This isn’t a sunk cost. It’s not like we used up a large fraction of our paper supply writing the constitution. Rather, it’s a precommitment, a contract, and a schelling point. There are good reasons to be bound be those, so the quote is false.
It’s a quote against which one can test their rationality, maybe?
When someone died or when it was made has no relevance; only its merit in guiding a government is relevant.
Their moral and political views don’t matter either, unless contained in the present US Constitution; this seems like argumentum ad hominem at first glance, but one needs to check the claim before evaluating its persuasiveness.
One must argue that knowledge of modern America confers enough of a benefit to forming a working governmental body that scrapping and rewriting the entire U.S. Constitution is preferable to the amendment process.
In an effort to steelman: perhaps the Professor meant to indicate that with the advent of the internet, a representative democracy is no longer the most effective means of running a government by the people, for the people, and of the people. If he was feeling radical, he may have been hinting at how political science has developed as a discipline since the Enlightenment era when the principles founding the U.S. government were theorised; perhaps the best solution is a flexible one, able to adapt to the political system most effective at running an efficient government while still remaining resistant to tyranny. Exempli gratia a futarchy for four years, some form of crypto-direct democracy for eight years, a modified version of Finland’s government for ten years, etcetera.
Why is this a rationality quote?
Sunk Cost? Also, Tsuyoku Naritai—we can do so much better with the knowledge currently available to us.
This isn’t a sunk cost. It’s not like we used up a large fraction of our paper supply writing the constitution. Rather, it’s a precommitment, a contract, and a schelling point. There are good reasons to be bound be those, so the quote is false.
It’s a quote against which one can test their rationality, maybe?
When someone died or when it was made has no relevance; only its merit in guiding a government is relevant.
Their moral and political views don’t matter either, unless contained in the present US Constitution; this seems like argumentum ad hominem at first glance, but one needs to check the claim before evaluating its persuasiveness.
One must argue that knowledge of modern America confers enough of a benefit to forming a working governmental body that scrapping and rewriting the entire U.S. Constitution is preferable to the amendment process.
In an effort to steelman: perhaps the Professor meant to indicate that with the advent of the internet, a representative democracy is no longer the most effective means of running a government by the people, for the people, and of the people. If he was feeling radical, he may have been hinting at how political science has developed as a discipline since the Enlightenment era when the principles founding the U.S. government were theorised; perhaps the best solution is a flexible one, able to adapt to the political system most effective at running an efficient government while still remaining resistant to tyranny. Exempli gratia a futarchy for four years, some form of crypto-direct democracy for eight years, a modified version of Finland’s government for ten years, etcetera.