I disagree with Acton's apophthegm, and consider it to be a perfect example of elite misdirection. Rather than "power corrupts", I think it's far more useful to start with the idea that ONLY those prone to corruption seek power.
So I would replace Acton with the French poet and author 'Alaine", who NAILED IT both in French and in translation:
"Car enfin le trait le plus visible dans l'homme juste est de ne point vouloir du tout gouverner les autres, et de se gouverner seulement lui-même. Cela décide tout. Autant dire que les pires gouverneront."
"Because finally, the most obvious characteristic of the Just Man is to not with at all to govern others, and to govern solely himself. That decides everything. We can basically say that THE WORST WILL RULE".
I will keep Chesterton at #2, solely for the second-last stanza of "The Secret People", the first few lines of which capture the modern bureaucrat so perfectly:
"The have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Men without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers,
They have bright, dead, alien eyes;
They look on our love and our laughter as a tired man looks to flies."
C.S. Lewis at #3 again solely for "The Inner Ring", especially the bit about how a man will be led to being a scoundrel over tea with people he is desperate to impress.
Now... this is where things get Arch (btw): we know that Python lists start at 0: the 0th position in the list must go to the Stoic Sage BIAS OF PRIENE, who famously said in the 5th century BC -
"Oi Pleistoi Anthropoi Kakoi" - Most People Are Shit.
Quibble all you like about my preferred translation of 'Kakoi', but translating it as "shitty" is defensible - and as a Sage, Bias would necessarily have been a meme troll-meister, a master shit-poster and a legendary edgelord.
Obviously I am biased in my choice of Bias at #0 - poll position - but if you're going to have a bias, make it Bias of Priene.
"I disagree with Acton's apophthegm, and consider it to be a perfect example of elite misdirection. Rather than "power corrupts", I think it's far more useful to start with the idea that ONLY those prone to corruption seek power."
Very interesting point, which I will have to think more about. At first glance, it strikes me as very likely true that power attracts the already corrupt (or corruptible), rather than being what causes them to be corruptible. Every now and then we get someone in power who didn't seek it but had it thrust upon him (from what I can tell George Washington was like that), but that's extremely rare.
I think we need to get back to choosing leaders the way Athanasius and Augustine were chosen to be bishops.
From what I understand, they both tried to get out of it, up to physically running away or hiding, but were consecrated anyway, against their wills. But then they stood up and accepted the responsibilities placed on them and served as they had been called to serve.
Maybe not wanting the job skulls be a prerequisite for resuming our vote. We need leaders who really don’t want to lead but who will accept and fulfill the responsibilities laid on them.
Of course, the problem is that what Augustine and Athanasius did spontaneously and naturally, our social striver politicians would do *performatively*, and there would be a whole chattering class throughout the mainstream media covering their theatrics as if it was real. We live in a memetic society, and the folks at the top will happily change the rituals and slogans, but don't expect it to change the reality at all, at least not in a positive way.
Thanks. I should add, there are great men today, who can be great leaders during the troubles ahead. Hopefully the rest of us will have learned to distinguish between the good men and the psychopathic con artist politicians. I am optimistic for Americans, in the long run, just not for the system as it now is or for the psychopathic con artists running it. At the rate they're going, they'll get a great reset, just not the one they want.
Thanks for writing this. I’ve saved it in my archives. I’ve been saving articles like this with the hope of one day sharing them with my children and grandchildren to hopefully explain “how we got here,” and how we can move forward. Thanks for being part of the solution.
I REALLY need to read Chesterton! Maybe Distributism better describes what I am shooting for.
I want to get back to a society where someone with a 70 IQ can still have his own business. (And yes, this was the case a half century ago or even less. When I was a teenager I went to a barber who was too dumb to make change. I guess his wife -- a school bus driver -- did the books for him. He was definitely the go to guy if you wanted to look like Elvis.)
The other lesson from the American experiment: we did not get the voting system right. First past the post can produce bad results when a strong third candidate gets in the race. Our civil war was the result of a four-way race.
The big breakthrough needed is Range Voting. And it needs to be used in parliamentary contexts as well. Robert's Rules and its variants only work for friendly groups which don't game the system. Range voting worked for Vikings.
I think you’ll really enjoy Chesterton. You may find much you disagree with, but he's such an interesting and imaginative thinker with so many thought-provoking insights that even the experiencing of disagreeing with him is highly rewarding.
When reading Lewis, I find myself either awestruck that he simply and elegantly put into words something I struggled to put into words my whole life or blurting out, ‘Come on, Jack! Are we even reading the same Bible?!?!’ (Or having no idea what he’s talking about until the end of the book, when I find my mental furniture completely rearranged, as happened with An Experiment in Criticism). But he always makes me think.
Brilliant writing here! Absolutely spot on! I too,always felt the devilblob would never allow the Orange Man to be Prez! Out here in Thee Sonoran,folks are hunkering down,stocking,arming,all necessary supplies for what will come,here its alteady started with the 'invasions of lemmings and goons"! My land right on the border is worthless and unsafe for habitation. Keep writing,you are a breathe of fresh insight!............mikee of The Republic of South Arizona
I don't know. This seems far too rosy an appraisal of the state of America. I'm at the point where I'd trade it all just to see my enemies punished. The only reason I have for hope is that I may live to see the day.
I write to you today in a sincere effort to help you accomplish your noble goals for seeking this office.
That is to help you facilitate the betterment of our schools for our children and young people.
To do this, I ask you to make the Board meeting agenda and the data points behind them available to me as well as all of the other taxpayers.
Upload the stack to a server where we can read, ratify and or annul the elements after log on.
In a perfect world each paragraph must have at least three possible answers: agree, disagree, no opinion at this time.
Direct democracy is a growing trend, and many companies offer these services:
hosting, voter receipts, and a running tally of totals for everyone to see.
In this way Madam Trustee you are assured that you will always have the strength of the community with you when making the decisions that really do effect the lives of our people.
Chesterton was right about many things, economics wasn't one of them.
Distributism isn't an economic system, it's a collection of economic platitudes. In that sense its not much different from Marx's original formulation of his theories.
In fact, I'd go so far as to assert that the only reason Marx is considered a monster and Chesterton a cultural critic is that nobody ever seriously tried to put Distributism into practice with Lenin's fervor.
> Rather, it means that you own, free and clear of any lien or encumbrance, the means by which you earn your daily bread.
That's nice. Except how could an industrial society work under those conditions given that industrialization was based on economies of scale?
You raise a good point about industrialization. With Chesterton and Distributism, it's not that he worked out a comprehensive system of rules -- he obviously didn't -- but that he articulated some important principles which any economic system must respect if it is to cohere with our human Nature. One such principle is that concentrations of power, whether economic or political (in reality, these forms of power are inextricably related), are likely to lead to abuses of power and thus are evil and ought to be resisted as much as possible. Maybe some concentrations of power are necessary, and as such, they should be seen as necessary evils, with the economic and political system designed to limit the evil they can cause. That's the critical insight of Distributism: we should strive as much as possible to break up concentrations of power and distribute power as widely as possible.
Another thing: skin in the game. The corporate structure, with the legal fiction that corporations are somehow "persons" entitled to rights (including to "free speech" with campaign contributions being considered a form of "speech"), as well as the limitations of liability (but potentially an infinite upside if things go well), means that it is too easy to use corporate structures to evade responsibility and pass the costs of your mistakes onto others (while being able to enjoy the profits if things go well). I don't know what the answer is, only that if the corporate structure is necessary, then it is a necessary evil and ought to be seen as such and treated in such a way as to limit the harms that it can be used to cause.
Distributism provides some useful principles derived from human Nature that our current economic and political system doesn't just ignore, but actively flouts. That's a large part of the reason why we're in the mess that we're in. I like things like electricity and refrigeration and recognize we need some complex systems in order to make those benefits possible, but complex systems means managerialism and loss of autonomy for those who participate in them. It's a balancing act to be sure, but for decades (at least) we've been out of balance by placing too much concern on the modern conveniences that require complex systems, and too little concern on intangible goods like having strong and stable families and high-trust communities and promoting liberty and responsibility on a personal level.
> That's the critical insight of Distributism: we should strive as much as possible to break up concentrations of power and distribute power as widely as possible.
I'd like to call attention to your use of the collectivist "we" in that sentence.
> The corporate structure, with the legal fiction that corporations are somehow "persons" entitled to rights
As well they should. That just means people are allowed to pool their money to produce political messaging.
> It's a balancing act to be sure, but for decades (at least) we've been out of balance
A large part of the reason for that is a previous generation empowered the government to help "break up concentrations of corporate power" and ended up with out of control government power.
"> That's the critical insight of Distributism: we should strive as much as possible to break up concentrations of power and distribute power as widely as possible.
I'd like to call attention to your use of the collectivist "we" in that sentence."
I don't even know what you're saying here. Should I have said "I" instead? Or "you" or "they?"
In the post, I indicated that rather than trying to give a comprehensive list of rules, I would cite three *general* principles from which, using Right-Hemisphere Dominant thinking, one could work out an understanding of where things went wrong. Any principle that's generally true can be taken to an absurd extreme if it's not balanced out with other true and relevant principles. Pointing out those absurd extremes can be a useful warning against treating a general principle like a hard-and-fast absolute rule admitting of no exceptions. Yeah, that's Left-Hemisphere Dominant thinking, which does lead to absurd results. But you seem to be pointing out absurd extremes and acting as if that means the general principle itself is *always* wrong. That's not how general principles work.
You made a point about how people should have the right to pool their money to produce political messaging. Okay, I never said they shouldn't, but something has gone very wrong today, when defense contractors shape our foreign policy and big pharma controls our healthcare system, and then when the bogus wars and scamdemics wind up costing the country dearly, these private interests are able to slither away with their ill-gotten billions and face no consequences. How did we get here? Seems like an important principle or two got left out of the mix. I'm calling attention to some of those principles.
> But you seem to be pointing out absurd extremes and acting as if that means the general principle itself is *always* wrong. That's not how general principles work.
The topic of the OP was constitutional systems, and that is in fact how laws work.
That's true. There's no perfect solution. It's trade-offs no matter which way you go. But as a general principle, I think it's wise to limit the ability of any one person or group to wield power over others.
I disagree with Acton's apophthegm, and consider it to be a perfect example of elite misdirection. Rather than "power corrupts", I think it's far more useful to start with the idea that ONLY those prone to corruption seek power.
So I would replace Acton with the French poet and author 'Alaine", who NAILED IT both in French and in translation:
"Car enfin le trait le plus visible dans l'homme juste est de ne point vouloir du tout gouverner les autres, et de se gouverner seulement lui-même. Cela décide tout. Autant dire que les pires gouverneront."
"Because finally, the most obvious characteristic of the Just Man is to not with at all to govern others, and to govern solely himself. That decides everything. We can basically say that THE WORST WILL RULE".
I will keep Chesterton at #2, solely for the second-last stanza of "The Secret People", the first few lines of which capture the modern bureaucrat so perfectly:
"The have given us into the hands of the new unhappy lords,
Men without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers,
They have bright, dead, alien eyes;
They look on our love and our laughter as a tired man looks to flies."
C.S. Lewis at #3 again solely for "The Inner Ring", especially the bit about how a man will be led to being a scoundrel over tea with people he is desperate to impress.
Now... this is where things get Arch (btw): we know that Python lists start at 0: the 0th position in the list must go to the Stoic Sage BIAS OF PRIENE, who famously said in the 5th century BC -
"Oi Pleistoi Anthropoi Kakoi" - Most People Are Shit.
Quibble all you like about my preferred translation of 'Kakoi', but translating it as "shitty" is defensible - and as a Sage, Bias would necessarily have been a meme troll-meister, a master shit-poster and a legendary edgelord.
Obviously I am biased in my choice of Bias at #0 - poll position - but if you're going to have a bias, make it Bias of Priene.
"I disagree with Acton's apophthegm, and consider it to be a perfect example of elite misdirection. Rather than "power corrupts", I think it's far more useful to start with the idea that ONLY those prone to corruption seek power."
Very interesting point, which I will have to think more about. At first glance, it strikes me as very likely true that power attracts the already corrupt (or corruptible), rather than being what causes them to be corruptible. Every now and then we get someone in power who didn't seek it but had it thrust upon him (from what I can tell George Washington was like that), but that's extremely rare.
I think we need to get back to choosing leaders the way Athanasius and Augustine were chosen to be bishops.
From what I understand, they both tried to get out of it, up to physically running away or hiding, but were consecrated anyway, against their wills. But then they stood up and accepted the responsibilities placed on them and served as they had been called to serve.
Maybe not wanting the job skulls be a prerequisite for resuming our vote. We need leaders who really don’t want to lead but who will accept and fulfill the responsibilities laid on them.
Of course, the problem is that what Augustine and Athanasius did spontaneously and naturally, our social striver politicians would do *performatively*, and there would be a whole chattering class throughout the mainstream media covering their theatrics as if it was real. We live in a memetic society, and the folks at the top will happily change the rituals and slogans, but don't expect it to change the reality at all, at least not in a positive way.
Not wanting the job *should* be a prerequisite to *earning* our votes. 🤦🏼♀️
> apophthegm
Thank you very much! I may never need it, but I'm glad to collect it.
"They gave us a republic; we were not able to keep it. Hopefully, the good men of future ages can learn from our mistakes."- Bravo
Thanks. I should add, there are great men today, who can be great leaders during the troubles ahead. Hopefully the rest of us will have learned to distinguish between the good men and the psychopathic con artist politicians. I am optimistic for Americans, in the long run, just not for the system as it now is or for the psychopathic con artists running it. At the rate they're going, they'll get a great reset, just not the one they want.
Does that third to last paragraph get the first/second rationales switched?
Thanks for the reminder to keep reading C.S. Lewis; we are at war, now as then, and unto the ages of ages.
I sure did! Thanks for pointing out that mix-up!
Thanks for writing this. I’ve saved it in my archives. I’ve been saving articles like this with the hope of one day sharing them with my children and grandchildren to hopefully explain “how we got here,” and how we can move forward. Thanks for being part of the solution.
Thanks, and glad to hear you found it worth saving! There is hope on the other side of this!
I REALLY need to read Chesterton! Maybe Distributism better describes what I am shooting for.
I want to get back to a society where someone with a 70 IQ can still have his own business. (And yes, this was the case a half century ago or even less. When I was a teenager I went to a barber who was too dumb to make change. I guess his wife -- a school bus driver -- did the books for him. He was definitely the go to guy if you wanted to look like Elvis.)
The other lesson from the American experiment: we did not get the voting system right. First past the post can produce bad results when a strong third candidate gets in the race. Our civil war was the result of a four-way race.
The big breakthrough needed is Range Voting. And it needs to be used in parliamentary contexts as well. Robert's Rules and its variants only work for friendly groups which don't game the system. Range voting worked for Vikings.
I think you’ll really enjoy Chesterton. You may find much you disagree with, but he's such an interesting and imaginative thinker with so many thought-provoking insights that even the experiencing of disagreeing with him is highly rewarding.
I find Lewis is that way, too.
When reading Lewis, I find myself either awestruck that he simply and elegantly put into words something I struggled to put into words my whole life or blurting out, ‘Come on, Jack! Are we even reading the same Bible?!?!’ (Or having no idea what he’s talking about until the end of the book, when I find my mental furniture completely rearranged, as happened with An Experiment in Criticism). But he always makes me think.
1000% how I feel about both of them.
Brilliant writing here! Absolutely spot on! I too,always felt the devilblob would never allow the Orange Man to be Prez! Out here in Thee Sonoran,folks are hunkering down,stocking,arming,all necessary supplies for what will come,here its alteady started with the 'invasions of lemmings and goons"! My land right on the border is worthless and unsafe for habitation. Keep writing,you are a breathe of fresh insight!............mikee of The Republic of South Arizona
I don't know. This seems far too rosy an appraisal of the state of America. I'm at the point where I'd trade it all just to see my enemies punished. The only reason I have for hope is that I may live to see the day.
I totally understand that sentiment. The evil that has been done deserves the most severe punishment, and it's long overdue.
https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/8/2/237/700005?login=false
Thanks for sharing that. Will check it out.
Start here:
Dear Mr. / Madam School Board Trustee
I write to you today in a sincere effort to help you accomplish your noble goals for seeking this office.
That is to help you facilitate the betterment of our schools for our children and young people.
To do this, I ask you to make the Board meeting agenda and the data points behind them available to me as well as all of the other taxpayers.
Upload the stack to a server where we can read, ratify and or annul the elements after log on.
In a perfect world each paragraph must have at least three possible answers: agree, disagree, no opinion at this time.
Direct democracy is a growing trend, and many companies offer these services:
hosting, voter receipts, and a running tally of totals for everyone to see.
In this way Madam Trustee you are assured that you will always have the strength of the community with you when making the decisions that really do effect the lives of our people.
Vty,
Helpful Taxpayer Citizen
Hosting Companies:
https://teletownhall.com/products/text-to-online-surveys/
https://publicinput.com/wp/online-town-hall/
https://www.govtech.com/archive/introducing-the-21st-century-city-hall.html
Chesterton was right about many things, economics wasn't one of them.
Distributism isn't an economic system, it's a collection of economic platitudes. In that sense its not much different from Marx's original formulation of his theories.
In fact, I'd go so far as to assert that the only reason Marx is considered a monster and Chesterton a cultural critic is that nobody ever seriously tried to put Distributism into practice with Lenin's fervor.
> Rather, it means that you own, free and clear of any lien or encumbrance, the means by which you earn your daily bread.
That's nice. Except how could an industrial society work under those conditions given that industrialization was based on economies of scale?
You raise a good point about industrialization. With Chesterton and Distributism, it's not that he worked out a comprehensive system of rules -- he obviously didn't -- but that he articulated some important principles which any economic system must respect if it is to cohere with our human Nature. One such principle is that concentrations of power, whether economic or political (in reality, these forms of power are inextricably related), are likely to lead to abuses of power and thus are evil and ought to be resisted as much as possible. Maybe some concentrations of power are necessary, and as such, they should be seen as necessary evils, with the economic and political system designed to limit the evil they can cause. That's the critical insight of Distributism: we should strive as much as possible to break up concentrations of power and distribute power as widely as possible.
Another thing: skin in the game. The corporate structure, with the legal fiction that corporations are somehow "persons" entitled to rights (including to "free speech" with campaign contributions being considered a form of "speech"), as well as the limitations of liability (but potentially an infinite upside if things go well), means that it is too easy to use corporate structures to evade responsibility and pass the costs of your mistakes onto others (while being able to enjoy the profits if things go well). I don't know what the answer is, only that if the corporate structure is necessary, then it is a necessary evil and ought to be seen as such and treated in such a way as to limit the harms that it can be used to cause.
Distributism provides some useful principles derived from human Nature that our current economic and political system doesn't just ignore, but actively flouts. That's a large part of the reason why we're in the mess that we're in. I like things like electricity and refrigeration and recognize we need some complex systems in order to make those benefits possible, but complex systems means managerialism and loss of autonomy for those who participate in them. It's a balancing act to be sure, but for decades (at least) we've been out of balance by placing too much concern on the modern conveniences that require complex systems, and too little concern on intangible goods like having strong and stable families and high-trust communities and promoting liberty and responsibility on a personal level.
> That's the critical insight of Distributism: we should strive as much as possible to break up concentrations of power and distribute power as widely as possible.
I'd like to call attention to your use of the collectivist "we" in that sentence.
> The corporate structure, with the legal fiction that corporations are somehow "persons" entitled to rights
As well they should. That just means people are allowed to pool their money to produce political messaging.
> It's a balancing act to be sure, but for decades (at least) we've been out of balance
A large part of the reason for that is a previous generation empowered the government to help "break up concentrations of corporate power" and ended up with out of control government power.
"> That's the critical insight of Distributism: we should strive as much as possible to break up concentrations of power and distribute power as widely as possible.
I'd like to call attention to your use of the collectivist "we" in that sentence."
I don't even know what you're saying here. Should I have said "I" instead? Or "you" or "they?"
In the post, I indicated that rather than trying to give a comprehensive list of rules, I would cite three *general* principles from which, using Right-Hemisphere Dominant thinking, one could work out an understanding of where things went wrong. Any principle that's generally true can be taken to an absurd extreme if it's not balanced out with other true and relevant principles. Pointing out those absurd extremes can be a useful warning against treating a general principle like a hard-and-fast absolute rule admitting of no exceptions. Yeah, that's Left-Hemisphere Dominant thinking, which does lead to absurd results. But you seem to be pointing out absurd extremes and acting as if that means the general principle itself is *always* wrong. That's not how general principles work.
You made a point about how people should have the right to pool their money to produce political messaging. Okay, I never said they shouldn't, but something has gone very wrong today, when defense contractors shape our foreign policy and big pharma controls our healthcare system, and then when the bogus wars and scamdemics wind up costing the country dearly, these private interests are able to slither away with their ill-gotten billions and face no consequences. How did we get here? Seems like an important principle or two got left out of the mix. I'm calling attention to some of those principles.
> But you seem to be pointing out absurd extremes and acting as if that means the general principle itself is *always* wrong. That's not how general principles work.
The topic of the OP was constitutional systems, and that is in fact how laws work.
> I don't even know what you're saying here. Should I have said "I" instead? Or "you" or "they?"
My point is that you need to think about who exactly will be doing the distribution of power.
That's true. There's no perfect solution. It's trade-offs no matter which way you go. But as a general principle, I think it's wise to limit the ability of any one person or group to wield power over others.