- the NSA, CIA, and FBI,
- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, or
- AT&T & Comcast,
or something else?
Would you be willing to elaborate on "the forces" you think shape our society?
I've lived life travelling the world on a shoestring, hiking some of the world's most famous trails, living in cars, camping on beaches, etc. Of course it's a bit different as it's easy to do this and there are lots of backpackers about--most of them quite casual in their pursuit of freedom.
Anyways most people without lust to follow the dictations of the almighty dollar (or other forms of power over others, like becoming a police officer) but still have enough ambition and gumption to put in the effort to do this sort of thing, tend to be really wonderful people... Occasionally a bit of the rails, though.
Are you excusing corruption because it's hard to be disciplined enough to not be corrupt when you have power?
Chris Rock has a great standup bit where he points out that you can’t really know how faithful a man is to his wife if the man has never had the opportunity to cheat. Celebrities are often in the news for cheating on their wives. This may not be an indication that they have any weaker morals than ordinary men, but rather simply that they have far more opportunities to cheat than ordinary men. How many ordinary, faithful men would make the same mistakes if suddenly given all the wealth and social status of George Clooney or whoever?
It seems like US politicians are plagued with it. I consider constant giveaways to the wealthy while mostly ignoring the majority of the population to be corruption, like this recent tax bill.
>The fact that such a law existed at all suggests that someone thought it was necessary. There must've been a fair number of unethical witches/gays/drug users/race of people.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN for ideological and national flamewar, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16943121. We ban accounts that do that, so please don't.
The only thing I've been able to come up with would be to dilute the expected reward of the political game with stochastic power structures. Democratically maintain a pool of candidates and then use some a random process to select from them.
Nobody will ever ask me, of course, but it's fun to think about.
“For the last century, almost all the top political appointments on Terra had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to people who volunteered for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewd political commentator had remarked: “We want a President who has to be carried screaming and kicking into the White House – but will then do the best job he possibly can, so that he’ll get time off for good behavior.”