#metapolitics

[balioc]

Seeing a lot of support for a European-style party system these days. For obvious reasons, to be sure. It's not like the US 2-party FPTP system is doing anyone any good.

...but it's not like most places in Europe are doing so great either. And I'm at least semi-convinced by the argument that America's particular distribution of crazy opinions would end up leaving the government in a very bad place under a parliamentary setup.

I've been toying with the idea of going in the other direction and just trying to cripple all political parties entirely. Obviously you can't prevent politicians (or voters) from forming whatever associations and private clubs they want, but...there's a lot you could do to prevent those associations and clubs from being in any way relevant. Make it unlawful to put party affiliations on ballots. Stop having publicly-supported primary elections. Change congressional procedure so that parties can make many fewer decisions and control many fewer things.

(And none of it would even require changing the Constitution!)

Thoughts? Arguments for and against? Not sticking my own oar in at least until I've heard some of what the people around here have to say.

[mitigatedchaos]

Degenerated ideology, in which the concepts of the ideology have been disconnected from their actual meanings or depth (too fluid), vs. dessicated ideology, in which ideas are treated too rigidly and followed mindlessly, lacking adjustment for practical realities (too dry/rigid).

[periodicresetofcivilizations]

"Jewish people" is a fiction—religion ≠ ethnicity. The spiritual transcends tribal fetishism. #Evola #Tradition #Metapolitics

[affirmation--negation]

To produce the same, to count each one universally as one, it is necessary to work locally, in the gap opened up between politics and the State, a gap whose principle resides in the measure π(ε). This is how a Maoist politics was able to experiment with an agrarian revolution in the liberated zones (those beyond the reach of the reactionary armies), or a Bolshevik politics was able to effect a partial transfer of certain statist operations into the hands of the Soviets, at least in those instances where the latter were capable of assuming them. What is at work in such situations is once again the political function π, applied under the conditions of the prescriptive distance it has itself created, but this time with the aim of producing the same, or producing the Real in accordance with an egalitarian maxim. One will therefore write: π(π(ε)) ⇒ 1 in order to designate this doubling of the political function which works to produce equality under the conditions of freedom of thought/practice opened up by the fixation of statist power. We can now complete the numericality of the political procedure. It is composed of three infinites: that of the situation; that of the state of the situation, which is indeterminate; and that of the prescription, which interrupts the indeterminacy and allows for a distance to be taken vis-à-vis the State. This numericality is completed by the 1, which is partially engendered by the political function under the conditions of the distance from the State, which themselves derive from this function. Here, the 1 is the figure of equality and sameness. The numericality is written as follows: σ, ε, π(ε), π(π(ε)) ⇒1. What singularises the political procedure is the fact that it proceeds from the infinite to the 1. It makes the 1 of equality arise as the universal truth of the collective by carrying out a prescriptive operation upon the infinity of the State; an operation whereby it constructs its own autonomy, or distance, and is able to effectuate its maxim from within that distance. Alain Badiou, “Metapolitics.”

[tropylium]

I was considering making a longer and more rambly post about it, but more succinctly: somehow I had not fully internalized that the “loud assholes are a minority” principle is generally applicable also to all political factions.

a particular application: most far-whateverism sympathizers are only sympathetic to certain specific goals and principles, not the whole construct with its associated conspiracy theories etc.

there are factions on which I had already convinced myself of this being the case and giving myself the permission to not worry about them too much, but this is being a somewhat convenient realization for continuing to adhere to my smug milquetoast sentrism deterministic fatalism things-happen-for-a-reasonism [note to self: research better branding]

[insidious-praetorian]

[lambdaphagy]

There’s general discontent with the revolving-door system in which figures in private industry become lobbyists become regulators and vice versa.  Which, sure: “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public,” and so on.  For example, all players have an interest in raising barriers to entry and pulling the ladder up after themselves.  You can see this at work in the real world all the time.

Against this, you have to consider that most of the people who are knowledgeable about a given industry got that way by working in it.  Excluding them for fear of perceptions of corruption will tend to narrow the pool of expertise.  Moreover, you probably don’t want all of the regulatory shots called by people who’ve never been on the other side of the regs.  Everyone is generally in favor of rules they never expect to have to obey themselves.  This is true even as our own personal experience with compliance tells us that regulations are often ill-considered, unduly burdensome, or superfluous to anyone with common sense and decency. 

(I’ve worked as a carpenter and as a grad student.  In the former job I ran around all day wielding things you see in horror movies.  In the latter I sat around all day behind a keyboard.  Guess which job had way more regulation?)

But It occurs to me that there’s another argument for the revolving door that you rarely hear put forward: maybe we should prefer large helpings of industry input precisely in order to identify and ban harmful practices that no one actually wants to engage in, but worries they’ll have to for fear that if they don’t, the other guys will.  That dynamic seems pretty plausible to me.  You hardly ever hear about it, though, probably because it puts industry in a less than totally spotless light.  “Hey Congress, we at Foo Enterprises just thought of some really heinous shit that we could pull. It’s not that we want to do it, exactly, but please pass a law against it so BarCorp can’t do it first and undercut us.  That way we won’t be tempted.” 

Not that you need the fox guarding the hen-house, necessarily.  But it does perhaps speak to the desirability of back-channels between industry and regulators, for the same reason that sunshine laws requiring public negotiations often prove counter-productive.

[kontextmaschine]

Ironic thing is if you were really worried about Russians using internet memes to claim American mindshare and fellow-feeling you'd crack down on the "white people being #relatable with their cat" stuff