The common techie posture that politics doesn’t matter/isn’t a solution to anything is no longer harmless. Thing is, politics has the potential to become a much bigger problem even if it offers no solutions. There’s low upside to good politics, high downside to bad politics.
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Politics is a game where zero-sum is actually the best case outcome. It can get arbitrarily negative sum.
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Is this a change/evolution of your position in breaking smart? I have a draft open about that sitting there for weeks but still can’t get my head around it. I mean, I agree with most things but it clashes when it comes to political action.
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Hobbes would disagree. Politics can be positive-sum when starting from a historical point in which public goods are under-provided. If politics is negative-sum today, it is because we can no longer afford the level of public goods that was feasible yesterday.
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Hmmm I would disagree about low upside. The us constitution laid the foundation for a lot of prosperity. Same with the interstate highways or visionary investment in the tripartite system of higher education in California




