Wandering Adventure Party

RE: https://mastodon.social/@theleftistlawyer/115860129619014301

@theleftistlawyer

Why gentle?

Our media and political class seem intent ensuring that the mere suspicion of criminality or the existence of a criminal record are de facto justification for arrest without warrants, denying due process, and even summary execution by govt forces.

This idea is literally monstrous, antisocial, and tyrannical, much like the police impunity it works to protect.

Instead of being gentle, slap the living fuck out of people until they think correctly about it.

@EricLawton @DejahEntendu @cybervegan @bonaventuresoft

It's been the purpose of the system for 150 years. At what point do we stop trying to pretend it was "captured" or it's "broken" and just accept that its purpose has always been thus, and we know this because of what it does and has done, and that it needs to be burned to the point where the atoms separate from one another and it drifts into the cosmos as elemental hydrogen?

I'm tired of giving the depraved system the benefit of the doubt

@EricLawton @DejahEntendu @cybervegan @bonaventuresoft

POSIWID forces us to think about systems critically, both their purpose, their outcomes, and their *very existence*.

That's why I make an exception to applying it to political and social systems under which we live.

@EricLawton @DejahEntendu @cybervegan @bonaventuresoft

Is it a coincidence that enforcement is much more extensive (and corrupt) in Black communities, or the prison population is disproportionately Black? Is it "broken" that access to good legal counsel requires money, but Black Americans have been systematically cut off from generational wealth building *as a matter of govt policy* for the last 150 years?

Or is it the purpose of the system?

@EricLawton @DejahEntendu @cybervegan @bonaventuresoft

...of that system: to recreate an environment in which slavery can be re-instituted without resistance from most white Americans. After all, the 14th Amendment was really clear that if you wanna, you can enslave prisoners (lol lmao).

Californians in 2024, of all people and times, are like "we're curious about this enslaving prisoners thing, and would like to keep it open as an option".

@EricLawton @DejahEntendu @cybervegan @bonaventuresoft

While I'm not a fan of exporting industry terms to the public sphere ("don't make perfect the enemy of good" being a stellar example of how dangerous it can be) I do think the concept behind POSIWID is extremely *useful* in an unjust political environment that is both systems-heavy and systems-deferential.

When someone says, for example, that "our incarceration system is broken", it ignores the historical and practical *purpose*...

@EricLawton @DejahEntendu @cybervegan @bonaventuresoft

It may be that what we call "reform" today - e.g. "shuffling around the deck chairs to try and confuse people into thinking something's changed - and what we called "reform" in previous eras of US government are substantially different things.

In this era, esp u40s are (rightly) skeptical of anyone who claims to be a "reformer".

But the implosion/surborning of language has been one of the great betrayals of the modern age, so...

@DejahEntendu @cybervegan @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

No. The engineering principle of POSIWID (purpose of a system is what it does) is intended to help people understand that "reform" of a system is impossible. A system can either be used or removed, but it cannot be "reformed".

If you "reform" a system to the point where it has a different outcome entirely, you're simply replacing the system with another whose purpose is...the new outcome.

@burnitdown @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

I'd go so far as to say "pro-person".

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

But all the rich people get richer, so there you have it.

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

But, the only way to "design" for this kind of efficiency is to design processes that have adequate resources (both material and human) applied to them and that have parts that can operate orthogonally.

So, really the *opposite* of "designing for efficiency", which is why systems designed for efficiency don't have resource buffers and often fail catastrophically when stressed, leading to extraordinary costs and obliterated efficiency "gains".

‍️

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

I'm not saying "efficiency is good sometimes", I'm saying "efficiency as an outgrowth of good process and appropriate use of resources is desireable", which seems like a small distinction but is a huge difference, practically.

In a service provider example, resultant efficiency gains can lead to better service to more people (in the instance of resource crunches) and help critical infra *avoid* triage situations.

@raymierussell

Which is why, of course, most Western hospitals ran out of ICU beds and ventilators in April 2020 and Jan 2022: cost and service efficiency fallacies that were pursued contra mission requirements.

@graydon @EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

"Specify outcomes and reward effectiveness" is precisely what I mean when I say efficiency as an additional benefit of good process is a good thing.

Cost efficiency and outcome (what I call service) efficiency are an example of designing for efficiency rather than for outcome or effectiveness.

TBH, it reminds me of when I used to consult with startups and I would ask "why this product?" and the founders would say "because we want to be billionaires".

@j5v

Efficiency is not something you "do"; it's an outcome of *how* you do something.

Efficiency as a goal in and of itself is aberrant and nonsensical outside of the particularly deranged logical errors of our current industrial era.

@EricLawton @bonaventuresoft

So, efficiency itself - as an outcome of good process - is not a bad thing. Obviously! Waste, especially in a warming world, is to be avoided.

It's efficiency as a primary *goal* - a particularly deranged symptom of capitalist, neoliberal ideology - that leads to the kind of collapsed services, enshittified businesses and hollowed out society we see today.

Efficiency in government is a lie told by people who want government to serve the smallest number of (rich) people possible and no one else.

You cannot have efficient government because eventually service efficiency always boils down to a triage process: who have you decided is hopeless/undeserving and therefore not worth serving?

But any government that does that is fascist and illegitimate. Government serves *all* the people, or it is radioactive poisonous garbage.

@cstross

I once read an interview with an Effective Altruist who said that a potential Skynet was the biggest threat facing humanity, during the hottest year in recorded history while the NAC fluctuated alarmingly, and that was the moment I knew Effective Altruists were idiots.