“Avoid concentrating power, and try to pit power centers against each other whenever possible” seems to have been a fairly successful design heuristic for governments.
If you’re designing them to last a long time, yes. If you’re designing them to serve their people well… no offense, but the one agreed-upon fact in American politics today is that the country is crashing and burning. I’d say the systemic explanations (lack of limits on money in politics, gerrymandering, two-party system, neoliberal takeover of both parties, Overton Window drift, and so on and so forth) have a lot of force here.
So you’ve got a system that’s successfully lasted such a long time that when it finally hits crises it can’t handle, it’s just dying. Brittle and hard rather than flexible.
Lots of people say that, but how would say America’s troubles rate next Syria’s, say? Or those of post-Soviet Russia?
I think many Americans have a hard time distinguishing “genuine catastrophes” from “the worst things ever to happen in America that I noticed in my lifetime”.
It seems to me that the best way to prevent America from hitting troubles similar to those experienced by post-Soviet Russia (in severity if nothing else) is pre-emptively; anyone who suspects that similar, or worse, troubles are going to affect a given country within the near future would be, in my opinion, perfectly justified in taking some effort to turn the country aside from the upcoming troubles.
Mind you, I have no idea how severe America’s future troubles could be; I don’t have enough information for a reasonable estimate.
Nobody said that it was a quick death. In fact, I would have called a quick death beneficial. Most countries throughout history have a crisis, crash, and then get back on their feet after a few years. It’s the ones who are brittle and unable to change that end up with long-term problems.
If we want to talk about Western countries, for instance, compare the USA with, say, Germany. Germany has had far more successions of government than the United States, but currently functions better because they change when a crisis hits.
Or compare Syria with Tunisia—like with like. Protests in Syria led the government to use violent force over a period of years, leading to absolute disaster (by the way, you will notice on my profile that I don’t even that far from Syria). In Tunisia, the government actually stepped down, and things have improved. Egypt is a borderline case.
If you think things are bad today, try 1860 or 1930. All we’ve got today is a repeat of the Gilded Age, complete with similar economic instability and partisan gridlock...
“Avoid concentrating power, and try to pit power centers against each other whenever possible” seems to have been a fairly successful design heuristic for governments.
If you’re designing them to last a long time, yes. If you’re designing them to serve their people well… no offense, but the one agreed-upon fact in American politics today is that the country is crashing and burning. I’d say the systemic explanations (lack of limits on money in politics, gerrymandering, two-party system, neoliberal takeover of both parties, Overton Window drift, and so on and so forth) have a lot of force here.
So you’ve got a system that’s successfully lasted such a long time that when it finally hits crises it can’t handle, it’s just dying. Brittle and hard rather than flexible.
Lots of people say that, but how would say America’s troubles rate next Syria’s, say? Or those of post-Soviet Russia?
I think many Americans have a hard time distinguishing “genuine catastrophes” from “the worst things ever to happen in America that I noticed in my lifetime”.
It seems to me that the best way to prevent America from hitting troubles similar to those experienced by post-Soviet Russia (in severity if nothing else) is pre-emptively; anyone who suspects that similar, or worse, troubles are going to affect a given country within the near future would be, in my opinion, perfectly justified in taking some effort to turn the country aside from the upcoming troubles.
Mind you, I have no idea how severe America’s future troubles could be; I don’t have enough information for a reasonable estimate.
Nobody said that it was a quick death. In fact, I would have called a quick death beneficial. Most countries throughout history have a crisis, crash, and then get back on their feet after a few years. It’s the ones who are brittle and unable to change that end up with long-term problems.
If we want to talk about Western countries, for instance, compare the USA with, say, Germany. Germany has had far more successions of government than the United States, but currently functions better because they change when a crisis hits.
Or compare Syria with Tunisia—like with like. Protests in Syria led the government to use violent force over a period of years, leading to absolute disaster (by the way, you will notice on my profile that I don’t even that far from Syria). In Tunisia, the government actually stepped down, and things have improved. Egypt is a borderline case.
If you think things are bad today, try 1860 or 1930. All we’ve got today is a repeat of the Gilded Age, complete with similar economic instability and partisan gridlock...