The alternative is primitive tribes, I think we can make government work, it’s improved a fuckton in the last several centuries, but it takes a lot more involvement and a lot less apathy than people have been showing about the whole thing lately.
“the alternative is primitive tribal life” is classic Capitalist propaganda.
You’re absolutely right though, we have progressed incredibly far. It’s almost as if we have all the knowledge and tools to build a truly inclusive society that provides a dignified standard of living for all people, yet there are stubborn and powerful groups interested in maintaining economic heirarchies and exploiting biases for political gain…
“the alternative is primitive tribal life” is classic Capitalist propaganda.
We can have a functional society without rampant capitalism controlling everything if we all really wanted it enough. The idea that it’s “capitalism or stone-age tribalism” is a false dichotomy that reactionaries who hate authority push. Mommy can’t hurt you anymore. It will be okay.
i don’t think we can make a government that works, what we can do is create a broader system of governance that functions.
it’s pretty fucking wild that we just let a tiny fraction of the population decide things on a national scale for years at a time, with little way of interacting with these people and with it just being accepted that most people don’t know what they’re voting for, if they vote at all…
From what i’ve learnt over the years the system that seems most likely to work well is something much much much much more based around local communities and constant actual human interaction, like instead of the most important elections being the national ones they should be the quarterly local elections where you decide who from you actual community represents you, based primarily on actually trusting them as a person you personally know.
You are absolutely right that we are ignoring community to a disastrous degree, our lack of communal spirit is allowing the worst people to gain the most power because we don’t care about who supports those worst people and only focus on spectacle.
But we still need broader systems, if we just have small communities, we end up with medieval feudalism the moment one community needs something their neighbor has.
We can’t get rid of the human need to “get ahead” it’s hardwired in, even in the most equitable system, there will always be someone who says “I want more.” And they will exploit and game the system until they get it. If there aren’t guardrails and laws and systems to enforce those laws, those kinds of people will immediately resort to force and we have, yet again, armed raiders who then become powerful enough after killing and raping enough of their neighboring communities that suddenly everyone sees them as the central power.
Our problem isn’t that we don’t know how to government, our problem is we’re broadly still too dumb to handle the abstraction required to manage such large systems. We haven’t had that “reckoning” yet that will slap our whole species down a peg and say “You need to value intelligence” and I genuinely don’t know what will do it at this point. We had plagues and wars and genocides and it made people cling to ignorance harder.
I might be peaking on my cynicism here but I am not sure we can rise above our limitations as a species. It might take several thousand more years of people building civilizations and having them reduced to ashes again and again before natural selection creates a species that can work together for a common good. But I kind of don’t think we’ll even be humans anymore at that point.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
genuinely cannot think of a government that doesn’t suck ass
musubibreakfast@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s not all around great but I think New Zealand has a pretty decent government
ameancow@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The alternative is primitive tribes, I think we can make government work, it’s improved a fuckton in the last several centuries, but it takes a lot more involvement and a lot less apathy than people have been showing about the whole thing lately.
head_socj@midwest.social 1 day ago
“the alternative is primitive tribal life” is classic Capitalist propaganda.
You’re absolutely right though, we have progressed incredibly far. It’s almost as if we have all the knowledge and tools to build a truly inclusive society that provides a dignified standard of living for all people, yet there are stubborn and powerful groups interested in maintaining economic heirarchies and exploiting biases for political gain…
ameancow@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We can have a functional society without rampant capitalism controlling everything if we all really wanted it enough. The idea that it’s “capitalism or stone-age tribalism” is a false dichotomy that reactionaries who hate authority push. Mommy can’t hurt you anymore. It will be okay.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
i don’t think we can make a government that works, what we can do is create a broader system of governance that functions.
it’s pretty fucking wild that we just let a tiny fraction of the population decide things on a national scale for years at a time, with little way of interacting with these people and with it just being accepted that most people don’t know what they’re voting for, if they vote at all…
From what i’ve learnt over the years the system that seems most likely to work well is something much much much much more based around local communities and constant actual human interaction, like instead of the most important elections being the national ones they should be the quarterly local elections where you decide who from you actual community represents you, based primarily on actually trusting them as a person you personally know.
ameancow@lemmy.world 2 days ago
You are absolutely right that we are ignoring community to a disastrous degree, our lack of communal spirit is allowing the worst people to gain the most power because we don’t care about who supports those worst people and only focus on spectacle.
But we still need broader systems, if we just have small communities, we end up with medieval feudalism the moment one community needs something their neighbor has.
We can’t get rid of the human need to “get ahead” it’s hardwired in, even in the most equitable system, there will always be someone who says “I want more.” And they will exploit and game the system until they get it. If there aren’t guardrails and laws and systems to enforce those laws, those kinds of people will immediately resort to force and we have, yet again, armed raiders who then become powerful enough after killing and raping enough of their neighboring communities that suddenly everyone sees them as the central power.
Our problem isn’t that we don’t know how to government, our problem is we’re broadly still too dumb to handle the abstraction required to manage such large systems. We haven’t had that “reckoning” yet that will slap our whole species down a peg and say “You need to value intelligence” and I genuinely don’t know what will do it at this point. We had plagues and wars and genocides and it made people cling to ignorance harder.
I might be peaking on my cynicism here but I am not sure we can rise above our limitations as a species. It might take several thousand more years of people building civilizations and having them reduced to ashes again and again before natural selection creates a species that can work together for a common good. But I kind of don’t think we’ll even be humans anymore at that point.