Astral Codex Ten

vetocracy

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vetocracy

Article

vetocracy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between February 09, 2021 and November 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Klein links this polarization to “vetocracy”, the idea that it’s impossible to do anything nowadays because somebody will prevent you”; “Vox article on vetocracy”; “modern complaints about vetocracy”. It most often appears alongside US, Congress, Ezra Klein.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 5
  • Issue count: 5
  • First seen: February 09, 2021
  • Last seen: November 10, 2023

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Why We're Polarized
February 09, 2021 · Original source
Klein links this polarization to "vetocracy", the idea that it's impossible to do anything nowadays because somebody will prevent you. Sometimes this is a literal presidential veto. Other times, it can be something as stupid and venal as the party out of power using filibusters and every other dirty trick to make sure nothing improves, because if something did improve the party in power would get the credit. Klein thinks this explains everything from our inability to fix health care to an infrastructure that continues crumbling even though both parties say they support infrastructure reform.
Ezra Klein On Vetocracy
February 20, 2021 · Original source
Here’s my answer: The institutions through which Americans build have become biased against action rather than toward it. They’ve become, in political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s term, “vetocracies,” in which too many actors have veto rights over what gets built. That’s true in the federal government. It’s true in state and local governments. It’s even true in the private sector.
In my review last week of Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized, I linked to a related Vox article on vetocracy:
Inline links: Why We're Polarized, Vox article on vetocracy
Klein argues that the US government can no longer do anything, especially not things that look like building, or inventing, or infrastructure, or making good plans, or solving problems. He attributes this to a bias towards inaction, implemented in the form of multiple veto points at which various interested actors can stop or delay things. Recently he followed it up with an editorial in the New York Times arguing that California, for all its supposed liberalism, was structurally conservative - it's good at cosmetic nods to progressive aesthetics, but incapable of progress toward real progressive goals. Its vetocracy is too entrenched to let anyone change anything.
Inline links: he followed it up
The Consequences Of Radical Reform
March 09, 2021 · Original source
An alternative thread runs through the French Revolution, social activism, and modern complaints about vetocracy. Its thesis: entrenched interests are constantly blocking necessary change. If only there were some centralized authority powerful enough to sweep them away and do all the changes we know we need, everything would be great. This was the vibe I got from Gabriel Over The White House (sorry, subscriber-only post), the movie exhorting FDR to become a fascist dictator. So many obviously good policies had built up behind the veto point that we needed a Great Man to come in, sweep them away, and satisfy the people's cries for justice. Obviously at its worst this thread can lead to authoritarianism.
Inline links: vetocracy, Gabriel Over The White House
Do I believe they have a tendency to generally make things better? I'm not sure. One thing I'm still chewing over was a throwaway line in the paper saying that of course getting conquered by a foreign enemy is good for economic growth, look at Japan and Germany after WWII. The idea was that the occupying American forces couldn't care less about the entrenched power structure and vetocracy in Germany and Japan, so they rammed through whatever reforms seemed like good ideas at the time, and they were in fact mostly good ideas. On the other hand, the Soviet Union tried the same thing in East Germany and that went less well.
Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill
April 12, 2023 · Original source
IRBs aren’t like this in a vacuum. Increasingly many areas of modern American life are like this. The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported it takes 87 permits, two to three years, and $500,000 to get permission to build houses in SF; developers have to face their own “IRB” of NIMBYs, concerned with risks of their own. Teachers complain that instead of helping students, they’re forced to conform to more and more weird regulations, paperwork, and federal mandates. Infrastructure fails to materialize, unable to escape Environmental Review Hell. Ezra Klein calls this “vetocracy”, rule by safety-focused bureaucrats whose mandate is to stop anything that might cause harm, with no consideration of the harm of stopping too many things. It’s worst in medicine, but everywhere else is catching up.
Inline links: recently reported, calls this
Followup: Quests And Requests
November 10, 2023 · Original source
Someone else pointed out that the current system is lobbying is already designed to address this issue. And the general public is always complaining about lobbyists - making them more effective would just make the public even more mad, and nudge us even more toward vetocracy.