But there’s no limiting principle to the above. You’d have more protection of individual rights in Europe if France could overrule Poland through undemocratic organizations like the ECHR: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-.... That would probably trigger devastating political consequences, however.
At the end of the day you have to make a decision about how much you care about democracy and self determination versus individual rights. I don’t think that in 2022 we are striking the right balance on that.
During the period in the US where power was most abused by bureaucrats and executives, they were also extremely local to the people they were wielding that power against.
I'm not trying to figure out some personal-freedom-vs-collective-justice conundrum, I'm asking a very concrete question about whether the quoted statement is even true. In one highly notable case affecting tens or hundreds of thousands of americans and lasting for nearly a century, that wasn't the case. That calls the assertion into question, I think.
> Differences in world view are less significant when the bureaucrats and executives with power over your life live nearby instead of in another city and state.
That can happen. But what also did happen is that the bureaucrats and executives with power of your life were also very much under the influence (and in some cases, direct control) of local (and non-local) wealth. That influence/control can be very hard or impossible to tackle with only local politics (history has shown this to be clearly the case, many, many times).
I'm pointing out an abuse of local power that doesn't seem to fit with the assertion that local power is less subject to abuse.
Personally I think neither centralization nor decentralization are themselves limits on power, and other constraints must be found and imposed.
Suppose x% of people will vote to convict a black man no matter the evidence, and the remaining 1-x% have a y% chance of erroneously voting to convict irrespective of race. At what value of x do you expect 2/3rds of wrongful convictions to be black?
It becomes more interesting when we consider juries. Juries, as far as I know (not being American), require unanimous agreement to convict. A jury consists of 6-12 people. To find out if a jury will convict, we have to find the probability of every single person in that jury wrongfully convicting. The formula now is y = ((2/3)^(1/{6|12}) - x)/(1 - x). At this point, either x or y have to be very high for 2/3 of wrongful convictions to be black. Even when x = 66%, y still has to be above 80% for the 6-member jury to convict wrongfully that many times. This is, of course, assuming this is a perfectly mathematical scenario and we aren't dealing with real humans who will vote to convict because everyone else is doing so.
The error, then, is probably more due to humans being likely to fold their convictions under peer pressure than merely a high percentage of them being rabidly racist. If people adamantly voted their conscience in juries, and refused to be swayed by the deliberation of their fellow jurors, we would have many more hung juries and many fewer convictions.
I'm glad you enjoyed this problem, both as a riddle and as a neat demonstration of how a societal system can be better (more fair, just) than the underlying society that builds it.
Really, though, things like this should be taught and demonstrated from k-12. A kindergartener can understand the cognitive dissonance when the Monty Hall problem is demonstrated, especially if an adult "cheats" repeatedly when they know the mechanics. After the big reveal, the kid knows the difference between 1 out of 2, and 2 out of 3. They'll play it smart by the time they hit third grade, and by graduation, they'll have an intuitive understanding of posterior probabilities.
Drug tests, statistical sampling used to validate polls, and misleading sales tactics would be neutered by a well informed, Bayesian thinking public.
Exponential thinking should be introduced early and feedback loops explained. If legislators could rationally deconstruct a problem such as racist false convictions they would be equipped to modify the systems they legislate to prevent or mitigate the damages implicit to reality-based statistics.
Prisons for profit would lose 80% or more of their fodder. The broken family, broken community cycle would be effectively ended.
How do you reconcile this with jim crow-era terrorism, for example? The movements were local and very loosely organized on even a regional level, but the bureaucrats wielded incredible power over individuals in their jurisdiction. There were definitely other factors but top-down power was important in the weakening of those structures.
I'm not necessarily for centralization, nor do I think our current system is good or has us on a healthy path by any means. I'm just not convinced stakes were lower in the early 20th century.