> To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. (Douglas Adams - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

Growing up on a diet of HHGTTG and Discworld just made me intrinsically distrust power in all it's forms.

Many (most?) politicians were traditionally (at least partly) motivated by public service, so we perhaps should consider how to reinvigorate and reinforce that.

One possibility might be to specifically improve pathways into politics from sectors that still have high levels of public service motivation - eg. the civil service, judiciary, NGOs, civil infrastructure, education.

There are likely plenty of other approaches to help balance out the pure power-seekers too, so let's work out what they are and follow as many as possible rather than encouraging fatalism.

How do you call a system of government when power is literally forced on unwilling people ? (And who would decide which Cincinnatus to call for setting up this year's budget ?)

Even when people mention "randomly picking up people" ("stochiocracy") I assumed you could refuse :D

In many ways, having a king was a lot better than having a bunch of people bickering among themselves without getting stuff done. At least the king was kinda tied to the country and thus the interest of the country was part self-interest.

We are forever doomed to beg on our knees to be ruled in general

no it's just a "good times creates weak men" sort of thing.

Once you're back to hard times you'll have a whole crop of reasonable people willing to wrestle power at the cost of their lives.

Sounds like an argument for aristocracy.

> People least suitable to wield power are most magnetically attracted to it.

In the current system.*

There are systems that allow you to distribute power more equally. It requires a different setup, like for example randomised choice. The people in power don't like it. It's much easier to bribe 2-3 career politicians and guarantee their success.

The golden path I dream of has ASI replacing human-run governments

It makes sense because anyone with experience, ability, and noble goals will give up before they start because it is too difficult. Linus Torvalds said he wouldn't have started Linux if he'd know how difficult it would be (paraphrasing here). So we are left with either people with noble goals, but either no experience or ability, or people with ability and experience, but without noble goals (what we have currently in the US).

But let's not despair. We are better off than centuries ago. The consciousness that people are not there to be ruled does not happen over night. Our civilization is just getting started. A republic if you can keep it.

There is a middle ground. This kind of fatalism makes people not want to try.

I think we have made political office and running for it so insanely adversarial and toxic that only three kinds of people will dare sign up for it: narcissists, crooks, and ideologues who think they are on a crusade. (The latter includes a variety of religions and ideologies.)

Competent sane well balanced people with reasonable balanced views of things like ideologies or for whom religion is more personal and spiritual? No way they’d go near it.

People with some of these negative characteristics, like narcissism, but who are also very competent? They can make more money and get often as much prestige in business. So we don’t even get competent narcissists.

Why is it so toxic? The media, the process, and us. The media and the people absolutely roast anyone running, and the winner take all process encourages a brutal slug fest.

Other countries don’t have it as bad. We could start by asking what they do differently.

Not being pure winner take all is one big one. They allow coalitions. That encourages alliances and dialogue. It also limits below the belt attacks since you might have to work hand in hand with these people, so you better not trash them too badly.

Eh, I prefer to lean on the less dramatic Peter principle.

I share your view, it's a discussion I commonly have with friends who are too blinded by individuals' actions instead of the systems that these individuals are part of, and from which those actions come from a series of rational but misplaced intermediary steps.

No single individual is controlling what their peer group does but by being a part of it those actions compound. Like you said, not even the most brutal dictatorships take actions single-handedly decided by someone, it's all part and parcel of the system they decided to (or ended up at) participate.

I think Byung-Chul Han hit the right spot when talking about "shitstorms" on "In The Swarm". Societies after the digital age got too narrowly focused on explosive bursts of outrage against individuals, instead of discussing more in-depth the issues that create systems these individuals live and navigate, and eventually take actions that are immoral, unjust, evil, etc. from the incentives of their environment, we only discuss things in binary terms (acceptable/transgressive), focused on the performative act of a monologue of outrage, without solidarity but with solitude, in our screens.

I've had this feeling for more than a decade, reading Byung-Chul Han so eloquently describe many observations and feelings I've had was refreshing for my own psyche. It's just extremely hard to try to instill some of these concepts unto others...

[dead]

Alternative take: education makes you a lot more efficient at exploiting people.

It is not education that is at the root of these things, but incentives. If the incentives are all wrong, so will be the outcomes. Take education as an institution. The way it is set up incentivizes cheating, and so nearly everyone tries to cheat.

That's about as "ironic" as you writing words even though you didn't like some other words. Seems like you disagree with words only when it suits you!

Or rather, it would be, if you weren't so completely off the mark about what a capitalist is... such as "an investor of capital in business, especially one having a major financial interest in an important enterprise." Writing a book isn't being a capitalist, buying the rights to a book to make more money off it would be.

That's correct. Musk et al have actually done nothing worthy of criticism and these whiners are just jealous of their richness /s