[HN Gopher] The bulldozer vs. vetocracy political axis ___________________________________________________________________ The bulldozer vs. vetocracy political axis Author : galfarragem Score : 131 points Date : 2021-12-20 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (vitalik.ca) (TXT) w3m dump (vitalik.ca) | saurik wrote: | What makes the axes everyone normally argues about interesting is | that people actually tend to have a "position" along them, a | property that isn't undermined by the idea that there are | numerous different axes people might choose as long as the | various resulting axes still allow you to at-least-usually place | people along them somewhere (see "Phaedrus's knife"). I thereby | challenge anyone who thinks that "bulldozer vs. vetocracy" is a | useful "political axis" (I am _not_ arguing that it isn 't a | useful distinction or even terminology, only that it isn't a | "political axis" comparable to any of the others presented in | this article) to answer the question of where Vitalik--someone | who explicitly tries to argue in this very article that | blockchain consensus layers should be a vetocracy (which, _by the | way_ , I would argue isn't actually true in a useful way of | Ethereum itself, but that's an entirely separate rant) but that | application layers should actively support bulldozers--falls | along his own axis, because it would seem like he is a clear | disproof of his own mental model. I will assert an actually | _useful_ "political axis" would need to have this I'm-betting- | extreme _mix of positions_ on one side and _something in | opposition to Vitalik_ on the other. | assbuttbuttass wrote: | The political compass comparison threw me off at the beginning, | but this piece actually has some good points. | epistasis wrote: | I like this axis a lot, and think that it is probably the most | important political axis at this moment in history (where I give | great weight to my local and state politics, and to international | concerns like climate change and global pandemic). | | BUT I really hate the term "bulldozer" for the opposite of | vetocracy, because bulldozers destroy and flatten, they do not | build interesting and useful things. They might make room for | something useful, but they may bulldoze something and leave it | empty. | | I'd prefer the term "Do-ocracy" in opposition to "vetocracy." Do | I have the licenses to do things on my own, or is everything | forbidden until explicitly approved by the vast majority of | interested parties? That's the key concern that affects all sorts | of governance from large corporations to startups to political | organizations to actual zoning laws. | ip26 wrote: | Autonomo-cracy? | | _Carte blanche_ seems like the appropriate descriptor, but | impossible to shoe-horn in. | hammock wrote: | There is a brilliant, literal bulldozer story about Chicago's | lost third airport. | | For years there was a busy and successful commercial airport in | downtown Chicago right on Lake Michigan. At some point Mayor | Daley decided he wanted it closed for his own agenda, but no | one else would let it happen. | | So, in the middle of one dark night in 2003, he got some | contractor cronies to go out there and bulldoze the runway, | damaging it beyond repair. This forced the closing of the | airport. | | >Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley forced the closing of Meigs in | 2003 by ordering the overnight bulldozing of its runway without | notice, in violation of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) | regulations. | | To this day, the site of the former airport is an undeveloped | "natural preserve" and most Chicagoans have no idea that it | used to be somewhere they could fly out of. | | Funny story. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field | vilhelm_s wrote: | Oh wow, that used to be the default starting airport in | Microsoft Flight Simulator, I must have taken off from it a | million simulated times as a kid... | lenzm wrote: | It's not undeveloped, there's a park and music venue there | now. I don't think it is a leap to say it is now used by many | more Chicagoans than the airport for private jets ever was, | even if most Chicagoans are unaware. | a9h74j wrote: | Daley's midnight move: Truly an example of "creative" | destruction. | | Today instead of X's the bulldozers could have engraved an | acronym, and he could have argued it was for an immediate | good cause. | meheleventyone wrote: | Isn't the point that they could potentially do either and its | any third-party concerns that get flattened? | | So something more like a permissive-cracy. | skybrian wrote: | I think it's reasonable because bulldozers are often used to | level the ground when something large is built. | | Also, the other end of the axis is also a negative term, so | it's balanced. | neilk wrote: | I understand where you're coming from, but in my experience, | "Do-ocracy" implies a kind of passive consensus mechanism. | Let's say we all have collective ownership of a garden, and | it's starting to need weeding, but nobody's taken the | initiative to fix it yet. In do-ocratic fashion, someone | announces that this coming Sunday is Weeding Party day, and | that catalyzes action. | | It's tricky. "Weeding Party Day" will succeed if everyone has | been made to see this is desirable, and if the person has | charisma or a track record or seems well organized. But it's a | dance between collective will and individual will. | | With "bulldozery" I think Vitalik is describing an extreme case | where some entity is completely unfettered. A dictator decides | it's Weeding Party day, or an all-powerful council, or even a | single individual goes and pays for a weeding crew and reaps | the rewards themselves. So at this extreme point we find | everything from The Great Leap Forward to the enclosure of the | commons by capitalists or the seizing of lands by colonists. | | Action and will for its own sake have long been associated with | fascism; many people long for a strongman to clear away all the | objections to "greatness". But the tendency exists in all kinds | of people, I think, it's just that their desires for sweeping | reform aren't as violent. | novok wrote: | I think bulldozer is a great term, because it also captures the | 'creative destruction' that occurs when the new better thing | replaces the old thing, like google replacing altavista / | yahoo, facebook replacing myspace and so on, the iPhone | replacing the iPod for the most part and so on. | | Also all the other terms I've heard so far are not catchy. | Pxtl wrote: | The idea is that bulldozers bash through obstacles. You could | also use a battering ram as metaphor. The point is that they | get crap done regardless of what's in the way. | | Some red tape exists for good reasons. We always have to | balance thalidomide vs housing crisis. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | I definitely would put myself far on the "just do stuff" side | of the spectrum, but I think it's fair that the names for both | sides identify what opponents might not like. "Bulldozer" is a | very apt name, because one of the key arguments in favor of | local veto points is the big urban projects of the mid 20th | century, when lots of interesting and useful neighborhoods were | flattened to build highway interchanges. | epistasis wrote: | I would also argue that it's nearly always legal to bulldoze | things, and the vetocracy doesn't really care if I bulldoze | my house. There are only a very very few jurisdictions where | demolition permits are an impediment. So the vetocracy is | generally just fine with bulldozers. | | It's the actual building of things that the vetocracy wants | to prevent. For example, check out this comment (whose | factual basis is quite low based on my knowledge) which I | think is great example of the vetocracy. If the luxury condos | in SOMA were bulldozed, that would probably be a good result | in their eyes! | | > The housing market example is bizarre, because if you go | look at San Francisco, the entire area of SOMA is dominated | by skyscrapers and luxury condos that are 90% vacant. Office | buildings are going vacant at an accelerated rate. Salesforce | Tower has never managed to fill up on tenants. We don't need | to build new housing, we just need to actually price the ones | we do have so people can afford them. Stop bulldozing stuff | built less than 20 years ago to replace it with even more | shoddily built stuff you can sell for even higher margins. We | already have the homes, just let people live in them. | Swizec wrote: | Judging office tower vacancy during a mass pandemic that | encourages work from home seems harsh. | | And the salesforce tower is only 3 years old. It takes time | to fill those up. | | The original WTC took 30 years (early 2000's) to achieve | full occupancy[1]. The new WTC was at 90% right before the | pandemic, 6 years after opening[2] | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_(1973%E | 2%80... | | 2: https://www.breakinglatest.news/world/the-occupancy- | rate-of-... | AnthonyMouse wrote: | We could use the terms conservative and progressive, but then | someone's head might explode when Bitcoin gets called a | progressive attack on conservative institutions. | davidw wrote: | Interesting idea. I would quibble a bit with some of the stuff | around zoning. There are tons of left-wing places like San | Francisco that have an enormous amount of zoning and regulation | around building homes - including areas where it's not legal to | build anything other than single family units. | | One of the things I've found a bit refreshing about the YIMBY | movement is that it is not really on one side of our political | "trenches" - things like abortion or guns where the lines are | drawn and you can mostly predict how someone votes by their party | affiliation. Means there is a bit of room for some alliances - | and also that people of your same party won't necessarily "have | your back". | epistasis wrote: | I think that it's important to both separate out the left/right | axis from the vetocracy axis. But also to realize that even if | one professes leftism on the National scale when it may not | affect one's significant privileges, that at the local level | that "leftism" may dissipate when it results in very real | dissipation of one's significant privileges that happen only | locally. | DarylZero wrote: | Right. Even most American leftists are much less leftist | regarding the broader "world system" into which America fits | -- compare self-professed "progressivism" to something like | Maoism-Third Worldism. | cturner wrote: | "Cryptocurrency proponents often cite Citadel interfering in | Gamestop trading as an example of the opaque, centralized (and | bulldozery) manipulation that they are fighting against." | | This has an air of mob justice to it. If enough people believe | it, that does not make it the truth. | | It is not established that Citadel interfered and they have | flatly denied all accusations. Griffin has denied it under oath. | | People who are tempted by this truthy narrative should think back | to the "flash crash" of 2010. For years, the mob treated it as | common wisdom that the event was caused by rogue high-frequency | trading. Years later it came out that the responsibility was with | (1) an unsophisticated trader interacting with a GUI who was | knowingly and regularly breaking market rules and (2) the | exchange he was operating on did not have adequate market-abuse | monitoring. | maicro wrote: | Setting aside anything else going on, thank you for bringing up | and clarifying the 2010 flash crash - I had only ever heard the | high-frequency trading theory (with a side order of "nobody | actually understands what the bots were thinking"). | will4274 wrote: | > Years later it came out [...] | | Maybe. Wikipedia has a lot more to say | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash. More than a | few folks quoted there seem to say that while this is what the | final SEC report said, it's basically ludicrous to blame an | individual and doesn't match the data very well. | armchairhacker wrote: | I think the larger issue (which Vitalik actually mentions a lot | in this article) is that crypto is also bulldozery and the same | stuff can happen. | | In fact, something very similar _did_ happen when etherium | forked after the [edit] DAO hack. | | At the end of the day, whoever has the resources has the power. | leppr wrote: | The Ethereum hard fork was in 2016 after the hack of a | project called just "DAO" [1]. | | No other on-chain event since then, including the recent | BadgerDAO hack, motivated a hard fork. | | Vitalk's article is quite precise about these subtleties, | concluding that crypto is generally vetocracy at the lower | level and bulldozer-y higher in the stack. | | [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) | Ntrails wrote: | I have explained multiple times why trading got shut down, how | robinhood got caught short of margin, how we can literally see | from released data that Citadels flows were not particularly | sided. | | Never the less, the same people who now understand what | happened continue to use it as a hill to stick an anti | establishment flag upon | nceqs3 wrote: | Meanwhile the PE firms that owned the bonds are now | converting them into equity, dumping it on retail and cashing | out. | | DUDE WE ARE STICKING IT TO THE MAN SO BAD. SILVER LAKE IS | JUST LIKE US. | dvlsadvoxate6 wrote: | bell-cot wrote: | Kinda similar is "scaling restriction" - how true it is that "you | have the right to do X" means that "you have the right to do X, | repeatedly, at scale, and/or automated". There are a whole lotta | things (from groundwater extraction to burning fallen leaves to | sending e-mails) that are pretty harmless _on a small scale_ , | but... | pessimizer wrote: | If you switch the word "disruptive" for "likely to have negative | externalities", this seems less like two descriptions of opposing | philosophies than a single way to lionize the people who support | the thing you want to do while caricaturing the people who don't | support the thing you want to do. | | 1) There's nobody who supports the idea of letting any idea be | vetoed by anyone. It's not a belief that people have. People have | a variety of ideas about how a variety of things should be | organized, and who should have standing to keep other people from | doing things. This is the entire purpose of political philosophy. | | 2) It's entirely self-serving and situational; the real | distinction is who the negative externalities will affect. | "Bulldozers" immediately become "vetoers" when somebody is | proposing something that might as a consequence keep them from | driving their bulldozers wherever they want. | | You might as well classify the world as "players" and "haters." | Players are people who let me do what I want, and haters are the | people who hate on that. | [deleted] | com2kid wrote: | > 1) There's nobody who supports the idea of letting any idea | be vetoed by anyone. It's not a belief that people have. | | No, but many existing systems of governance allow (nearly) | anyone to raise an objection, thereby delaying the decision | making process. If a concerted effort by enough "anyones" is | made, a decision can be forcefully delayed long enough that it | is essentially halted. | | For certain processes (e.g. environmental reviews in certain | states or municipalities) this entire setup is arguably by | design. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | The problem with "likely to have negative externalities" is | that if you ask whether something has negative externalities, | the answer is _always_ yes. | | If you carry on breathing, you're emitting CO2 and remain in | competition for scarce resources with anyone else who is still | alive. If you take your own life you're wasting the resources | society invested in your education and causing work for | emergency services. Both doing and not doing anything has | negative externalities. | | One of the things that has negative externalities is accounting | for negative externalities. It has transaction costs and | compliance costs and enforcement costs. | | This implies that there is a level of negative externalities | where the cost of preventing them is more than the cost of | incurring them. The key is to catch the breakeven point and not | go too far in either direction. | philips wrote: | The breathing thing is a pretty poor analogy. | | The problem with climate change is not living things | breathing. It is the insertion of net new carbon into our | carbon cycle by digging it out of the ground and burning it. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | Not so. You ate food to make that CO2. If you had buried it | underground instead, that carbon would have remained | sequestered instead of reentering the atmosphere. | | It's a good example precisely to show that you can spin | anything into a negative externality by comparing it to | some possible alternative which is better on some possible | metric. Then if you want to show that the other alternative | is worse, choose a different metric. No thing exists which | is more perfect than all other things across all metrics. | marginalia_nu wrote: | > There's nobody who supports the idea of letting any idea be | vetoed by anyone. | | Well, between IBM and Poland-Lithuania, it's not like liberum | veto hasn't been tried (with moderate intermediate success and | long-term problems as a result). | cblconfederate wrote: | Or, capitalism vs the EU | | I don't think it s a valid axis though because it doesn't | encompass most of the political spectrum. It describes only 2 | flavors of liberarianism, one is completely individualist, and | the other is slightly less so in an attempt to build consensus. | Also, what are the intermediate points? | guerrilla wrote: | I was prepared to be annoyed, but I think this might have | actually contributed something. In political science, there are | many axes/spectrums to grade things on and even more ways to | quantify them, but I haven't actually heard of this one | specifically yet. Big fan of the whimsical naming too :) | | Also, I love the idea meta-political compass... As someone who's | been on Twitter, yeah, that's a thing. We need a meta-meta- | political compass now though. Let's fractal this. | HPsquared wrote: | The 100-dimensional political model | https://youtu.be/UuopBeaUN24 | | (Satire... I think) | dragonwriter wrote: | > In political science, there are many axes/spectrums to grade | things on and even more ways to quantify them, but I haven't | actually heard of this one specifically yet. | | Inventing political axes is an easy polisci game. Pick any | political phenomenon, now take its negation or inversion, boom, | political axes. | | Descriptively meaningful political axes are derived from | empirical measurement of political behavior within a domain of | analysis, but most proposed political axes aren't intended to | be descriptively meaningful, they are tools for advocacy. | js8 wrote: | IMHO this distinction is just conservative vs liberal. | | Honestly, I am not a fan of political compass, I think there are | three independent dimensions based on three major moral values: | | - conservativism (value of authority and cultural preservation) | | - liberalism (value of individual freedom and meritocratic | progress) | | - socialism/progressivism (value of equal participation in | society and democracy) | | Each of these gives a worldview and a way to address equality, | freedom, justice, authority; and each suggests what societal and | economic institutions should look like. They can be also | combined, they are not always contradictory. And each system has | its own "vice" - type of selfish corruption. | | Left vs right has shifted through history, originally it was | liberalism+socialism against conservativism, slowly liberalism | was coopted by the right instead. | | That's why the OP's axis is a tension between conservative and | liberal, because it is missing from political compass. But it was | always present in capitalism (in fact Marx described it as | capital accumulation - liberals who accrue property thanks to | "merit" become conservative incumbents). | twic wrote: | > Of course, "authoritarian vs libertarian" and "left vs right" | are both incredibly un-nuanced gross oversimplifications. | | Right, but they aren't chosen at random. These are the two axes | which empirically fall out if you do principal component analysis | on people's policy beliefs: | | http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20050415-my_country... | | Whereas Vitalik's axes are pulled directly out of, at best, thin | air. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | Isn't that just "wet streets cause rain"? | | Once you tell people that one tribe is the Left and the other | is the Right and they choose one to align with, they're | inclined to pick up its other positions out of tribal loyalty. | That doesn't mean they're actually principled policy groupings. | They're just how a coalition shakes out when you need 50%+1 to | win. | Jasper_ wrote: | The housing market example is bizarre, because if you go look at | San Francisco, the entire area of SOMA is dominated by | skyscrapers and luxury condos that are 90% vacant. Office | buildings are going vacant at an accelerated rate. Salesforce | Tower has never managed to fill up on tenants. We don't need to | build new housing, we just need to actually price the ones we do | have so people can afford them. Stop bulldozing stuff built less | than 20 years ago to replace it with even more shoddily built | stuff you can sell for even higher margins. We already have the | homes, just let people live in them. | | "Bulldoze or not" is not a helpful axis, because it implies that | the new stuff will be better. But that's not a given, and I'm | very suspicious to trust the people who built apartments which | are 90% empty. The analogy also helpfully applies to blockchain | technology. | kurthr wrote: | I learned something early this year from a friend in the | finance industry. Part of the reason you find so many empty | overpriced new apartments/condos/commercial is that they are | written into the loan... and if even a single unit is | rented/sold below the rate that was contracted the entire loan | has to be renegotiated/paid within the year. If you're | speculating on price increases, there's no reason to rent any | of them. | | Frankly, when there is so much empty space the desire for | increased building, higher density, and reduced code | requirements just looks like what builder/speculators want... | not what will increase actual affordable housing for people | with jobs (who need to get there somehow). The whole 22 bus | line as a "Transit Corridor" is a joke that lets developers use | public space for private profit... the Safeway parking lot is | already half full at 3am and apparently they're planning to | start charging for it! | | Why not just do what Vancouver did and put an annual fee on | empty (no renter on taxes, resident owner on taxes, or going | concern on rolls) residential/commercial to curb speculation? | Because the developers who fund local politicians would lose | money. Further, they would threaten the politicians with "no | one will ever build here again because of these fees!". | Jasper_ wrote: | i do not give a shit if the developers who make houses people | do not live in do not build here again. neither should the | politicians. our lives will improve if they go away forever. | we already have all the houses we need, we just need to stop | bulldozing them and instead start handing them out. | | if they actually do not want to build here, maybe they should | have thought of that before building houses nobody lives in. | people should live in the houses. | kurthr wrote: | It could be worse: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wehsz38P74g | | Billionaires Row is half empty. | [deleted] | dvt wrote: | Every post I read by Vitalik reeks of political science 101. It's | like these people (I'm including Ezra Klein here) haven't | bothered to read Plato's Republic or Hobbes' Leviathan. A few | points: | | > The case for vetocracy in these contexts is clear: it gives | people a feeling of safety that the platform they build or invest | on is not going to suddenly change the rules on them one day and | destroy everything they've put years of their time or money into. | | This is simply wrong. Vetocracy is the game equivalent of a | stalemate. It's _definitionally_ an inept form of governance. | There are no pros to vetocracy, and no case to be made for it. I | 'm not going to cite the Vox article here, but Ezra Klein has no | idea what a vetocracy is, either. (Actually, he's a pretty smart | guy, he's probably just being purposefully obtuse.) Vitalik is | just messing up _definitions_ here, he 's not saying anything | even remotely interesting. | | > Ethereum protocol research is sometimes bulldozery in operation | | This sentence (and the following paragraph) means nothing. | Research is definitionally done by one dude in his garage | (barring edge cases like weapons, viruses, human testing, etc.). | Why would you even need sign-off for it? His point just makes no | sense. | | > The physical world has too much vetocracy, but the digital | world has too many bulldozers, and there are no digital places | that are truly effective refuges from the bulldozers (hence: why | we need blockchains?) | | What he's trying to say here is that big actors can act "too | unilaterally" in the digital space, but small actors can "veto | too much" in the real world. This is not true. Small actors | cannot veto in the real world (or in the web2 digital world, for | that matter), and I'd strongly suggest he reads Madison's | Federalist 10 (where this is a major worry), but who am I | kidding, these people think they just discovered sliced bread. | vorpalhex wrote: | One of the issues this has missed is whether consent is needed. | | Put another way: | | Bob lives on 200 acres and wants to construct an apartment | building on that land. Nobody can really see it, he has agreed to | provide parking and services, etc. | | Sally owns a small residential house in a historic neighborhood. | She wants to tear down her house and make a narrow four-story | apartment building. She can't provide any room for parking and | depends fully on city utilities. | | Sally has more impact on her neighbors than Bob does. It's | reasonable for Bob to merely have a question of general freedom. | Sally on the other hand is clearly impacting her neighbors - and | not every neighbor could do what Sally wants to do. | | Some freedoms can impact the freedoms of other people, and that | is when the consent of those other people is needed. | mbot5324 wrote: | Choosing to recognize the causal impact of one's actions of one | type on another's freedom of some type is itself a political | decision. Being able to argue a causal chain of one action to | another impact does not make it the sole narrative -- only a | more likely narrative than some other non-coherent chain. | | Your choice of raising your child under one religion directly | impacts the cultural environment my child enters into at a | minimum, if not the outright practices my child would be forced | to participate in. The US government recognizes a freedom of | religion and therefore _does not_ recognize any impact from | that freedom as an infringement on others. | AlexTWithBeard wrote: | 1. Have all these limitations been known to Sally when she | bought her house? | | 2. Do Bob's rights change if someone builds a historic house | next to his lot? Or it would be fair to say that Bob came here | first so everyone else may just gtfo? | vorpalhex wrote: | That was sort of the purpose of making his lot so large in | the hypothetical. | | But let's change it. Let's say Bob is running a rather large | nuclear reactor. Initially this is fine - nobody is around | him and nuclear power is very environmentally friendly. | However, time goes on, and after a few years Bob and his | large homemade nuclear reactor are surrounded by hundreds of | brand new but very full preschools all bordering his | property. | | Do we have a right to ask Bob to stop running his nuclear | reactor? Situations change, risk models change. What was | originally fine is now a hazard to other people. | magila wrote: | There's a version of this which has actual played out | several times in the US: Many motor racing tracks were | built decades ago in what was at the time the middle of | nowhere. Over time new developments sprung up around these | tracks and their residents companied about the noise coming | from the race cars. In practice the "we were here first" | defense has proven rather weak as many such tracks have | been forced to shut down. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | RIP to the Polaris Amphitheatre as well. | jcims wrote: | But now we have Top Golf! | AnthonyMouse wrote: | This seems like something that the market could address. | | The new neighbors could come together and buy out the | racetrack. Take out a mortgage to turn it into an | apartment building or something, then sell the building | to pay off the mortgage. | | If the value to the neighbors of not having a racetrack | there is at least as much as the value to the rest of the | market of having a racetrack instead of an apartment | building, this should be economically viable. If it | isn't, isn't that a solid case for leaving the racetrack | there? | AlexTWithBeard wrote: | The ever-evading part of the brain responsible for ethics | tells me that if safety models have changed - like they did | for lead, for example - then yes, it's up to Bob to comply. | | If, on the other hand, I've built my house next to his | plant and now started to complain about the proximity of a | potentially dangerous thing next to me - well, in this case | Bob was there first. | | And then there are all these questions for extra credit | like what's gonna happen if Bob wants to put a second plant | right next to his current one? | teachrdan wrote: | I think that's a great extra credit question. | | A real-life version is, Bob's reactor was scheduled to be | shut down in a few years, but now he's applied to extend | its lifespan by another 20 years. Should that be allowed? | If so, are there any conditions under which he should NOT | be allowed further extensions? | vorpalhex wrote: | The other set of questions we need to ask for this | extension: | | 1. How many people depend on Bob's reactor for power? | | 2. If Bob shuts down, is the replacement something like | solar or a coal plant? | | 3. Design/safety/longevity. | JohnWhigham wrote: | _Do we have a right to ask Bob to stop running his nuclear | reactor?_ | | If it's the same entity that allowed those preschools to be | built next to a nuclear reactor, then absolutely not. | arethuza wrote: | What if Bob is in a country where people have the freedom to | wander around most of Bob's 200 acres? | AlexTWithBeard wrote: | How does it change the original question? | arethuza wrote: | I admit its not a major point - but I guess I reacted to | the idea that "Nobody can really see it". | BrazzVuvuzela wrote: | They don't see it unless they choose to go look at it. I | can stand on a step ladder and look over my neighbor's | fence. But if I do that then start complaining that the | grass in his back yard is too dry and ugly, then who's | the asshole? My neighbor for having ugly grass, or me, | who went out of my way to look at it? | anonymoushn wrote: | Why do people who live in Sally's city need cars? | | It seems like the choice to impose parking minimums on | apartment and home owners instead of building train tracks is | one that should be weighed according to its externalities. | michaelt wrote: | The problem is: If I build and sell a home with no parking, | there's no legal mechanism that can stop the new owner from | buying a car anyway, and parking it on the street. | | That might be OK if there's physically no on-street parking | within walking distance - this is the case in central London, | for example. Or if I can convince someone on the council to | pass a new law specific to my building. | iskander wrote: | Funny how we interpret these situations differently: Bob is | going to destroy wildlife habitat, which we should treat as a | public good. Sally is going to provide additional housing in a | dense urban area, which we should also treat as a public good. | | My ideal would be significantly less interference and oversight | for Sally than Bob. | lil_dispaches wrote: | Bulldoze vs Vetocracy is not an axis. | | Left/Right, and Lib/Auth, are axis, of political "persuasion"; | they are suited for Venn diagrammatic overlap. You can be both | leftist and rightish (centrist). | | Bulldoze and Vetocracy are modes (of governance, of process, | etc). You can't be both bulldozery and vetocratic on a topic. If | a process is half bulldozer, half vetocratic, the effect would be | a policy wash, and external factors will decide. | | As the article explains, the qualifications of Bulldoze/Veto | exists on different levels (outside vs inside, level 1 vs level | 2, foreign vs domestic). | | Ergo: Axis are extensive, in that you can parse what is lefty and | what is righty _about a single part of the system_ (eg. a | particular law). | | Ergo: The Bulldozer system is intensive: you can't pull apart a | law and say "this is mostly bulldozer, but a little veto". | | The intensive applies to processes, the extensive applies to the | participants and/or the product. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | > You can't be both bulldozery and vetocratic on a topic. If a | process is half bulldozer, half vetocratic, the effect would be | a policy wash, and external factors will decide. | | It's still a spectrum. Take driving. The maximally-bulldozery | position is that no licensing is required, no traffic | regulations exist, the ability to drive is gated solely by the | ability to reach the pedals and even that isn't a law. The | maximally-vetocratic position is that cars are prohibited. The | moderate position is that adults can drive if they pass a basic | driving test and there are fines for risky behavior. | analog31 wrote: | >>> Bulldoze vs Vetocracy is not an axis. | | Indeed, these are just tactics, that can be chosen by anybody | on any axis. | rectang wrote: | My first reaction was that I don't want a bulldozer to be able to | seize and consolidate power, then to create a permanent vetocracy | so that their hold on power can never be challenged. | mbot5324 wrote: | Bulldozers breed vetocracies which breed bulldozers in turn. | Stable, long lasting power counter-balances itself with a host | of ongoing concessions to each side of this coin. | macintux wrote: | A very timely concern. | VictorPath wrote: | > restrictive housing | | I visited San Francisco thirty years ago and surveyed somewhat | the effects of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Collapsed freeways and | so forth were still visible. I think of this as I hear the | Milennium tower is sinking into the sand - and San Francisco has | not been hit by an earthquake for a while. I don't know what the | future of building upward in the city will be. | | Why not fix up Caltrain? Why not have BART be fixed up and | something people find safe and convenient instead of curse? | | Decent public transportation is not completely absent in the US. | Decent public transport from the East Bay would fix a lot of | problems. | | I don't think "remove regulation on business" is some stroke of | genius, it sounds fairly lazy. Real estate developers are not | some oppressed group, they tend to run local politics in most of | the country. | frenchyatwork wrote: | > Real estate developers are not some oppressed group, they | tend to run local politics in most of the country. | | I think the people who run local politics are often the people | who own lots of real estate, not necessarily those who build | buildings/improvements on it. Often, they're seeking to | maintain or improve the value of their existing estate. | teachrdan wrote: | I have an unpopular answer. Back in the oughts, companies like | Google and Facebook started running charter buses that stopped | illegally at public bus stops to ferry their employees to the | south bay. If those people had taken public transit instead we | would have pumped billions of dollars into Caltrain, enough to | fund vastly improved services. | | There would definitely have been an adjustment period where | more people would have driven and made traffic even worse. But | that discomfort would have helped create the political will to | improve public transit. | epistasis wrote: | > If those people had taken public transit instead we would | have pumped billions of dollars into Caltrain | | This denies the actual reality of the situation in that there | was no public transit that was equivalent, the local | political power structure is hostile to improved transit, and | the power structure is in particular extremely opposed to | transit that might be used by tech workers, much less | predominantly used by tech workers. During the recent | Caltrain electrification battle, there was a large anti- | Caltrain political force because it was seen as "for tech | workers." | nitwit005 wrote: | They blamed the rising housing costs and changing | neighborhoods on the tech workers. They would have opposed | public transit alternatives as well. They didn't want those | people living in SF and working elsewhere. | skybrian wrote: | But you might also think of these private bus fleets as a | reaction to the vetocracies delaying or outright preventing | significant public transportation improvements. Large | corporations might be more willing to fund public transport | if they thought it would work? | | For example, many of Google's new campuses are have very good | connections to public transport, so it's not like they're | inherently against it. | anonymoushn wrote: | If those people had taken public transit instead their | commutes would have been twice as long innit. | friedman23 wrote: | Your comment just doesn't make any sense in the context of this | article. It almost reads like complete gibberish. | hash872 wrote: | Good piece. I'd tend to argue more for mild | vetocracies/Madisonian political systems with multiple checks & | balances when we're constructing actual governments. Many people | heavily involved in politics ("intense policy demanders", I've | heard them called) are just moderately insane overall, so I'm | pretty interested in blocking bad ideas and rapid change. I'm | kind of small c conservative that way. (I agree the US Senate | should have a supermajority voting requirement, etc.) | | One thing that makes some vetocracies illegitimate, however, is | that a small group of people wield far outsized power relative to | their numbers. This is the objection to say a tiny group of | wealthy, usually elderly people who can block new housing | construction based on complaints about 'neighborhood character'. | I'm fine with actual gridlock some issues where the US is | genuinely divided, but I object to a tiny tiny minority with | outsized power. Contrary to popular belief, James Madison was | actually against too much minority power and had a few rants in | the Federalist Papers about how democratic systems should be | majority rule-only | clairity wrote: | an axis is literally dichotomizing, and dichotomies don't aid | understanding of complex, dynamic systems because of the | numerous chaotic (i.e., higher order) drivers of phenomena | within the system. dichotomies provide faux-understanding, | allowing the speaker to feel esteem for knowing about the | dichotomy, not the underlying system of which s/he speaks. it | is literally _bullshit_. | | i'll repeat that the only useful dichotomy when talking about | political systems (practically tautologically) is that between | the powerful and the powerless. left/right, | liberal/conservative, even bulldozer/vetocrat are all | distractions on this fundamental characteristic of political | systems. it's especially important that when we voters consider | elections and policy positions, we do it based on a critical | reasoning of the issues at hand, not a political affiliation or | chosen dichotomous self-identification. | inglor_cz wrote: | One of the problems with supermajorities is that you give | greater weight to status quo. | | With supermajorities required, few countries would ever get rid | of slavery or the death penalty, give voting rights to women | etc. | | A lot of the grandfathered defaults aren't worth a | supermajority to overturn. | hash872 wrote: | Not sure you picked the best examples there- both of these | things required a Constitutional amendment, aka had to pass | both houses by a 2/3rds vote, then be voted in by three | quarters of the states. That's like the definition of a | supermajority, so pretty much the opposite of your point. To | be fair, it was much easier to pass the 13th Amendment when | the rebelling states didn't get a vote in the matter :) | | To your broader point- radical change can just as equally be | bad as good, so it should require more than a bare majority. | (Personally I think the US Senate should require 55 votes for | cloture, not 60). Some pretty radical stuff could have been | passed in 2017-2018 if we just used a majority in both | houses. I think with the current level of political | fanaticism in the US, making it a bit difficult to pass laws | is a wise choice | helen___keller wrote: | > This is the objection to say a tiny group of wealthy, usually | elderly people who can block new housing construction based on | complaints about 'neighborhood character'. | | Where I live, it's not a small wealthy group blocking new | construction, it's that the region is already as built out as | is legal in most places, and updates to municipal zoning is a | supermajority vote so it almost never happens. Most | construction happens via petitioning the zoning board for a | variance | credit_guy wrote: | I like to think in terms of checks on the Executive power. It can | go from virtually unchecked, or absolute monarchy (think Augustus | of Rome, or Peter the Great of Russia), to virtual paralysis | (think Poland before it was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and | Austria). Checks on the Executive power are both good and bad. | It's tricky to find the right balance. | yob28 wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-20 23:00 UTC)