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Demurrage

By Al Schumann on Wednesday August 12, 2009 12:54 AM

Current events blogging gets toxic after a while. For change of pace, a hypothetical. What if the exercise of power within a political system came at a penalty rate? A year as the mayor of Smbivania must be paid for by a year keeping the streets of the fine city free of garbage and, uh, pet residues. I think this would tend to raise wages and impose comfortable limits on both the exercise of power and type of person who seeks it.

Comments (6)

hapa:

so long, "term limits"

Al Schumann:

Ideologically, I'm committed to the idea that all humans can participate in the political life of their community as responsible and empathetic adults. But some of them really need to spend some time gaining an understanding of what life is like for a lot of people. And some of them need to be reminded. The more power they have, the more learning and reminding they need.

It's not just for the humility and empathy. The most important jobs relate directly to the cleanliness of a community. A community awash in the waste products of living is going to literally sicken. A community that kills its environment is going to die. In shit, some enlightenment may be found.

Al Schumann:

Another thing, there's an observed phenomenon relating to the passage of accurate information up the hierarchical food chain. Unintentional distortion and human error -- forgetting, delaying, misjudging -- is normal. In entrenched hierarchies, so is pandering and tactical disinformation. I may be wrong, but undoing some of the entrenchment or compensating for it, would tend to reduce the pandering and disinformation.

op:

one year running a honey wagon might work
as prep for jury duty

once we assume a system of "merit" advance
that filters out ascriptive brutes like the bush clan the remaining dedicated slippery pole climbers
like say bill clinton
could be forced to eat the shit for a year
and still play prez for the day more or less like he did

in the huxley conjecture of what today we'd call a clone society
he figured genetic dronery would be necessary
that hg wells rule and be ruled in turn
misses something crucial about human co habitation
that has nothing to do with natural inequality
but is very glad we have it

Al Schumann:

I think you're right about the Clinton-style pole climbers. They can play a long game. But to play the long game like he did requires access to people who are exempt and entrenched. There'd still be a problem with cabals of pole climbers, but I think the organizational difficulties and the pole climber tendency towards intra-cabal treachery would work against large scale disaster.

op:

i agree

"intra-cabal treachery would work against large scale disaster"

in fact in the end
that's what keeps the framing and hermetic sealing
from working for the corporations

though maybe if they perfected their "front"
it would run off cliffs like this present bubble trouble
even faster

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