
Iron law of oligarchy - thunderbong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy
======
dools
When you see the same family names in so many places (Bush, Kennedy, Clinton)
the oligarchic tendencies are pretty obvious. It's fucking crazy that 2 Bushes
have been president, and Jeb Bush is a governor, and might one day be
president. This would never happen in a healthy democracy.

~~~
nostrademons
I was just thinking that from 1988 to 2008 (20 years), a Bush or Clinton was
president _the entire time_. From 1980 to 2013, a Bush or Clinton was either
President, Vice President, or Secretary of State _the entire time_. If Hillary
or Jeb Bush wins in 2016 and serves two terms, then from 1980 to 2024, the
only years that a Bush or Clinton will not have been in one of the three
executive offices of the United States is 2013-2016. Let that sink in: for 40
out 44 years, members of the same two families will have occupied the top 3
offices in government, and for 28 years, they will have been President.

Man. I thought we got rid of hereditary monarchies in 1776, but that's a
helluva lot longer than most kings served.

~~~
chasing
There was an Adams or a Jefferson serving as either President or Vice
President of the country, as well, for the first twenty years of our
nationhood. And then after an eight year break, the son of the first President
Adams became Secretary of State. And then President himself. An Adams or
Jefferson was President, VP, or Secretary of State for the first 36 out of 44
years the US existed!

I'm not sure what the above proves. Neither then nor now is what's going on
anything like a hereditary monarchy. For one thing, Hillary Clinton is not the
heir of Bill Clinton. And in both cases other people have been in the mix
holding power. Washington during Adam's Vice Presidency. Obama during Hillary
Clinton's Secretaryship of State. Which kind of kills the "mono" part of a
"monarchy" \-- if there are a bunch of different people from a bunch of
different families running around with power. (Is "polyarchy" a word?)

So don't get too freaked.

(Also, plenty of first world democracies have hereditary monarchs. The United
Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Canada, Japan, etc. The
existence of a hereditary monarchy isn't necessarily anti-democratic.)

~~~
danarmak
> Is "polyarchy" a word?

Oligarchy, per the OP.

~~~
chasing
No, polyarchy is something different. The word does seem to exist:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy)

------
lvs
The endpoint of his thought process was to join Mussolini.

    
    
      "Michels stated that the official goal of representative 
      democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, 
      that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing 
      the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, 
      that he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable.[1] Later 
      Michels migrated to Italy and joined Benito Mussolini's 
      Fascist Party, as he believed this was the next 
      legitimate step of modern societies. The thesis became 
      popular once more in post-war America with the 
      publication of Union Democracy: The Internal Politics 
      of the International Typographical Union (1956) and 
      during the red scare brought about by McCarthyism."

~~~
jjoonathan
I still don't understood how that followed. What am I missing?

~~~
201511270626
Tyrants are servants of the people, and enemies of the oligarchs.

That's why republican democrats hate them so intensely, and have been
murdering tyrants by sword and word for so many centuries.

~~~
meowface
>Tyrants are servants of the people

[citation needed]

~~~
TheLogothete
Does Plato cut it?

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pacaro
From the article... 'Darcy K. Leach summarized them briefly as: "Bureaucracy
happens. If bureaucracy happens, power rises. Power corrupts."' \-- how does
this not also apply to corporations?

This is a super pertinent question when a company grows over some threshold
size

~~~
adventured
The only successful model I'm aware of, for dealing with that when it comes to
huge scale corporations, is the Berkshire Hathaway model. Delegation to great
operators across major, highly independent units. Even then, inside of the
large units you inevitably get a replication of the problem with increasing
scale.

It's clearly one of the reasons Google did what they did. At 60,000 employees
they were beginning to drown in the bureaucracy of it all.

------
Empact
My burning man camp, [http://thephage.org/](http://thephage.org/), recognized
the underlying oligarchy in our own organization and decided to make it open
and explicit by identify leaders through proxy voting
([https://github.com/ThePhage/phage-proxy](https://github.com/ThePhage/phage-
proxy)) on a few different axes: who each individual thought was best at
conflict resolution, who we would each go to for life advice, etc.

The end result was remarkably high-confidence, transparent, and harmonious. I
expect proxy voting will have a far more significant role in the future.

~~~
puredemo
>'cook2': ('A second Phageling you trust to enjoy cooking with!',

Cooks are leaders at Burning Man?

Is this similar to instant runoff voting? Only had time to glance at the
code..

~~~
Empact
> Is this similar to instant runoff voting?

No it involves building a graph of voter preferences to find the central
nodes.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_voting#Delegated_voting)

------
nickbauman
For a counter-argument, see Karl Popper's _The Open Society and it Enemies._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies)

------
Kinnard
I think this is largely explained by Hayek's 'Problem of Knowledge in
Society':
[http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html)

Direct Democracy was impossible and representative democracy was necessary
because it was impossible to aggregate the wishes of a populace.

Mass telecommunication solves or at least paves the road to solving this
problem.

~~~
RogtamBar
What people may wish for and what needs to be done seem, to me, to be
completely different things.

Take Germans and their nuclear power plants. Despite the plants in Japan
failing because of conjunction of shoddy construction, earthquake and tsunami,
of which only 1 could even be a case in Germany - Germans closed their nuke
plants in response.

I don't see how wise decisions would result from aggregation. We've not been
shaped by evolution to be rational or realistic, but to have an inflated
opinion of self and of our chances - because that was advantageous.

I really doubt that is the case when it comes to running countries.

------
touchofevil
I think that direct democracy enabled by online voting and blockchain
technology will eventually supersede the current representative system of
democracy. I can understand that pre-internet it was necessary to have a
representative democracy as it would not be possible to have all citizens vote
in-person or by mail on all issues, but with the internet a direct democracy
seems viable even at a large scale.

While there would be security and privacy issues to overcome with a digital
direct democracy, at least it would not be as susceptible to corporate capture
as our current representative systems of democracy.

~~~
forrestthewoods
I believe California has demonstrated that the public voting directly on
propositions is a terrible idea.

~~~
touchofevil
Well, California has medical marijuana, so I guess the proposition system
works sometimes. But I do think the proposition system is corrupted by the
need to raise large amounts of money to advertise.

~~~
lsc
I would argue that the big problem that the California proposition system
caused was property taxes. Prop 13; and that is pure self-interest; homeowners
voting themselves a tax cut. Because homeowners vote in state elections
dramatically more often than people who don't own property, this law will
remain on the books until we can get people who don't own to vote at a higher
rate than people who do own. (Which will be difficult, considering that the
majority of people live in a home owned by themselves or their family, _and_
homeowners vote much more often than non-owners.)

------
bayesianhorse
Slightly pessimistic. Also, in 1911 knowledge about what works and doesn't
work was a lot more limited. The safeguards modern democracies employ now are
far superior. At the very least the control of information doesn't work as
well as some people would like...

On the other hand there will always be a power differential between those who
strive to political leadership (often sacrificing a lot on the way) and those
who don't participate at all. And even in a completely equal power share, the
power of an individual in a nation of millions is so small that it is easy to
confuse it with zero.

~~~
fulafel
1911 is about half way between the rise of modern democracy and present day,
and the pace of development is faster in the beginning. Parliaments and
political drama had been around much longer still.

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chroem-
This is precisely why we should change our sampling process for selecting
representatives, from corruptible elections, to completely random selection.

For more info, see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

~~~
Retra
"Michels theory states that all complex organizations, regardless of how
democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies."

How is sortition going to help? It should either also become an oligarchy, or
simply be a dysfunctional government, or not actually have anything at all to
do with this subject.

~~~
chroem-
Would you say an average person who works an average job has a reasonable shot
at getting into elected office in the United States Congress? If no, then that
by definition is a form of oligarchy.

Though random samples and a large enough sample size, you can ensure that at
least those in elected (sortitioned?) positions are not members of the
oligarchy. Additionally, since sortition is much more efficient in selecting
candidates, it's possible to replace some formerly unelected bureaucrats with
sortitioned ones. Even if it's not perfect, it's still an improvement.

~~~
chongli
Who administers the process of sortition? Who ensures that it is properly
random and fair? Who enforces the law if it isn't?

~~~
puredemo
>Who enforces the law if it isn't?

Your randomly selected police officer.. ;)

------
sdg1
For a nice study of how this law extends to online peer production
communities, see [https://mako.cc/academic/shaw_hill-
laboratories_of_oligarchy...](https://mako.cc/academic/shaw_hill-
laboratories_of_oligarchy-DRAFT.pdf)

------
known
Amen
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority)

