>I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.
The only argument against this is a statistical one, akin to how entropy works: One should engage in revolution only when the set of likely worse systems is larger than the set of likely better systems. (I could probably state this better if I knew more mathematical terminology; I suspect matrices are involved.)
Obviously in the US you haven't reached that point. Yet.
You don't really need matrix terminology - just a bit of economic theory and an understanding of basic statistics.
Essentially, you want to measure the 'quality' of each outcome (utility), and the likelihood of each outcome. Then, you calculate the expected utility (which is different from the utility of the expected value - you apply the function before taking the dot product, not afterwards).
I'm blanking on the TeX at the moment, but you basically take the sum of p(i)*U(I), where p(i) is the probability of the i-th outcome occuring, and U(I) is the utility ('benefit') associated with the i-th outcome. Utility is unique to a monotonically increasing function, so that means the individual values are arbitrary, as long as the relative order is preserved.
Then, see if that expected utility is better than the status quo. (Of course, this assumes that you already have a well-defined utility function, which is easy in theory but hard in practice).
Thank you for that. I cannot upvote enough. This subthread, with its heady blend of mathematics, philosophy and violent uprising is why I keep coming back to hacker news.
The only argument against this is a statistical one, akin to how entropy works: One should engage in revolution only when the set of likely worse systems is larger than the set of likely better systems. (I could probably state this better if I knew more mathematical terminology; I suspect matrices are involved.)
Obviously in the US you haven't reached that point. Yet.