The Glade 4.0

That's a large question; I know, but I think it's worth asking. But hold that thought.

I hope you'll forgive the apparent derail. Long OP is loooooong. I promise I am going somewhere with this...

I've had the feeling for a long time that, in spite of appearances, much of the "crap" that goes down in Hellfire doesn't really have all that much to do with personality conflicts or differences of opinions, but something deeper. There's something really broken about the way we communicate, and I don't think it's just a matter of individual dysfunction. It's not just the Glade, either. The whole landscape is wrong, somehow.

The phrase that comes to mind is "disconnected and isolated highlands", but that's a bit of a non-sequitur. To the annoyance of a certain poster that I'm pretty sure thinks Pirsig is full of crap, this seems like a good survey of the land. I may have quoted before sometime; I can't remember:



This is what I see much of the time. If television reshaped the terrain to be broader, but shallower, but then what is the Internet, as we use it? I see a deluge that though it may be only 6 inches deep, flows thousands of miles across and with terrible rapidity. Don't misunderstand me; I love the Internet. It is, in a way, my home. I've walked the breadth of this land in way that honestly not many do. It's almost impossible to impress on someone just how large the Internet truly is. Though the diameter of the web may hold at a surprisingly scant "19 degrees of separation", the only truth that you can actually offer about it's true size is that you cannot comprehend it. Fully 50% of the web isn't even reachable at all in any usual sense -- nothing links to it.

But it isn't just the sheer size of the Internet which is problematic. It's how we deal with this size. Look around you at the way we use it. Consider the most popular sites and what makes them this way. Have you noticed the rise of the aggregator? It's a natural thing. At first, it was just way to cope with overload of information; to condense this unimaginable vastness into something that could actually be digested without an unhingable mental jaw. But it didn't exactly stop there. Now the aggregators themselves are becoming the vastness, and we're seeing aggregators of aggregators as entirely normal and popular thing (ex. Digg).

So what's wrong with that? Well, nothing exactly. But when I look to my own browsing habits, I see a pattern that makes me a little uncomfortable. I flit around from site to site to site, gathering as much information as I can. Most of the sites I frequent are very useful in that capacity: they bring the mountain to Mohammed. Not just a mountain, really; it's an entire mountain range. I see much, but I don't see it deeply. There isn't time. There's too much "what's new" and not enough "what's best". "An endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow" is a prescient observation.

I think that even the Glade becomes like that for us. What originally drew me here was that this was a place where I could have deep conversations. But somewhere along the line it stopped being a well that taps deeply, and turned more into yet another net cast widely across the flood -- a mish-mash of flotsam and jetsam and pretty little fishes to add to my collection.

Where the conversation does turn deep, no one is really listening anymore. I know I seldom do. We've heard it all before. Our channels "have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated". That sounds about right to me, anyway. What we have are people standing on their isolated and disconnected island highlands yelling across the channel at one another. But no one is listening because of the disconnectedness. There's no continuity of terrain; no way across the channel because of the constant flood. And in the meanwhile, those looking from the banks are no better off. The highlands are just as disconnected, if you can ever even see them for the "growing havoc and destruction" along the banks.

So maybe some channel-deepening is called for. Maybe we don't need a break from the Glade or from each other half so much as we need a break from the endless stream of current events and the tedium of specific "issues-du-jour". Let's not talk about healthcare, or monetary policy, or abortion, or racism, or .... Let's talk about something that cuts deep.

So I ask, simply, what is good government? And, more importantly, why? Dig deeply on that point. "Good government should do X because X is good" is a tautology at best. Obviously you think that X is good, or else you wouldn't expect for good government to do it. Why is X good, and just as importantly, why is it better than Z? What guiding principle makes X desirable?

As much as possible, I think it best to avoid specific issues. That is, when it comes to a specific issue like government run healthcare, most of us who have an opinion on the subject have formed this opinion because of some underlying principle. For the purpose of this discussion, the underlying principles are what I'm interested in -- something like Plato's "perfect forms". These deep abstractions are what establish the "highlands of the mind". The lowlands and valleys are the down-to-brass-tacks, day-to-day specific issues.

I'm not quite sure how to go about this. For now I'd just like to establish an honest survey of the highlands. In the long run, I'd like to start cutting a path down from the timberline to the lower altitudes. Of course, you could work your way up from the lowlands instead, but I think this might be more difficult under present circumstances. This is where the turbulence of the flood lives, and what has been silted in with too much stagnant history.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Good points Stathol.

I'd like to take a moment to represent the lowlands of the internet.

Yes. Longdog is long.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Great post Stathol. I'll do my best to answer.

I am convinced that at it's crux, the point of government in general is to provide, commonly and evenly to all and yet with detriment to none, a basic framework which fosters prosperity, and a consistency and simplicity of rules which all can easily understand and which lend themselves whole heartedly to that prosperity.

Government working towards those ends would, to my mind, be good. Government working agaisnt them, inadvertantly or otherwise, would not be.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

That's....really disturbing.

Oh, and for the record, I'm not really sure how to answer this, myself. It might not be evident to everyone, but my political philosophy has changed quite significantly since I first started posting on the Glade. I need time to stop and think about it. Like most people, I suspect, my natural habitat isn't in the thin air of the mountain tops, nor in the boggy bottomlands. A philosophy that concerns itself only with the highlands is too prone to becoming out-of-touch and insular. But on the other hand, philosophies that never elevate themselves beyond the immediate...shall we say, perceptual muck have a tendency to lose any sense of anchoring. In trying to stay "down to earth", they ironically wind up becoming merely wishy-washy. They can too easily become a part of that destructive flow that "obliterates the banks" because they have no "central direction and purpose".

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Government that is good should protect individual autonomy and provide a means alternate to violence for dispute mediation.

Why? Because violence inhibits both human life and by extension individual autonomy.

Why is autonomy important? Because it is the best method for advancement, in any context.

Growth of government beyond those functions begins to impede one or the other core functions.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The only good government is a dead government!

Vive la Elmosistance!

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Holy shitsnacks!

I'll have to think about it before providing a full answer, Stathol. As a starting point, though, I think "good government" has to be based on a recognition of core human traits such as self-awareness & individual consciousness, social instincts and malleability, pain/fear avoidance, desire for pleasure/security, aggression, affection, etc. Obviously, many of these traits are contradictory and all are subject to conditioning pressures, but I think any government that tries too hard to suppress or ignore those traits will find itself at odds with its people and ultimately be forced to either evolve or collapse.

In order to answer this, we need to look at why people form governments in the first place. There are two basic reasons people form governments:

A. To cooperate in protecting against outside threats (both natural and human)
B. To protect members of the community against one another

This isn't the same as why individual people may want certain governments; or may want to be the government; this is why societies do.

Moreover, when asking what good government is, it must be recognized that there are plenty of bad governments, and plenty of mediocre ones, and any government regardless of how well it is run, may simply make bad decisions. Therefore, the questions of what a government should do and be must be answered with the assumption that other governments will not necessarily do these things; only the “good” ones will.

It must also be recognized that creating a system of government that cannot be corrupted is impossible. Good government maintains checks and balances so that bad elements within it are naturally purged. Enough bad elements will overcome any system. However, as long as the system is still purging; it is still working. Essential to good government is recognition by citizens that they cannot always have their own way, and their personal consent is not needed for everything.

1. Good government must, over everything else, provide for the national defense. This is the first, primary, and overriding reason for government. If the government fails to do this, it is no longer the government, some other government is, whether its a conqueror or the defeated citizenry creating a new one to pick up the pieces.

How exactly the government goes about doing this depends on the exact situation of the nation, and the resources available. Obviously no nation can devout 100% of its effort to national defense all the time, but in desperate circumstances, most or all effort might go there.

Good government will allow no legal or moral limitation to impede it in the face of bona fide extreme circumstances where the survival of the nation is actually at stake. Faced with invasion or complete destruction by nuclear weapons, or similar circumstances, good government will violate its own laws and international law wholesale in defense of the populace, and will force citizens to comply. It may arrive that no action undertaken by the government will ensure the survival of the nation. In such cases, the government should undertake whatever course of action, including accepting conquest, that will provide the best chance of survival for the most citizens.

Obviously this carries the hazard that government might declare “emergencies” in order to circumvent law. That, however, is not good government; that's bad government. By the same token a government that allows its nation to be destroyed out of blind adherence to axiom or principle is bad government; no matter how admirable the principle it will mean little to the victor, and will be of precious little comfort to the survivors.

Good government also recognizes that these extreme circumstances are rare, and that there may be other recourse. For example, in 1990, Kuwait was faced with complete national destruction, and Saudi Arabia had to confront the possibility of something similar. Both nations secured he assistance of powerful allies who found it in their own best interests to assist these nations in their liberation and defense respectively. In that regard, both governments did “good”. Reality should be the governing principle for good government; a government that spends vast resources out of paranoia is as reprehensible as one that rejects useful defense out of distaste or to divert funds to other avenues.

2. Good Government provides justice to citizens. Regardless of the details of the actual laws, citizens good government does not allow either itself or other citizens to take someone's life, liberty, or property based on spite, whim, or caprice, or as a means of attack.

In many circumstances it is necessary to deprive someone of liberty or property, and rarely, life too. Whatever rules are in place should be in place for all, and should not in their aggregate effect substantially deprive citizens of the security the laws are in place to protect.

Good government in terms of justice is not defined by the degree to which it does or does not regulate. Rather, regulation should be easily understood, easily complied with, narrow in scope, and should serve to augment society, buisness, professions, institutions and even government itself in policing themselves, rather than seeking to replace normal forces that maintain balance. Laws should be aimed primarily at deterring and punishing behaviors whose consequences are not possible to remedy by settlement between parties. A person crippled by a robber will not be made to walk again by any amount of money; neither will a lawsuit cleanse water poisoned by chemical dumping.

The foundation of justice in a country is that everyone there is a citizen, or they are a citizen of another nation. There are no country-less people there, except insofar as they might be refugees from some other country's destruction, and there should be a clear plan for them to become citizens of somewhere.


3. Good government defends the interests of the country.

In this regard, defense is not always, although it can be, military in nature. Good government does not allow the rights of citizens to become a shield to attack other citizens from, nor does it allow principle to become a shield for other nations to attack it from. Good government will regularly find it in the interests of its own citizens to be friendly, accommodating, helpful, or even allied with, other nations.

Good government, however, remembers that its own citizens always come first. It has no basic obligation or moral duty to anyone else. If another nation is hiding behind treaties, while using proxies, economics, or other means to attack a nation without using overt military force, the government should take whatever steps are necessary to remedy that, without in the process incurring some worse problem, of course.

In the same vein, government does not allow citizens to use their rights to circumvent the rights of others or attack their interests. It does not insist on rights defined in such a way that human emotion and interaction is expected to adhere to some absurd theoretical standard; it places limits on them bearing in mind that a limit on one is a limit on all including those governing.

Good government does not:

1.Get the nation into trouble it can't get out of. Whether economic, or by antagonizing a powerful adversary unnecessarily
2.Play favorites in any manner. Good government does not tolerate nobilities or aristocracies as a matter of law, neither does it allow class warfare and notions of social justice to arbitrarily grant special protections to some citizens at the expense of others.
3.Allow axioms, assumptions, or principles to rule at all cost. Such things may be good rules of thumb, but adherence to them is never the goal. They are not the people, they, like the government, serve the people.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I disagree here. I would argue that good government is government at the consent of the people in all circumstances. At the point that a government decides, for whatever ends, that it must force itself on it's people, it becomes no different than an invader. It does not matter if it is the devil you know or the devil you don't that binds you in chains, you are still in chains. The system you currently advocate places the needs, wishes, or ideology of the government before the needs, wishes, or ideology of it's citizens; do you suppose that good government does not derive it's consent from the governed?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I wouldn't know, I've never seen one.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

What is good government?

The US has a "good government", but like anything with a structure there are times things should be torn down and rebuilt in a controlled manner. There are organizations in this system where that should be performed.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Actually it does none of those things. We're talking about a good government here, which necessarily is one that is in place and defending its citizens and territory because it is their interest and desire to be defended. The attacker may or may not be a "good government", but chances are quite good that it is not. If the citizens would rather have the attacker anyhow, the government has probably already lost no matter what it does since its own forces will simply evaporate. Consent of the governed is not the issue; that already exists in a good government necessarily.

However, there will always be some citizens who put their own profit, own ideology, own paranoia or simply their own cussed stubbornness over the need of the country to repel invasion. However, you are quite wrong about it being no different. The citizen is already in chains by the invader. They are going to roll over property and rights and shoot people in the head as a counterrevolutionary or a subversive or whatever. The good government is simply going to toss these naysayers out of their houses while they use it as a command post; eventually they will get their land back. They might even get compensated once the war is over and the amount of harm suffered can be determined.

Like I said, if the populace at large isn't consenting to be defended, then defense won't get accomplished. However, good government already has consent. The few malcontents who think their personal consent is needed for everything should be forced to cooperate in times of dire emergency such as invasion. The consent of "the governed" means the aggregate consent, not the personal consent of each individual to each and every detail. A government that's going to call trivialities "dire emergency" sin't a good government in the first place and isn't within the scope of what I'm discussing.

In other words, if you're going to turn good government into bad government and then repeat a bunch of platitudes about chains and consent of the governed based on the bullshit assumption that there is some nice, neat, dividing line between the citizens and the government, you're just wasting everyone's time. If you're on the receiving end of an invasion, philosophizing about chains and the consent of the governed isn't going to mean very much. All the argument and debate in the world will not stop a T-80. If, however, an ATGM team sets up in your living room, and knocks out that T-80, well, **** you if you think your property rights were violated. They're a lot less violated than they would have been if they hadn't.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The issue is that you place the government in a position where it is somehow to decide what is best, and for which of its people, and how they are best to be served. In that you are no different than an invader. Who decides what is best? Who prioritizes and to what ends? Who is sacrificed in favor of who? Who the hell decides all this, and what makes their judgement best?

A dictatorship is a dictatorship is a dictatorship. It always serves it's own ends.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I'm not placing the government in any such position, except in the case of major external attack. In that case, the government is in a position to decide what is best for the citizens. That is the primary reason governments exist at all.

When engaging in combat, generals decide what is best, and advise the civilian leadership, in a state with good government, who then authorize the generals to carry forward with their plans. The general's plans may or may not be the "best" in an absolute sense, but they will generally be better than anyone else's because they are the ones with the greatest training and experience in combat, and combat is ultimately a highly practical matter.

You're trying to take this position and strawman it into me saying that government should act like this at all times. All this crap about "Who decides what is best?" is just a smokescreen to hide the asumption that every opinion is equally valid and should be heard a all times. That's a load of horseshit. One's opinion gets heard when one votes. If one isn't satisfied with that, one should run for office.

In the case actually being discussed here, yes, government is temporarily being a dictatorship, and it should, becasue the choice is between a temporary dictatorship and a permenant one. Who gives a **** if the government is no different than a dictator all because we're under attack? They'll get rid of the attacker and then we'll go back to normalcy. Sure, it'd be nice of they didn't, but since the enemy decided to attack, that's not really an option.

That's my position, and since this is the "what does good government mean to you" thread, you might be better served to post something longer than 2 lines about what you think is good instead of complaining that my ideas don't fit your assumptions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The question was "what is GOOD government"... not "what is GREAT government".

Set your sights a bit lower.

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In time, this too shall pass.

This formulation seems pretty central to your concept of good government, DE, but I'm not sure it's really true. I think it reflects your own ideology, rather than the historical development of governments and societies. Agriculture, not war and disaster, is what drove the early formation of civilization.

Also, even if protection was/is the core rationale for some governments, it doesn't follow that it must be the rationale for all governments. People may well choose to form a government for primarily cooperative, rather than protective, reasons. Note that I say "primarily", not "exclusively", because a government can serve protective functions without those functions being the fundamental reason for its existence, and in that case, there may well be occasions when some purpose trumps protection. Not according to your ideology, perhaps, but as I said, not all governments are necessarily be based on that ideology.

Well, first of all, I don't have any ideology. There is none to "trump" anything.

Second, I think it does reflect the development of government and society.

Obviously different societies will face different threats extrenally, but all societies face the problem of members who prey upon other members. Furthermore, while the amount and type of effort to be spent on defensive needs and internal justice may vary, the fact remains that these are necessarily the fundamental reason for a government. Societies that claim to be forming a government for other purposes are fooling themselves and are allowing ideology to reign over reality.

A society/government that fails to do either of the above will not remain so; the government will be replaced by outside attackers, by criminals, or by the people themselves tired of being preyed upoin by criminals and wanting someone to do something about it.

In other words, it really doesn't matter what the society thinks its reason for forming a government is, nor does it matter how much priority is given to defense and justice; how much will be dictated by the situation and the available resources. None of that changes the fundamental nature of those two activities to government. If the government is not doing those things, it doesn't need to exist.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's what I'm saying is an ideological statement, DE. I'm not using the word ideological in a pejorative sense here. I'm just pointing out that your belief that defensive/justice functions are the fundamental reason for a government is ideological, not empirical, in nature. It can't be tested or disproven. It's an interpretation of history that is plausible and part of the picture, no doubt, but it's not the only plausible interpretation. It's just the lens through which you view the world, i.e. your "ideology".

That's not accurate. It's pretty much observationally true that societies that meet a threat and cannot defend themselves cease to exist as independant societies. I'm not interpreting anything at all. There's no ideology at all.

In the same vein, hiumans are social animals, and all social animals have rules of behavior and ways to sanction mambers that don't adhere to them, even though in other animals that is primarily by instinct. Those social animals also engage in collective behavior to protect against outside threats, such as sperm whales which surround their young and use their flukes to repel attackers.

I'm not viewing the world through any lens. That might be true if we were talking about the degree to which any society needs to defend itself against any given thret, since that involves predictions and guesswork, but the fact is that "government" is really just a highly sophisticated expression of a social animal acting as a group for defense.

Even when government is ostensibly formed for some other purpose,t he people doing it couch it in terms of defense, for example, protecting the "proletariet" from the "bougoise".

In any case, I'll tell you the same thing I told Rynar: Post your own ideas. This isn't the "DE posts what he thinks and then everyone else nitpicks his after posting 2 lines or nothing at all" thread.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Fair enough. Truth is, I'm still not precisely sure what my answer is, but yours touched on some of the themes I have rattling around in my head, so I was using it to help me clarify my own thinking. Sorry for nitpicking.

- L.E. Modesitt Jr.

^^
I'm a bit of a left leaner.

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

Quit being ridiculous. I'm not trying to strawman anything. We are having a discussion about what good government consists of, and you just don't like the notion that people being critical of any segment of your idea, even when offering their reasons, is actually part of that discussion. Let's just change the title of this thread to: "Let's all blindly agree with DE, without any discussion". Better?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Except for the blindingly obvious fact that you're speaking in generalities about a government doing what I'm proposing, instead of addressing it in the context of the situation I say it's appropriate for; namely an invasion.

Moreover, you've addressed it only in platitudes and assertions of principle that I've already rejected in forming my discussion of what I think good government is.

What you're really doing is saying "no, your idea of good government is bad government because it doesn't agree with the basis I would use to discuss what I think good government is." No one said you had to blindly agree with me. In fact, I even invited you to say what your ideas are, but so far you've only posted about 2 lines of your own ideas, and spent the rest of your time cricticizing mine.

The title is "What does good government mean to you?" not "What's wrong with everyone else's ideas?" If you want to disagree with me, do it by posting what your ideas are. All you're doing right now is saying "no, your opinion is badwrong because I disagree with it, but I'm not going to put mine out there beyond a very cursory mention".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE I pose you this question: must a government survive to be considered "good"?

My point is to examine this statement "That's not accurate. It's pretty much observationally true that societies that meet a threat and cannot defend themselves cease to exist as independant societies. I'm not interpreting anything at all. There's no ideology at all."

First of all its circular in nature in that you identify a society as "true" by making sure it fits your stated criteria. That is supporting your premise by your conclusion.

You also seem to use this as if survival makes a government "good" and that is most certainly an ideological position of yours.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Not necessarily; it is possible that a good government will meet a threat beyond its capacity to defend against no matter what it does.



Well, guess what? We're not going to examine my statement. Stathol asked everyone what they thought good government is. That does not mean that a few of us say what we think and then the lolbertarian brigade complains that they don't like it while making a cursory, or in your case, no, attempt to say what they think would be good.



I'm not identifying societies as "true" at all, and in any case, I'm making an observation.. as I stated. you're just invent a strawman, and a particularly poor one at that because not only is this buisness about identifying a societ as "true" your invention, I have no idea what it's supposed to mean either.



It can't be an ideological position. A government which fails to survive isn't a government at all, and therefore is not a good government. It also isn't a bad government. It's gone. How you think this is ideological is beyond me, aside from the obvious fact that you just want to pin some ideology on me.

Similarly, I have not said that survival makes a government good. It only makes it a government. Bad governments survive too. Survival is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. You're just readin what you want to into my statements in order to make them fit your pre-concieved ideas about what I think.

So why don't you just post what you **** think without worrying about what I had to say? That's what Stathol asked for. If you're not going to, then as far as I'm concerned you can **** off. I'm not going to answer questions from someone who won't post their own **** for examination.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."