In this piece, Dominic Cummings appears to be endorsing both of the following propositions:
The current and recent-past elected leaders of the US and the UK have been incredibly useless and incompetent, leading to (e.g.) huge numbers of preventable deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic.
It would be a good idea to have “the government actually controlling the government”.
Since the second of these would put more power (maybe much more power) in the hands of those elected leaders, it seems like one of three things must be the case:
He is confident that the only paths that lead to “the government actually controlling the government” also lead to much better leaders, perhaps because in order to grab that power they would need to be better leaders.
He is confident that if we had “the government actually controlling the government”, the real power would not be in the hands of the Trumps and Bidens and Johnsons, but of their Cummings-like advisors whom he expects to be able to wield it responsibly and effectively.
He is lying or bulshitting or thinking unclearly somehow. (In this category I include options like: what he really wants is an authoritarian state and he doesn’t much care about what it does; he hasn’t noticed the tension between “give more power to the elected leaders” and “recent elected leaders have been hopeless”; he doesn’t actually think as ill of those leaders as he says he does; he doesn’t really want “the government actually controlling the government” but hopes that calling for that will lead to something else that he does want; etc.)
The first of those seems really naïve, unless you conflate “better” with “stronger”. He mentions Lincoln and FDR as leaders who have actually controlled the government, and those are nice encouraging examples, but others who seem to have done it include Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Erdoğan, none of whom is quite so encouraging as those.
The second also seems naïve, both because political leaders with a lot of power tend to like to use it and because I don’t think there’s much reason to assume that political advisors of strong leaders will reliably be either wise or benevolent.
And the third is a bit of grab-bag, but none of the possibilities in that grab-bag seems very encouraging either.
There are other possibilities here. For instance, Matt Yglesias has written multiple articles on abolishing the filibuster, and one of his arguments was (to badly paraphrase from my lousy memory) that it’s bad in a democracy when the winners of an election can’t govern, even if one considers these winners bad or evil or something.
For one thing, it means even if the winners are “good”, they still can’t govern. For another, it means voters get increasingly disillusioned because not enough changes after an election. And finally, if politicians are allowed to implement terrible policies, these terrible policies will actually materialize, in which case voters can learn that they’re terrible, and if they don’t like them they can vote the bums out who implemented them. (Of course this sets limits to what you should be able to do even with a strong majority, e.g. no-one should be able to stop elections. And separately, it assumes that the electorate has a sufficient ability to learn.)
What’s the alternative anyway? If the winners of an election can’t govern, then the election is a sham. It’s not only a waste of time, it’s a deliberate misdirection meant to fraudulently legitimate the actual power.
Your point: if Cummings thinks elected leaders are incompetent, isn’t it a problem that his solution is giving them more power?
The way I read it: Cummings says elected leaders are incompetent exactly (or at least firstly) because they fail to exert power. Ergo, if they did have more power, de facto they’d be less incompetent.
That would be the possibility of conflating “better” with “stronger”. I don’t find the prospect of stronger leaders as such an encouraging one, because while Lincoln and FDR were strong leaders who used their strength to do good things there are plenty of examples (I think rather more) of strong leaders who used their strength to do very bad things.
Taking what I think is an optimistic view of Cummings’s motivations: I think he wants strong leaders who can push through reforms that will make their country better. But if you just optimize for strong leaders, which is pretty much what he seems to be trying to do, I think the default outcome is that you get strong leaders who can push through reforms that will make their country worse.
If a strong leader is a prerequisite for any improvement, what choice do we have? I think that’s his point of view, and it makes sense (as in, it’s consistent). The way to counter it would be to show a path to lasting improvement that does not require a strong leader.
True. I just want to point out the irony on hoping for a providential all-powerful machine in order to avoid relying on a providential all-powerful human. What makes you think the AI saviour will be in more virtuous hands?
In this piece, Dominic Cummings appears to be endorsing both of the following propositions:
The current and recent-past elected leaders of the US and the UK have been incredibly useless and incompetent, leading to (e.g.) huge numbers of preventable deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic.
It would be a good idea to have “the government actually controlling the government”.
Since the second of these would put more power (maybe much more power) in the hands of those elected leaders, it seems like one of three things must be the case:
He is confident that the only paths that lead to “the government actually controlling the government” also lead to much better leaders, perhaps because in order to grab that power they would need to be better leaders.
He is confident that if we had “the government actually controlling the government”, the real power would not be in the hands of the Trumps and Bidens and Johnsons, but of their Cummings-like advisors whom he expects to be able to wield it responsibly and effectively.
He is lying or bulshitting or thinking unclearly somehow. (In this category I include options like: what he really wants is an authoritarian state and he doesn’t much care about what it does; he hasn’t noticed the tension between “give more power to the elected leaders” and “recent elected leaders have been hopeless”; he doesn’t actually think as ill of those leaders as he says he does; he doesn’t really want “the government actually controlling the government” but hopes that calling for that will lead to something else that he does want; etc.)
The first of those seems really naïve, unless you conflate “better” with “stronger”. He mentions Lincoln and FDR as leaders who have actually controlled the government, and those are nice encouraging examples, but others who seem to have done it include Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Erdoğan, none of whom is quite so encouraging as those.
The second also seems naïve, both because political leaders with a lot of power tend to like to use it and because I don’t think there’s much reason to assume that political advisors of strong leaders will reliably be either wise or benevolent.
And the third is a bit of grab-bag, but none of the possibilities in that grab-bag seems very encouraging either.
There are other possibilities here. For instance, Matt Yglesias has written multiple articles on abolishing the filibuster, and one of his arguments was (to badly paraphrase from my lousy memory) that it’s bad in a democracy when the winners of an election can’t govern, even if one considers these winners bad or evil or something.
For one thing, it means even if the winners are “good”, they still can’t govern. For another, it means voters get increasingly disillusioned because not enough changes after an election. And finally, if politicians are allowed to implement terrible policies, these terrible policies will actually materialize, in which case voters can learn that they’re terrible, and if they don’t like them they can vote the bums out who implemented them. (Of course this sets limits to what you should be able to do even with a strong majority, e.g. no-one should be able to stop elections. And separately, it assumes that the electorate has a sufficient ability to learn.)
What’s the alternative anyway? If the winners of an election can’t govern, then the election is a sham. It’s not only a waste of time, it’s a deliberate misdirection meant to fraudulently legitimate the actual power.
Your point: if Cummings thinks elected leaders are incompetent, isn’t it a problem that his solution is giving them more power?
The way I read it: Cummings says elected leaders are incompetent exactly (or at least firstly) because they fail to exert power. Ergo, if they did have more power, de facto they’d be less incompetent.
That would be the possibility of conflating “better” with “stronger”. I don’t find the prospect of stronger leaders as such an encouraging one, because while Lincoln and FDR were strong leaders who used their strength to do good things there are plenty of examples (I think rather more) of strong leaders who used their strength to do very bad things.
Taking what I think is an optimistic view of Cummings’s motivations: I think he wants strong leaders who can push through reforms that will make their country better. But if you just optimize for strong leaders, which is pretty much what he seems to be trying to do, I think the default outcome is that you get strong leaders who can push through reforms that will make their country worse.
If a strong leader is a prerequisite for any improvement, what choice do we have? I think that’s his point of view, and it makes sense (as in, it’s consistent). The way to counter it would be to show a path to lasting improvement that does not require a strong leader.
If you are not in the worst possible dystopia, you have the choice of sticking with what you’ve got.
Then you face having to make the same choice in 10 years but with worse options.
Depending on AI timelines etc., this may be fine.
True. I just want to point out the irony on hoping for a providential all-powerful machine in order to avoid relying on a providential all-powerful human. What makes you think the AI saviour will be in more virtuous hands?
I don’t think that.