communicate effectively.
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how about bigger guns?
