That seems like the crux of the issue. I can absolutely imagine a world where institutions have become sufficiently bad due to misaligned incentive structures that any random thing would be an improvement (though I would still not want to settle for random).
For instance, take Gall’s Law: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” We might be in a situation where institutions that originally worked have increased in complexity to the point that they no longer work, in which case they might be unfixable and one would have to start over.
In any case, whether we actually live in that world seems like an empirical question, but when I compare the world of today to my sky-high expectations (from e.g. transhumanism), there are tons of institutions I would not call particularly functional.
Finally, some institutions are considered so bad by some people that they’d rather abolish them with no replacement than leave them as-is, in which case you wouldn’t even necessarily need the random thing to replace it. Zvi’s FDA Delenda Est stuff comes to mind.
I agree that we might be in a world where the institutions are unfixably bad and the only thing to do is to start over. But if reality and your expectations diverge, I’m not sure it’s a good general practice to assume that reality is at fault. Perhaps those expectations were unrealistic.
Again, that seems like a general argument to do nothing. Like, you could have justified not rebelling against slavery when slavery was a thing in the US.
That seems like the crux of the issue. I can absolutely imagine a world where institutions have become sufficiently bad due to misaligned incentive structures that any random thing would be an improvement (though I would still not want to settle for random).
For instance, take Gall’s Law: “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.” We might be in a situation where institutions that originally worked have increased in complexity to the point that they no longer work, in which case they might be unfixable and one would have to start over.
In any case, whether we actually live in that world seems like an empirical question, but when I compare the world of today to my sky-high expectations (from e.g. transhumanism), there are tons of institutions I would not call particularly functional.
Finally, some institutions are considered so bad by some people that they’d rather abolish them with no replacement than leave them as-is, in which case you wouldn’t even necessarily need the random thing to replace it. Zvi’s FDA Delenda Est stuff comes to mind.
I agree that we might be in a world where the institutions are unfixably bad and the only thing to do is to start over. But if reality and your expectations diverge, I’m not sure it’s a good general practice to assume that reality is at fault. Perhaps those expectations were unrealistic.
Again, that seems like a general argument to do nothing. Like, you could have justified not rebelling against slavery when slavery was a thing in the US.
That’s not a good example, since the North already functioned without slavery.