Put GOOD people in charge

[Pionart]

I sincerely believe that many of this world's problems would be fixed if we put morally good people in charge, rather than what is currently done where it's typically very evil people rising to the top.

I don't know how this would be achieved, but I guess first learning to identify who is good or evil would be a start.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I sincerely believe that many of this world's problems would be fixed if we put morally good people in charge, rather than what is currently done where it's typically very evil people rising to the top.

I don't know how this would be achieved, but I guess first learning to identify who is good or evil would be a start.

Just go by whatever your preferred information source says is good or evil, doy.

Sarcasm aside, I do think moral character matters with regards to politics; I do think it has an impact on the kind of policies you get. I get the sense that many people on the right and left find that very old fashioned but I think morality is actually important here. Someone who is in it for self-interested reasons is obviously not going push to policies that will benefit others if they can get more personal benefit from not pushing for them. If say, the primary goal is winning re-election than actually getting something good done, they are going to accept money from lobbyists (and they probably get other kinds of perks, as well), which means they will squash reform efforts when the opportunity arises to do so. Someone who sees the goals as bigger than themselves might have a different approach.

I think the process of finding out if someone is "good" is relatively easy if they have held office for a long time... you can actually "gasp" look at their record (votes on these things for the US Congress and Senate are publicly available and they probably are for state and local as well). Why more people don't do this or think this matters, I don't know. This makes it easier to determine what people are likely to actually believe is important vs. what is likely to be a product of opportunism.

For new folks, I don't know.

 

[Pionart]

It's easy to find out if soneone in office is good. If they're in office, they're evil.

Honestly, the majority of politicians make even Trump look good.

 

[Vendrah]

It's easy to find out if soneone in office is good. If they're in office, they're evil.

Honestly, the majority of politicians make even Trump look good.

You don't need to trust your hunches on this one, the statistics are on my own private blog. "They are all evil" is not true, "a lot of them are evil" (on the form of "a lot of <insert top and leadership are> are psychopathic/narcissistic") is accurate by studies already. Politicians goes immune on the studies but here are good reasons to think it is the same for the moment.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Yeah, the premise of this thread is evidently in the zone of "captain obvious".



While on the part of how to do this: detection of bad apples is evidently the right start.
However as I explained a while ago in a typical democracy it is best to start with local seats. There isn't that much money or PR involved and that kinda makes it easier to start. Plus all the politics that is visible actually stands on top of the local and regional levels. Therefore visible politics is cherry and cream on the cake. While local and regional levels are the main body of the cake upon which the top level stands. Therefore if you start to clean this up things will start to change. This is actually why some fast changes just on the top level usually don't really work. Since you didn't change the bulk of the system which actually implements the decisions locally. This bulk is made out of "endless" amount of people you never saw or heard and almost no one is excited about races for those seats, even if the sum of those ground level seats is very very powerful.

Plus this all stands as an idea even on the inside of political parties. Thus removing of your own bad apples is very good practice. Since something like that should be practiced for the sake of the country and it's people. People should be elected due to their quality and morals, not just party label (especially since formally they are often labeled in a wrong way).

 

[Pionart]

It might be obvious, but it's the opposite of how things are done.

 

[Pionart]

On this site, we talk about the 16 types, but not about how good or evil someone is.

 

[Totenkindly]

People don't really agree on what good and evil is. Do you think they vote in people who they believe are evil? No, they think the person they are supporting is the best option they have.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

People don't really agree on what good and evil is. Do you think they vote in people who they believe are evil? No, they think the person they are supporting is the best option they have.

It is not uncommon for people to vote for the best option under the belief that is the lesser of two evils. How they determine which one is the lesser of two evils may differ.

People vote for someone who they think is good, or someone who may not be good but can get the job done or get elected, or they vote for the lesser of two evils. It is true that nobody votes for the greater of two evils (well, edgelords might).

 

[Totenkindly]

It is not uncommon for people to vote for the best option under the belief that is the lesser of two evils. How they determine which one is the lesser of two evils may differ.

People vote for someone who they think is good, or someone who may not be good but can get the job done or get elected, or they vote for the lesser of two evils. It is true that nobody votes for the greater of two evils (well, edgelords might).

I think you got my point, though.

The whole discussion is rather ineffective at improving anything.

 

[Virtual ghost]

People don't really agree on what good and evil is. Do you think they vote in people who they believe are evil? No, they think the person they are supporting is the best option they have.

I think you are somewhat wrong here. Since the media like to present info in such a way that it looks as if people have much larger diversity of thought than they really have. What is simply because drama is what sales. However in reality most people actually agree on most things. The only real questions are how to set priorities or get things that elites don't want.

 

[Kephalos]

I sincerely believe that many of this world's problems would be fixed if we put morally good people in charge, rather than what is currently done where it's typically very evil people rising to the top.

I don't know how this would be achieved, but I guess first learning to identify who is good or evil would be a start.

You know what? I agree with this. You do need good people in charge. And, most importantly, you need to have institutions (political, legal, economic, social, educational, etc.) that systematically forms good people to be ready to be in charge, that systematically promotes good people to positions of influence, and that systematically does not promote evil people to positions of authority and influence.

We don't have that now: not in politics, not in business, not in social media, not in sports, not in the international order, not in religious institutions even. What we have is that the most ruthless people are the ones that are most likely to "succeed" because only such people can stomach to do what has to be done to get to the top and have less compunction to do what has to be done to keep others from getting to the top: this is why one should not be surprised to find out that among the top businessmen, the top politicians, the top financiers, even the top chefs, psychopathic traits are disproportionately higher than elsewhere (outside of prisons). Good people, even people with scruples, either don't rise, get pushed out, leave voluntarily (would you work for Enron?), or prefer to rise only up to the point where their pronciples are not violated.

Of course, our system delivers the Tesla, but it also delivers Elon Musk (whom I find to be a detestable individual). Or, our system delivered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the truth is that Lyndon Johnson was a morally bankrupt person. It took the cooperation of such a terrible man as Fredrik Willem de Klerk to end Apartheid in South Africa. You get the idea: when and if we get a system that promotes good people instead of evil people, we might not get what we have now. I myself believe (and firmly so) that such a system would be immesurably better than anything we have now, but I have no doubt that it will be a lot different.

 

[ceecee]

I hate to say it, I think our only hope is to have our leaders chosen by a supercomputer

it’s time to try technocracy

Well, Yanis Varoufakis thinks capitalism is being replaced by techno-feudalism.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Well, Yanis Varoufakis thinks capitalism is being replaced by techno-feudalism.

Yeah, to me his statement also sounds strange.
It isn't that algorithms don't determine what the most people will see. What is actually pretty close to his idea.

 

[ceecee]

Yeah, to me his statement also sounds strange.
It isn't that algorithms don't determine what the most people will see. What is actually pretty close to his idea.

It made a little more sense to me once I read the interview.

Yanis Varoufakis: We are living in a post-capitalist, techno-feudalist dystopia

World-renowned Greek economist, author, and politician Yanis Varoufakis argues that global capitalism as we know it is dying—and something much worse is taking its place.

therealnews.com

 

[Virtual ghost]

It made a little more sense to me once I read the interview.

Yanis Varoufakis: We are living in a post-capitalist, techno-feudalist dystopia

World-renowned Greek economist, author, and politician Yanis Varoufakis argues that global capitalism as we know it is dying—and something much worse is taking its place.

therealnews.com

Just in case we have a misunderstanding: I was talking about Doctor Anaximander having a strange thought since algorithms already made that a reality for the most part. While Yanis is evidently right, this isn't really a real Capitalism anymore.

 

[Kephalos]

Just a reminder: Yanis Varoufakis is quite a terrible economist, who definitely has not earned the the right to have his pronouncements taken seriously without double and/or triple checking them first.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Just a reminder: Yanis Varoufakis is quite a terrible economist, who definitely has not earned the the right to have his pronouncements taken seriously without double and/or triple checking them first.

Perhaps, but in the bottom line he is generally correct in this part of the equation. What we are seeing out there in the world indeed looks more like a tehno-feudalism than genuine Capitalism.

 

[draon9]

I sincerely believe that many of this world's problems would be fixed if we put morally good people in charge, rather than what is currently done where it's typically very evil people

The way the system is setup,it aint going to work in the people's favor,the only way it is going to happen is to tear it down and rebuild it,it clearly is going to happen