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Tuesday, September 29. 2015

Hubris and systemic change


A debate about altruism, do-gooders, and people who are sure they are right: Beware systemic change.  (Thank you, AVI)



I also look back at history and am deeply troubled by what I see. In the 1920s, nearly all the educated, intelligent, evidence-based, pro-science, future-oriented people agreed: the USSR was amazing. Shaw, Wells, Webb. They all thought Stalin was great and we needed a global communist revolution so we could be more like him. If you and I had been alive back then, we’d be having this same conversation, but it would end with both of us agreeing to donate everything we had to the Bolsheviks.



Problem is that people who think they are really smart enough to run things for others are often or usually wrong. Only humility grows wisdom, and vice versa. "Rational," "scientific" social planners have created far more misery, and far less freedom, than anybody else on earth.

Posted by Bird Dog in Politics at 15:15 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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I will note that I am a fan of the site in general. A liberal who can self-observe and is not afraid to question his own beliefs.
#1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2015-09-29 15:39 (Reply)
And yet only 13 yrs prior in 1907, many educated, intelligent, evidence-based, pro-science, future-oriented people weren't quite so easily duped. Wonder what happened?



QUOTE:
To go no further back than Aristotle — about 2000 years ago he wrote : —

"This style of legislation wears a good face and an air of philanthropy. No sooner is it heard than it is eagerly embraced, under the expectation of a marvelous love to grow out from it between man and man, especially if the proposer goes on to inveigh against the evils of existing institution, setting all down to the want of a community of goods. These evils, however, are due not to want of a community of property, but to the depravity of human nature. For experience teaches that disputes are far more likely to occur among people who possess property in common and live as partners, than among those who hold their estates in separate tenure. The life proposed appears to be altogether impossible."

There are just two differences between this socialism of two thousand years ago and that of today. One is that new ideas, our socialists say that a German Jew named Lassalle made a new discovery some fifty years ago called the Iron Law of Wages, which makes the mechanic's condition forever hopeless in a free country; which is, that he is paid only for his bare subsistence, while entitled to the full product of his labor ; and the other is that our modem Socialists give up the early communism of savages in so much as they say they will permit a man to own his coat, and his horse, if he can afford one, and his house in all but if he can buy one — and pay the taxes on it. The only thing he may not own is capital. Now of these two supposed new discoveries, the first is false and the second is a confession of failure.

Excerpt From: Stimson, Frederic Jesup, “Socialism; a speech delivered in Faneuil hall, February 7th, 1903, by Frederic J. Stimson
#2 JK Brown on 2015-09-29 17:30 (Reply)
OT New Bob Dylan ‘Bootleg’ to Cover 1965-66 Sessions

From the article:

From January 1965 through March 1966 Bob Dylan recorded three fiery, trailblazing, universally acclaimed albums: “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde on Blonde.” The next installment of his archival Bootleg Series — “The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12″ (Columbia/Legacy) — unearths a trove of previously unreleased material from those recording sessions.

It includes demo versions, rehearsals and alternate takes of some of Mr. Dylan’s most celebrated songs, on the way to forging what he would famously call “that thin, that wild mercury sound” with “Blonde on Blonde.” The collection will be released Nov. 6.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/new-bob-dylan-bootleg-to-cover-1965-66-sessions/?_r=0
#3 feeblemind on 2015-09-30 01:03 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Beware systemic change

Examples of systemic change include the American Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Progressive Period, and the Civil Rights Movement. The systemic world today is not much like the Medieval Period.

While one should be wary of vast changes to traditional institutions, systemic change is often necessary, and frequently inevitable.
#4 Zachriel on 2015-09-30 08:52 (Reply)
Point taken - somewhat. Systemic change is not always a cure worse than the disease. I don't see the Civil Rights Movement as systemic, though people now feel it was that way because incremental changes can be meaningful. But Thurgood Marshall was extremely frustrated with the danger those in Dr. King's protests were put in, because he believed the victories were already being won, year after year, not by developing any new rights, but claiming and asserting ones already in place.

People feel that way, because it happened when they were coming of age.

Come to think of it, the American Revolution, while in many ways radical, was really just colonies seceding and adopting the ideas of the Bloodless Revolution of 1688, which were already largely in place as self-governance. It was the French Revolution that was more systemic - and that worked out less well.
#4.1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2015-09-30 21:56 (Reply)
If the Civil Rights Movement resulted in systemic change, then please explain how George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, both of whom were once considered "moderate" Southern politicians who later made political hay by opposing the Civil Rights movement, both remained in elected office decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

With systemic change, wouldn't both them have been booted out of office?

After all, Czar Nicholas and Kerensky didn't remain in power after the systemic change in Russia. Nor did the Loyalist Governors remain in power after the completion of the American Revolution. Interesting that Benjamin Franklin's son was a Loyalist Governor.
#4.2 Gringo on 2015-10-01 15:51 (Reply)
Gringo: If the Civil Rights Movement resulted in systemic change, then please explain how George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, both of whom were once considered "moderate" Southern politicians who later made political hay by opposing the Civil Rights movement, both remained in elected office decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It resulted in the overturning of generations of legal segregation. That's a change in the system.
#4.2.1 Zachriel on 2015-10-02 08:38 (Reply)
The activists, the altruistic, the convinced are those who seek power. They mean to rule, they believe that they mean to rule benevolently but make no mistake they mean to rule. It is but a slight shift to the further left than to rule by force because after all if you are trying to save humanity and humanity is resisting it is only right that you force them to do what is right. Marx and Lenin would be so proud of the Democrats and American left. It is not even possible to use the phrase "is the pope catholic" anymore in a joke or comment because it would appear that he is not, he is a committed Marxist which should be the antithesis of Catholicism.
It is a strange world we find ourselves in the president is a muslim who hides behind Christianity and the pope is a wanna be communist who hides behind Catholicism. Ask yourself why hide? If their philosophy is so good for people why hide behind what they hate?
They mean to rule!
#5 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-09-30 09:30 (Reply)

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