Re:Some tech firms being 'friendly to terrorists' says UK po...
by kbenson on Friday April 24, 2015 @02:53AM
(#9431775)
I don't believe the conditions you outlined make it impossible to change the system, but they do outline a situation that makes it very hard. At a minimum, voting to aggressively replace incumbents in all offices for a few terms would definitely shake up any existing internal power relationships (as I said, hard). But if we can outline way out of the scenario you outlined above that possible, we can work backwards from there to see what is a necessary condition for the desired outcome and how we can achieve it by iterating on a known possible solution (even if initially unlikely).
> You don't need everyone in the police to be corrupt to silence a potentially problematic civilian.
No, but you need a fair percentage of people, or people in power to be, to do it continuously without getting caught. Additionally, as long as general consensus is against specific group actions, they will eventually come to light. Just as there is a chance that a normally lawful person may occasionally, due to some aspect of their personality or environment,break the law, there is a chance that a person that normally breaks a specific law will decide that this instance of it occurring within the group is inexcusable in the way it previously was, and make it public. That is, groups that exhibit aberrant behavior with regard to the social norm will eventually be exposed, and society in general will take steps to correct that behavior if it is aberrant enough. I.e. The group defined by getting just a little too close when greeting people will face little or no social correction, while the group that spits in your face instead of saying hello will face some heavy corrective actions.
> Not everyone needs to be evil for the system as a whole to become abominable, even incorrectably so (at least just going by number of good vs bad participants.)
I'm not sure any system is incorrectably abominable. Nature seems to abhor steady state systems (if it seems to be steady, perhaps the scale is too small), cyclical seems more common. and cyclical implies change (and return, to be fair).
> You don't need everyone in the police to be corrupt to silence a potentially problematic civilian.
No, but you need a fair percentage of people, or people in power to be, to do it continuously without getting caught. Additionally, as long as general consensus is against specific group actions, they will eventually come to light. Just as there is a chance that a normally lawful person may occasionally, due to some aspect of their personality or environment,break the law, there is a chance that a person that normally breaks a specific law will decide that this instance of it occurring within the group is inexcusable in the way it previously was, and make it public. That is, groups that exhibit aberrant behavior with regard to the social norm will eventually be exposed, and society in general will take steps to correct that behavior if it is aberrant enough. I.e. The group defined by getting just a little too close when greeting people will face little or no social correction, while the group that spits in your face instead of saying hello will face some heavy corrective actions.
> Not everyone needs to be evil for the system as a whole to become abominable, even incorrectably so (at least just going by number of good vs bad participants.)
I'm not sure any system is incorrectably abominable. Nature seems to abhor steady state systems (if it seems to be steady, perhaps the scale is too small), cyclical seems more common. and cyclical implies change (and return, to be fair).