I think a technocracy would initially be relatively better, but would rapidly decline and likely end up worse.

Initially, there would be some significant number of genuinely sincere people who would be well-positioned to move into the positions of power, and the requirement of technical expertise would eliminate a lot of the scumbags.

Over time though, the scumbags would figure out which hoops they needed to jump through in order to qualify for office, then they’d start co-opting that system, so that eventually, well-connected scumbags would, if anything, actually have an easier time of obtaining the necessary credentials than actual experts would.

I have no proposal for a non-hierarchical system because that’s the exact sort of collective thinking that leads to hierarchical systems.

A non-hierarchical system can’t be implemented. Rather, it can only be the result of all the paticipants in a system (or close enough as makes no meaningful difference) butting out of each other’s decisions.

At that point, it will and can only take whatever form it takes - whatever the manifestation of the unconstrained decisions of all of the participants might end up being.

There are two levels of problems with a technocracy.

The first is a problem that’s common to all hierarchical systems, entirely regardless of their specific nature. They will, each and all, sooner or later come to be dominated by people who hold the positions they hold solely because they most lust for those positions and are most willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to gain and hold them.

It makes no difference what sort of limitations or stipulations might be in place - if there is a position that holds authority over others, it will eventually come to be held by the most vicious and conniving bastard in the organization, because they will be willing and able to go to lengths to which nobody else will go.

The second problem with a technocracy is ancillary to the first, and common to all hierarchical systems that focus on some specific philosophy or identity. The positions of power will still come to be held by the most determined psychopaths, but unlike in a more general system, the abusers in power will have an additional claim to legitimacy by paying lip service to the ideal. They’re generally able to act even more destructively than other psychopaths, since they can hide their malevolence behind the philosophy or identity both before and after the fact.

Or more simply - problem 1 is that you end up with psychopathic assholes, and problem 2 is that you end up with psychopathic assholes who have even more power than your run-of-the-mill psychopathic assholes because, after all, they’re experts.

He’s also the junkie who robbed you.

I’m not an anarchist by accident.

The institutionalization of authority inevitably leads to a social order in which the shallow self-interest of the ruling class usurps all other considerations.

Political power inevitably comes to be held and controlled by those who most lust for it and who are most willing to do whatever it takes to gain and hold it, and those people are virtually always malignant - some combination of narcissistic, megalomaniacal and sociopathic.

So, among other things, when it comes down to a crisis like the western world faces today, and faced in the 1930s, yes - they choose to side with the autocrats, entirely regardless of the specifics of their ideology, rather than siding with those who stand for liberty and justice and the well-being of the common people. Driven as they are by pathological self-interest and greed and entirely unconstrained as they are by their complete lack of morals, ethics, integrity or empathy, what else would they ever do?

Weird how he suddenly turns into a dove when it comes to Russia’s strongest ally in the Middle East.

Almost as if his actual loyalty isn’t to America at all, but to Russia.

Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

I access lemmy through Firefox, and I just have bookmarks for all of my accounts and have whichever ones I’m using the most pinned. Switching from one to another is just a matter of clicking a link.

I don’t know of any way to combine everything into one feed, though I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of the apps will do it. That’s exactly the opposite of what I value though - I don’t want just one feed - I want whichever feed I happen to be in the mood for at the moment.

Ah - I get a chance to preach.

I think it makes a lot of sense, and I’ve been trying to convince people of that since I’ve been here. It costs nothing and provides benefits, and what more could anyone want?

When I first came to Lemmy, I couldn’t figure out any reason to pick one specific instance, and I finally decided that the only way to know if it mattered was to create multiple accounts and compare them. So I did.

I sort of intended to eventually settle on one, but as it turned out, I never really did, and in fact have added a number of accounts since.

The first and most notable thing I discovered is that every instance is different. Unsurprisingly, specialty instances like ani.social and literature.cafe are different from the general instances, but even the general instances differ from each other just depending on which other instances they’re federated with and which communities they carry.

I default to All on most instances, and All on lemm.ee, for instance, is significantly different from All on Sopuli, or from All on dbzer0, or from All on Beehaw, and so on. So I can effectively tailor my experience simply by using different accounts.

I generally have about three general accounts that I cycle between, with another few specialty ones - either specialized by topic, like ani.social, or specialized by bias, like .ml. I find that’s enough so that pretty much no matter what I’m in the mood for, I have an account that fits.

Additionally, from a more simple practical perspective, instances change over time, and are sometimes shut down entirely. That’s never directly affected my experience, since I always have other accounts. So for instance, when .world started to decline, I just stopped using it, and when lemmy.ninja shut down (RIP), I just spent more time on other instances. And as new instances pop up, or just come to my attention, I just make an account, then take them for a test drive and see what I think. I’ve discovered a number of good instances that way.

So… yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense and it’s pretty much effortless and entirely free, so there’s no reason not to do it.

Deliberately.

The long-term goal is to make housing even less affordable, then criminalize homelessness, so that poor people can be fed into the prison-for-profit system and made into slaves.

America in the 21st century - the Republicans are dismantling the government in order to make it even easier for the 1% to loot and pillage without consequence, and the Democrats are debating maybe disrupting a speech.

I hate to be the one to piss in the punch bowl here, but the only reason that they did this is because it in fact didn’t require any spine at all.

Whether or not trans women play women’s sports is an issue that has no effect at all on the fortunes of corporations and billionaires, so none of the soft money the Democrats receive has been contingent on them ensuring that trans women were banned, so they were free to oppose it, and did. And that’s it.

So it’s only barely March and Trump is already basically bent over on the front steps of the Kremlin with his butt cheeks spread, shouting, “Take me daddy!”

I expected him to bend over for Putin, but even cynical as I am, I didn’t expect him to do it so completely so quickly.

I don’t pretend to know one way or the other.

He’s clearly working for the benefit of Russia, but “asset” implies an official, essentially employer/employee relationship, and there’s no knowing if that’s the case or not.

Not that it much matters really - whether he’s working for Russia’s benefit because they literally own him or working for Russia’s benefit because he’s a desperately insecure narcissist who idolizes Putin, it works out to pretty much the same thing in the long run.

Here’s the full text of what I said, including the part you inexplicably left out:

For the record, I do think that Putin manipulates Trump, and pretty brazenly at that, but I don’t think that he controls him. Trump’s ego is far too bloated for that.

And that’s specifically because, in point of fact, a bloated ego makes a person easier to manipulate, but not to “control.” They reflexively rebel against direct control, because it’s a threat to their ego, but they’re relatively easily manipulated, because all anyone has to do is frame things in a way that will appeal to their ego.

Did you really not grasp the distinction I was making there?

What the fuck are you on about?

For the record, I do think that Putin manipulates Trump, and pretty brazenly at that, but I don’t think that he controls him. Trump’s ego is far too bloated for that.

I meant pretty much exactly what my metaphor implies - Trump is weak and insecure and desperate for affirmation, and he idolizes Putin, so he wants his approval.

AND Trump is also greedy and self-absorbed and trying to please his greedy and self-absorbed cronies and patrons - that’s painfully obviously why he’s trying to swing this mineral rights deal alongside trying to effectively hand Ukraine to Putin.

It’s possible for more than one thing to be true at the same time.

The Toddler-in-chief hoping that daddy Putin will pat him on the head and tell him what a good boy he is.

Shh!

Don’t let the Republicans know that their cynical attempt to further depress voter turnout is going to disproportionately affect their own supporters!

Some kind of dark ages - yes.

I suspect it will be considered the Lunatic Age or the Misinformation Age or the Willfully Ignorant Age or something like that, since its most distinctive characteristic, in retrospect, is likely to be the oddity that the creation of the most efficient and comprehensive information-sharing system the world has yet seen led pretty much directly to a worldwide epidemic of ignorance, stupidity, irrationality, and insanity.

Yeah - we hear that same tired song and dance over and over again.

Funny though that when Democrats held the majorities, they somehow couldn’t manage to accomplish much of anything, and blamed it all on the Republican “obstructionists.”

If the Republicans really could obstruct them then, then they could obstruct the Republicans now.

Or if they really can’t obstruct the Republicans now then the Republicans really couldn’t obstruct them then.

Either way, they’re liars.

One would think that a president using the authority of his office to exact vengeance on the people who investigated his past crimes would warrant at least some sort of response from the supposed opposition…

Yes.

And even beyond that - hierarchical systems effectively reward and thus select for psychopathy.

People with morals, ethics, integrity and/or empathy will refrain from making choices that would conflict with their principles, while people without any of those things are free to pursue any course of action that will benefit them, with no concern for anything else.

So all other things being more or less equal, psychopaths actually have a competitive advantage in hierarchical systems.

And it shows.