Robert A. Heinlein and todays readers

Many thanks Hutch for -

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”--From the Notebooks of Lazarus Long

as I didn't have an electronic copy. I haven't died gallantly & don't intend to yet, but have done all the others although the sonnet was a bit questionable. Weirdly enough I did end up in a position requiring the planning of several invasions, being a senior military logistician at the latter part of my career.

Regarding the vote I still support complete adult suffrage. I've known people from all works of life, and those from a military or land holding background didn't seem to average higher in wisdom than those who had to be supported by the state. The whole concept of withholding the vote from those receiving any government support would exclude everyone including industrialists as their enterprises get research grants. When you consider that our Public (Civil) Servants were mainly selected from an order of merit test that had them in the top 2% IQ wise, it seems wasteful to not collect their votes.

I suppose that the Haven dolist viscous circle could eventuate, but consider that the higher welfare net countries like the Scandinavians, New Zealanders and Australians all came out better from the GFC than did the USA. My cash investments are still getting better than 4% interest, and topped 6% after the GFC.

" It all depends on your definition of Public Service.

To too many of us, Public Service = Civil Service = Mandarins = "Yes Minister" "

"Starship Troopers" required people to risk their lives for their country (multiple star systems there) to qualify to vote. And they weren't allowed to vote before they were mustered out.

A card which on one side said "The statement on the other side of this card is true" and on the other said "The statement on the other side of this card is false." changed my thinking in a major way.

Definition: Fantasy is any statement which refers only to other words, and not to reality.
Definition: True means a statement agrees with reality.
Definition: False means a statement disagrees with reality.
Conclusion: The card has two fantasy statements.

Since none of us know everything, we will not always get true and false correct. That is much different from taking a fantasy statement and passing it as true or false.

BTW, has anyone noticed how many people reject studying the reality of history, and instead opt for a future that is only fantasy?


Certain political policies are sold as ways to help the poor and minorities but instead make them poorer and more oppressed, but those who sell them more powerful. "Progressives" have many rich supporters but object to those who disagree with them, rich or poor.

NSA - Big brother is born.

DDHv I'm puzzled by your perception that there is a problem with -

To too many of us, Public Service = Civil Service = Mandarins = "Yes Minister" "


I did many things in my working life, from being a professional hunter to a truck driver to a research scientist to eventually a Public Servant. I agree that I ended up somewhat of a Mandarin, and that the shows "Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister", while being hilariously funny were somewhat of a documentary.
However my memory of the show was that Sir Humphrey actually managed to make the system (and country) function, despite all the stupidity exhibited by the politicians. He had a positive effect on his country and contributed much. In my case I did chuckle internally when I said yes minister myself, and I did use the phrase "That would be a courageous decision Minister" on occasion.

Some of the problem with our American friends could be due to some of their local officials and police being directly elected. We don't have that system so their votes wouldn't make up a large enough block to influence matters like their wages.

Fireflair wrote:They're probably no smarter, on the average, then the dregs, but they've done something better then simply be a leech. Maybe they can't make a better informed decision, but they have a more valid right to provide input to the process.

The same argument can be made about anyone who has paid taxes over a couple of years. Public service, by itself, is not a signifier of greater altruism.

It's still wrong, of course. Creating a disenfranchised class of citizens who have no voice in the public discourse will not make a society better. It will just create a rift between those who can govern, and those who are governed; The desire of those who see themselves as the "doers" and "contributors" of society to control the lives of those they see as "leeches" is toxic and should not be encouraged.

HB of CJ wrote:Public safety means putting the needs of the many before the needs of the few, or the one, or yourself. The means the knowledge that you might die horribly serving the greater good. This includes military, police, fire and ems.

How does this enable you to make better decisions about, say, tax policy than any other citizen? How does it make these people any more interested in politics?

I also think that welfare people should NOT vote.

So basically, you want to be able to patronize people who you believe to be a burden to society. Fantastic. Are you sure you are able to make good decisions on their behalf?

Additionally, civil servants should NOT vote in any election where it is contrary to their self interest. Cops and firemen should not vote on their outfits tax budgets as an example.

Oh, so we're talking about a direct democracy? Too bad that that does not work on a large scale.

I would even go further and suggest that if your income comes from tax dollars, then you can not be politically active within that consideration. Cops can not be politically active for a related tax measure. There must be restraints.

So you're proposing to tie each voter's voting priviledges to a detailed audit of his or her finances? Are you sure you've thought this through?

There should be a minimum number of years of required public service. Less time for public or national safety. Once you qualify and pay taxes, then you can vote. Not before. Until this is done, the USA is doomed to a eventual slow death.

Why? What makes people who contribute to public or national safety better voters? Why should these people be any more interested in politics?

Also, FYI, all societies everywhere are "doomed to an eventual slow death". No society lasts forever. Better get used to it.

What Heinlein was really doing was updating an ancient practice known as "Timocracy", where people were enfranchised according to certain criteria (generally property ownership in the past).

The reasoning behind this, in the Athenian Eklassia, the Res Publica Roma, the Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta or as envisioned by the Founders of the American Republic was to ensure that the people who voted were the people who actually had an interest in the outcome of the vote ("skin in the game", in modern terms).

Aristotle and most ancient philosophers were not fans of Democracy as practiced, since it was generally seen to evolve into a form of mob rule, easily swayed by demagogues and voting to enrich some at the expense of others. The idea that the poor would use their votes to overwhelm the rich and take their property, or to divert funds from public works and public order to "Bread and Circuses" wasn't a theoretical concern, they had seen it in action.

Heinlein wasn't even first to think of military service as a requirement to vote. The Timocracy of most of the ancient Greek polis was pretty explicitly tied to the price of a set of armour, a shield and spear. Victor Davis Hanson reconstructs the sequence as: family farmers could all generate about the same amount of wealth. To protect the farms in the district, they all had to turn out and stand together against invaders (generally farmers from the next valley over). Since farming is time sensitive, they needed to settle disputes quickly, so a wall of armoured men (the phalanx ) evolved, which had the added advantage of excluding the poor (the armour could turn away the rocks and light weapons of the poor) and the rich (horsemen throwing javelins had little effect on formed bodies of armoured men, this was true even a thousand years later with the invention of the stirrup, horses will not charge into formed bodies of men).

The men who stood together in the field as equals and farmed plots of land as equals stood together in the assembly and debated laws and issues as equals as well.

Now few would argue that the way unlimited franchises have evolved today does have a large element of what the ancients were worried about (demagoguery, voting for bread and circuses, and even criminalizing the political process: how many times have you seen or heard calls for political opponents to be jailed in modern America?)

Heinlein did offer a different solution (I believe it is in "Grumblings from the Grave"), where a new quadratic equation would be generated in the voting booth for each voter. Solve it and the voting machine unlocks. Fail to solve it.....

Exactly. We are headed down the same black hole as the Peeps. We have Dolists, and politicians that pander to them, but since we are the world's biggest economy there's nobody we can conquer and loot to appease the Mob. Everybody must know by now that it's fundamentally unsustainable, but they all believe they can keep it limping along for a few more years. Eventually they will be wrong about that.

Thucydides wrote:(horsemen throwing javelins had little effect on formed bodies of armoured men, this was true even a thousand years later with the invention of the stirrup, horses will not charge into formed bodies of men).

Horses will not charge into formed bodies of men holding long pointy things, anyway. They're not stupid.

RFC may have re-enacted the French Revolution 2,000 years in the future, but his warning is for us, here, now.
---------------
If a business tries something that doesn't work, they either stop doing it or they will go broke. If the government tries something that doesn't work, they just keep shoveling our money into it forever.

Sorry but I do disagree with the assertion that -

"Now few would argue that the way unlimited franchises have evolved today does have a large element of what the ancients were worried about (demagoguery, voting for bread and circuses, and even criminalizing the political process: how many times have you seen or heard calls for political opponents to be jailed in modern America?)"

Not sure about the USA but the citizens of my country and most developed world democracies are generally content with their current systems. Sure we bitch about minor variations between parties, and various policy items but we do believe that the fundamentals are sound. As I stated previously most countries with a universal welfare safety net have sounder economies than the USA (nowhere near as big, but sustainable without a ballooning debt).

I personally meet all the Timocracy criteria listed here, so it's not sour grapes.
Much as I revere Heinlein he did have some out there views. I can do quadratic equations while my wife is challenged by arithmetic, but in many other aspects is sharper than me.

Thucydides wrote:Heinlein did offer a different solution (I believe it is in "Grumblings from the Grave"), where a new quadratic equation would be generated in the voting booth for each voter. Solve it and the voting machine unlocks. Fail to solve it.....

Fail to solve it, and the only thing you've proven is that you can't do math all that well. You haven't shown yourself to be a good citizen. You haven't shown a better appreciation for the consequences of your vote.

That's the problem with all schemes that reduce the franchise. There are no quick and easy ways to determine how engaged one is in the welfare of the state. There are no quick and easy ways to figure out how much weight your vote has.

To my mind, the big problem that today's democracies are facing has nothing to do with the wrong people voting. It's a matter of scale; the average western democracy that seeks to get a consensus out of several million or several hundred millions of people is fundamentally unable to do the right thing for most of the people living in it, it can only hope to do the least wrong. The solution isn't to restrict the voting franchise and keep the existing borders intact, it's far better to reorganize countries into smaller, more governable units.

The E wrote:

Thucydides wrote:Heinlein did offer a different solution (I believe it is in "Grumblings from the Grave"), where a new quadratic equation would be generated in the voting booth for each voter. Solve it and the voting machine unlocks. Fail to solve it.....

Fail to solve it, and the only thing you've proven is that you can't do math all that well. You haven't shown yourself to be a good citizen. You haven't shown a better appreciation for the consequences of your vote.

What is a "good citizen"? One that can't figure out who to vote for or votes for someone for stupid reasons? That is the problem. Our politicians are too stupid to vote for and presume the voters are dumber than they are.

The Empire State Building is 80 years old and people spend years arguing about whether or not skyscrapers can collapse straight down but no one talks about the distributions of steel and concrete down the buildings. Look at the shape of the CN Tower in Canada. It would be interesting to have a table specifying the mass of every 12 foot high horizontal slice of the CN Tower. But The WTC is more complex because it has more of a problem with the wind because it did not get narrower toward the top like the CN Tower.

The nation that put men on the Moon can't solve a skyscraper problem in 13 years and economists can't say anything about the planned obsolescence of cars.

Read Heinlein's Door into Summer and see what he wrote in 1957 about the automobile industry in the year 2000. Then look at the city of Detroit.

The annoying thing about science fiction today is that it has mostly gotten dumber since the 60s. The Star Wars effect maybe. I can't figure out what people see in Banks Culture series.

Weber's solution could be workable. Those that collect welfare will always vote for more, and more, and more, whether society can afford it or not. We who have to pay for it will vote for limits. Why should those that produce nothing and pay no taxes have a say in how high taxes should be, or how they are spent? If they don't like it they can get a job, contribute to society and vote.
---------------
Some people, when they find themselves in a hole, have enough sense to stop digging.