Looked to me like Singapore was one of the happiest in all of E and SE Asia, inclusive of developed Korea / Japan and just barely edged out by Taiwan?
That's not bad - in fact, it's basically "second best in a fairly big population set." I do think it's interesting that both Israel and Taiwan enjoy a "happiness bonus" due to existential threat, but only Israel gets a fertility bonus, while Taiwan doesn't.
I admit I was hoping for some proposal for term limiting political parties entirely, or entire legal and social apparatus. For instance, the analogue of the "pod" strategy for America would be *actual* federalism and diversity at the state level allowing the best laws and mores to surface empirically, but the trend has intead been for greater and greater central control and governance via the Commerce clause and various other levers (road funding with conditions, etc). We're turning into a monoculture in all large cities regardless of state, and as the cities absorb more and more of the population and the central government grows in scope, we lose all diversity in governance.
I agree that the reasoning here implies that this would be a good idea, but I'm not sure how you could set up a system to enforce it. Even presidency term limits are pretty hard and requires a lot of of tradition to be baked into a constitutional amendment, but this would be less of a bright line difference so it'd be harder to pass as one (e.g. the tenth amendment already bans the federal government from doing most state level things, but it's gradually eroded it with loopholes over time).
Yeah, honestly my personal hope for politics is end-running around all the problems entirely. I put together an AI-in-the-loop but still human-boxed and democratic governance proposal in one of my posts. Unlikely to happen, sure, but if AI gets good enough it can drive 20% annual economic growth or something similar, then that's a signal too big to ignore!
But done right, it could eliminate politicians, regulatory capture, lobbying, and all the other ills that plague our current system.
The big problem would be "where can you see that verified level of growth as the showcase to the rest of the world," such that they would consider it? And here I think our only hope is the Prospera's and Singapores and similar zedes in the world that are nimble and results-focused enough to actually try radically different governance structures.
Looked to me like Singapore was one of the happiest in all of E and SE Asia, inclusive of developed Korea / Japan and just barely edged out by Taiwan?
That's not bad - in fact, it's basically "second best in a fairly big population set." I do think it's interesting that both Israel and Taiwan enjoy a "happiness bonus" due to existential threat, but only Israel gets a fertility bonus, while Taiwan doesn't.
I admit I was hoping for some proposal for term limiting political parties entirely, or entire legal and social apparatus. For instance, the analogue of the "pod" strategy for America would be *actual* federalism and diversity at the state level allowing the best laws and mores to surface empirically, but the trend has intead been for greater and greater central control and governance via the Commerce clause and various other levers (road funding with conditions, etc). We're turning into a monoculture in all large cities regardless of state, and as the cities absorb more and more of the population and the central government grows in scope, we lose all diversity in governance.
I agree that the reasoning here implies that this would be a good idea, but I'm not sure how you could set up a system to enforce it. Even presidency term limits are pretty hard and requires a lot of of tradition to be baked into a constitutional amendment, but this would be less of a bright line difference so it'd be harder to pass as one (e.g. the tenth amendment already bans the federal government from doing most state level things, but it's gradually eroded it with loopholes over time).
Yeah, honestly my personal hope for politics is end-running around all the problems entirely. I put together an AI-in-the-loop but still human-boxed and democratic governance proposal in one of my posts. Unlikely to happen, sure, but if AI gets good enough it can drive 20% annual economic growth or something similar, then that's a signal too big to ignore!
But done right, it could eliminate politicians, regulatory capture, lobbying, and all the other ills that plague our current system.
The big problem would be "where can you see that verified level of growth as the showcase to the rest of the world," such that they would consider it? And here I think our only hope is the Prospera's and Singapores and similar zedes in the world that are nimble and results-focused enough to actually try radically different governance structures.
The proposal is here if you're interested:
https://performativebafflement.substack.com/i/163195267/anyways-here-goes-a-democratic-ai-in-the-loop-governance-proposal