Following climate policy, what's really striking is the role of China's provincial governments in keeping coal going, which is always tied to corruption. I had a go at this here
The central government has blunt instruments (up to and including executions) to control provincial officials, but no easy way to get access to the information they control
Bloomberg had a good article on the problems in China's government financing. The central government has low taxes. Despite this, it subsidizes local governments, but not enough to cover their operating expenses. Local governments had their own, even more limited taxes, so they relied on land sales and off the books borrowing. It would be no surprise if a local government contravened national policies for economic reasons. As long as there was no challenge to the CCP's power or purse, the central government would let is slide.
Are you conflating “speech” as in free speech with “information” as a description of a true state of affairs. But speech is a description of a possible state of affairs, not to be assumed as “true”. If there is a coin that might be heads or tails, and I say “the coin is heads” you can’t tell prima facie whether I am telling the truth, lying, or bullshitting. So in a social-media democracy where speech is maximally unrestrained, information entropy is maximized, and it is costly to ascertain the truth of situations. Conversely if there is an accessible “authority” in a position and disposition to speak truth, access to truth is cheap.
So it all depends, as usual. Whether your authoritarian is trustworthy on the one hand, or your citizenry is well-behaved on the other. Efficient nation-states would seem to require both, so yes, council of despair I suppose.
A general fyi which I am putting on all comments - someone seems to be going through the substack comments for this newsletter and sending messages pretending to be "programmable mutter" and suggesting contact be made on Telegram. This is presumably a phishing attack, so ignore all such messages!
In the long run, those who govern based on reality, which is to say science, have the more durable governments. Governing based on vibes works out worse.
However, there is no particular method for getting those people into power. I tend to think Hu Jintao was a fluke. If I'm right, China's relative success right now is... a fluke.
I think efficiency is overrated. Life as we know it is based on an enzyme called Rubisco that let's plants cleave carbon dioxide, and Rubisco is notoriously inefficient. It is sluggish, unselective and inefficient, but it created our world as we know it. Biologists rant about it. Meanwhile, life is full of multiple pathways, superfluous mechanisms, and junk drawers of genetic atavisms.
The real problem is resilience. This is especially important as technology changes the way we produce things and the way we live. Autocracies can have good runs, but they have no mechanism for changing course. Successful autocrats might do well for most of a decade, but then fall prey to their own success or fail when circumstances change. There's a huge difference between the Prisoner's Dilemma and the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. In the big picture, there is no dilemma.
Look at Europe in the 19th century. After Napoleon, the old aristocracy tightened its grip, but industrialization, urbanization, nationalism, militarism and rise of an educated work force led to crisis after crisis. These were repressed, but each time, democratization was seen as an essential part of the maintaining power. There were reforms, an expanded franchise, constitutions and charters. When everything else fails, autocracy yields to democracy if only to survive.
A general fyi which I am putting on all comments - someone seems to be going through the substack comments for this newsletter and sending messages pretending to be "programmable mutter" and suggesting contact be made on Telegram. This is presumably a phishing attack, so ignore all such messages!
Following climate policy, what's really striking is the role of China's provincial governments in keeping coal going, which is always tied to corruption. I had a go at this here
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/coal-in-china-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly,15470
The central government has blunt instruments (up to and including executions) to control provincial officials, but no easy way to get access to the information they control
Bloomberg had a good article on the problems in China's government financing. The central government has low taxes. Despite this, it subsidizes local governments, but not enough to cover their operating expenses. Local governments had their own, even more limited taxes, so they relied on land sales and off the books borrowing. It would be no surprise if a local government contravened national policies for economic reasons. As long as there was no challenge to the CCP's power or purse, the central government would let is slide.
Are you conflating “speech” as in free speech with “information” as a description of a true state of affairs. But speech is a description of a possible state of affairs, not to be assumed as “true”. If there is a coin that might be heads or tails, and I say “the coin is heads” you can’t tell prima facie whether I am telling the truth, lying, or bullshitting. So in a social-media democracy where speech is maximally unrestrained, information entropy is maximized, and it is costly to ascertain the truth of situations. Conversely if there is an accessible “authority” in a position and disposition to speak truth, access to truth is cheap.
So it all depends, as usual. Whether your authoritarian is trustworthy on the one hand, or your citizenry is well-behaved on the other. Efficient nation-states would seem to require both, so yes, council of despair I suppose.
A general fyi which I am putting on all comments - someone seems to be going through the substack comments for this newsletter and sending messages pretending to be "programmable mutter" and suggesting contact be made on Telegram. This is presumably a phishing attack, so ignore all such messages!
In the long run, those who govern based on reality, which is to say science, have the more durable governments. Governing based on vibes works out worse.
However, there is no particular method for getting those people into power. I tend to think Hu Jintao was a fluke. If I'm right, China's relative success right now is... a fluke.
I think efficiency is overrated. Life as we know it is based on an enzyme called Rubisco that let's plants cleave carbon dioxide, and Rubisco is notoriously inefficient. It is sluggish, unselective and inefficient, but it created our world as we know it. Biologists rant about it. Meanwhile, life is full of multiple pathways, superfluous mechanisms, and junk drawers of genetic atavisms.
The real problem is resilience. This is especially important as technology changes the way we produce things and the way we live. Autocracies can have good runs, but they have no mechanism for changing course. Successful autocrats might do well for most of a decade, but then fall prey to their own success or fail when circumstances change. There's a huge difference between the Prisoner's Dilemma and the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. In the big picture, there is no dilemma.
Look at Europe in the 19th century. After Napoleon, the old aristocracy tightened its grip, but industrialization, urbanization, nationalism, militarism and rise of an educated work force led to crisis after crisis. These were repressed, but each time, democratization was seen as an essential part of the maintaining power. There were reforms, an expanded franchise, constitutions and charters. When everything else fails, autocracy yields to democracy if only to survive.
Once again, the solution to <interesting high-level question> is just
<literally what are you talking about, why do you think you have anywhere near enough information to think with>
Wasn’t it Huxley who said, “the mind is a reducing valve”?
A general fyi which I am putting on all comments - someone seems to be going through the substack comments for this newsletter and sending messages pretending to be "programmable mutter" and suggesting contact be made on Telegram. This is presumably a phishing attack, so ignore all such messages!
This is a bit too terse for me to follow. Could you expand a bit, please? Thanks!