Re: [tlug] [OT] Linux breeding out Microsoft

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Josh Glover writes:

 > I had to stop watching "The Daily Show" (which I *love*) for a few
 > weeks because it was just putting my blood pressure through the
 > roof at the ineptitude of both the Right and the Left in American
 > politics. :(

"Geeks."  *sigh*  It was one of the German philosopher-statesmen
(Clauswitz, maybe? cited by van Wolferen) that said "A people gets the
government it deserves."  It's not about the eptness of the political
classes.

In a modern mass democracy, politics is inherently dishonest.  You get
into office by promising to make your constituents better off (which
is OK), you prove you can do it before actually doing it by telling
them about policies you support in terms they understand (dishonest
because you know that what they understand is insufficient to deal
with the issues), and once you get elected, you do something else
because simplistic policies simply aren't capable of succeeding (ie,
you outright lied).  Note the phrase "they understand", not "they
*can* understand".  Many of the self-deluding voters are highly
intelligent and academically well-informed, but don't have a grasp of
the on-the-ground issues.  (Hey, geeks, I'm looking at you! :-)  The
funny thing is that this system works tolerably well.

Note that in general you don't want politics to work terribly well.
Politics is about win-lose situations.  If there was a win-win
available, you'd see a market develop.  So, *at the micro level*,
inherently politics is about one group taking from another by force.
At the *macro* level, of course, the idea is that we take turns
winning.  But this requires that things move slowly enough that the
core parties can verify that turns actually are being taken.

By the way, if you watch Beat Takeshi's TV Tackle on Monday nights,
not only will you learn to feel a lot better about American politics,
but you'll learn how to say really cutting things in keigo.