On the one hand, there are those that actually don’t want anything to change, but don’t want to be seen as such for one reason or another, or don’t want to think of themselves as preferring that.
On the other hand, the world is complicated, and most proposed ideas that haven’t been tried at the relevant scale before probably legitimately would not work very well at least without adjustments (because after all, it would be unrealistic to expect one person to understand it all well enough to come up with a well functioning system on the first try).
It would seem highly unlikely that what we have is the best possible system, and therefore there should be something that will work, or at least work better. Probably quite a few different somethings that could. But at the same, when dealing with the complex dynamics of human society, an answer that can be phased as “but what if we just…” is unlikely to ever be sufficient by itself, and if something does have some obvious flaw, it shouldn’t shut down the whole effort to find something better to point that flaw out, so that a better idea can be found or the flaw with the original one can be addressed.
There is no “best possible system”. Every system will be corrupted with time, because there will always be people who seek power and once they have some they’ll be able to use that power to get more.
Instead of fantasizing over some perfect system, focus on the problems that society faces in the here-and-now and on the tools you have to solve those problems in the here-and-now. Do that continuously and things will get better. Sitting on your hands while you argue about systems just lets the rot spread.
What I meant by that is that there is definitely room for improvement and therefore a stance of “we should change nothing” does not make sense. Saying that all systems are corruptible does not change that, it just would mean that even the best possible ones still are susceptible. I think you must be misunderstanding what I meant there, or else your response does not make sense to me. “Solving a problem in the in the here and now” is a modification to the system, because the system is just the sum total of the way that society functions, to include the way problems are created for people and the way people react to them. Whatever solution you come up with to whatever problem, the fact that the circumstances to the people around you are now slightly different represents a small but nonzero change in the way things are done, in your society.
In order to solve a problem, it is first necessary to identify how to solve the problem. That step is not “sitting on your hands”, its a necessary component to any useful action.
most proposed ideas that haven’t been tried at the relevant scale before probably legitimately would not work very well
Before you can even get to those, you have to stop all the people who are proposing ideas that have been tried, over and over, and didn’t work every one of those times.
Even that has nuance. When someone is proposing something that has been tried before, which is common enough, one can point to the relevant historical examples. But sometimes someone is trying to propose a variant on something that hasn’t worked, with the intent on fixing whatever the problem with the idea seemed to be, which depending on if that variant has also been attempted or if there are obvious problems with the proposed fix, may or may not be worthy of further discussion.
It doesn’t help that a lot of labels used to describe political or economic systems are extremely broad, a bit vague or have contested definitions, or are commonly misunderstood, because you can get an idea with some merit dismissed by virtue of sharing a broad label with something unsuccessful, or conversely, someone insisting that this is the case for their idea even though their suggestion really has been tried or clearly doesn’t address the issues with whatever they’re basing it on.
It should be taken into account that some amount of trial and error is probably inherit to developing new systems or laws, and the nature of trial and error is such that anything that works is likely to be preceded by similar things that did not, or at least not as well.
There’s two sides to this I think:
On the one hand, there are those that actually don’t want anything to change, but don’t want to be seen as such for one reason or another, or don’t want to think of themselves as preferring that.
On the other hand, the world is complicated, and most proposed ideas that haven’t been tried at the relevant scale before probably legitimately would not work very well at least without adjustments (because after all, it would be unrealistic to expect one person to understand it all well enough to come up with a well functioning system on the first try).
It would seem highly unlikely that what we have is the best possible system, and therefore there should be something that will work, or at least work better. Probably quite a few different somethings that could. But at the same, when dealing with the complex dynamics of human society, an answer that can be phased as “but what if we just…” is unlikely to ever be sufficient by itself, and if something does have some obvious flaw, it shouldn’t shut down the whole effort to find something better to point that flaw out, so that a better idea can be found or the flaw with the original one can be addressed.
There is no “best possible system”. Every system will be corrupted with time, because there will always be people who seek power and once they have some they’ll be able to use that power to get more.
Instead of fantasizing over some perfect system, focus on the problems that society faces in the here-and-now and on the tools you have to solve those problems in the here-and-now. Do that continuously and things will get better. Sitting on your hands while you argue about systems just lets the rot spread.
What I meant by that is that there is definitely room for improvement and therefore a stance of “we should change nothing” does not make sense. Saying that all systems are corruptible does not change that, it just would mean that even the best possible ones still are susceptible. I think you must be misunderstanding what I meant there, or else your response does not make sense to me. “Solving a problem in the in the here and now” is a modification to the system, because the system is just the sum total of the way that society functions, to include the way problems are created for people and the way people react to them. Whatever solution you come up with to whatever problem, the fact that the circumstances to the people around you are now slightly different represents a small but nonzero change in the way things are done, in your society.
In order to solve a problem, it is first necessary to identify how to solve the problem. That step is not “sitting on your hands”, its a necessary component to any useful action.
Before you can even get to those, you have to stop all the people who are proposing ideas that have been tried, over and over, and didn’t work every one of those times.
Even that has nuance. When someone is proposing something that has been tried before, which is common enough, one can point to the relevant historical examples. But sometimes someone is trying to propose a variant on something that hasn’t worked, with the intent on fixing whatever the problem with the idea seemed to be, which depending on if that variant has also been attempted or if there are obvious problems with the proposed fix, may or may not be worthy of further discussion.
It doesn’t help that a lot of labels used to describe political or economic systems are extremely broad, a bit vague or have contested definitions, or are commonly misunderstood, because you can get an idea with some merit dismissed by virtue of sharing a broad label with something unsuccessful, or conversely, someone insisting that this is the case for their idea even though their suggestion really has been tried or clearly doesn’t address the issues with whatever they’re basing it on.
It should be taken into account that some amount of trial and error is probably inherit to developing new systems or laws, and the nature of trial and error is such that anything that works is likely to be preceded by similar things that did not, or at least not as well.