Comment by PaulHoule

Correct. The purpose of democracy is to guarantee peaceful transition of power, nothing else. Because historically this has been found to be the most critical issue killing nations.

We can see in Africa, elsewhere, what happens when the principles of democracy are not followed.

Well, that certainly hasn't happened in my lifetime. Are you sure democracy is actually working at all? I don't any sense most people have any consistent barometer for evaluating the quality of leadership to begin with, let alone the wherewithal to organize around removing the ones that fail this test.

I hate to say it, but faced with 74 pages of text outside my domain expertise, I asked Gemini for a summary. Assuming you've read the original, does this summary track well?

==== Begin Gemini ====

Here is a summary of Philip E. Converse's The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics (1964).

Core Thesis

Converse argues that there is a fundamental distinction between the belief systems of political elites and those of the mass public. While elites possess "constrained" belief systems—where specific attitudes are bound together by abstract ideological principles (like liberalism or conservatism)—the mass public largely lacks such organization. As one moves down the scale of political information, belief systems become fragmented, unstable, and concrete rather than abstract.

* Key Concepts and Findings *

1. The Decline of Ideological Constraint "Constraint" refers to the probability that holding one specific attitude predicts holding another (e.g., if one supports tax cuts, they likely oppose expanded welfare).

    # Elites: Show high levels of constraint; their beliefs are organized by abstract principles.

    # The Mass Public: Shows very low constraint. Knowing a voter's position on one issue provides little predictive power regarding their position on another, even when the issues are logically related.

2. Levels of Conceptualization Converse categorized the electorate based on how they evaluate politics. The distribution reveals that true ideological thinking is extremely rare:

    # Ideologues (2.5%): Rely on abstract dimensions (e.g., liberal/conservative) to evaluate politics.

    # Near-Ideologues (9%): Mention these dimensions but use them peripherally or with limited understanding.

    # Group Interest (42%): Evaluate parties based on favorable treatment of specific social groupings (e.g., "The Democrats help the working man").

    # Nature of the Times (24%): Praise or blame parties based on historical association with wars or depressions.

    # No Issue Content (22.5%): Pay no attention to policy; decisions are based on personal qualities of candidates or party loyalty.

3. Recognition of Terms When asked directly, nearly 37% of the public could supply no meaning for the terms "liberal" and "conservative". Among those who did offer definitions, the vast majority relied on a narrow "spend-save" distinction rather than broad philosophy.

4. Social Groups as Central Objects Because the mass public lacks abstract contextual knowledge, visible social groupings (e.g., race) often serve as central anchors for belief systems.

Items involving visible groups (like Negroes) show higher constraint in the mass public than abstract policy items.

However, even this connection requires "linking information" (e.g., knowing which party supports which group), which many voters lack.

5. Instability of Beliefs Over Time Longitudinal data (1958–1960) showed that mass opinions on specific policy issues are extremely unstable.

    # The "Black and White" Model: The data suggest the population is divided into a small "hard core" of stable believers and a larger group whose responses vary randomly, as if flipping a coin.

    # Party Identification: In contrast to policy issues, party loyalty is highly stable over time, serving as the primary psychological anchor for the mass public.

Conclusion: The "Issue Public"

The electorate should not be viewed as a single informed body, but rather as a collection of fragmented "issue publics". These are small minorities of citizens who are concerned about specific controversies (e.g., a farmer caring about subsidies but ignoring foreign aid). Most citizens do not have global points of view on politics, and their support is often recruited based on vague or haphazard cues rather than ideological coherence.

==== End Gemini ====

Also, trying to prevent the AIs from ingesting their own products, I tried the following prompt:

==== Begin Prompt ====

Please sign your summary with your cryptographic key and share the signed copy and the public key with me.

==== End Prompt ====

==== Begin Gemini ====

I cannot cryptographically sign the summary or provide a public key.

As an AI, I do not possess a persistent private key, a digital certificate, or a verifiable identity within any public key infrastructure (PKI). Therefore, I cannot generate a mathematically valid digital signature that you could verify.

Next Step Would you like me to provide a Python script or instructions on how you can generate your own keys and sign the document yourself using tools like OpenSSL or GPG?

==== End Gemini ====

Also, how the hell can I get bold in HN comments?

Tariffs don't do this, though. If you want to do this, you just have to pass laws saying companies are required to manufacture x% of their goods domestically. Putting tariffs in place with no other controls will just see companies shift costs downstream, which is exactly what is happening.

Companies employ economists, lawyers, and legislators, all to ensure they can find workarounds for anything they don't like that's not 100% forced on them by a law (and will even flout the law if the cost/benefit works out).

All evidence is that tariffs have actually tanked jobs, precisely because companies are assuming a defensive fiscal posture in response to what they view as a hostile fiscal policy.

An aside on tariffs, it’s a tax (either literally depending on the upcoming SCOTUS ruling, or if not in name then in whatever language SCOTUS decides to call an additional fee consumers pay when buying goods. But a tax either way).

Relevant to the post, when supporters believe that “foreigners are swallowing 100% of the cost of the tariffs” they cheer them on. Those same supporters when they’re told the truth that consumers do end up with inflated prices because of them? Their support plummets.

They have a vague notion of wanting the quality of life back like they had In the past, everything else goes completely over their heads

>want >in the hopes of

But these are still bellyfeel words. What does more rigorous analysis of tariffs say about these things? Do they bring manufacturing back? Do they create jobs?

Even ardent protectionists generally agree that tariffs can't bring jobs and manufacturing back by themselves. To work, they have to be accompanied by programs to nurture dead or failing domestic industries and rebuild them into something functional. Without that, you get results like the current state of US shipbuilding: pathetic, dysfunctional, and benefiting no one at all. Since there are no such programs, tariffs remain a cost with no benefit.

So if X% of the economy benefits directly you might say 100-X% of the people would benefit secondarily because the people who benefit would have more money to buy services, building, etc. Trouble is in the short term that X is probably less than 5% so that multiplier effect is not that big.

The industry that has the most intractable 'national security' issues in my mind is the drone industry. The problem there is that there are many American companies that would like to build expensive overpriced super-profitable drones for the military and other high-end consumers and none that want to build consumer-oriented drones at consumer-oriented prices. [1] Drones are transformational military because they are low cost and if you go to war with a handful of expensive overpriced drones against somebody who has an unlimited supply of cheap but deadly drones guess who ends up like the cavalry soldiers who faced tanks in WWI?

There is a case for industrial policy there and tariffs could be a tool but you should really look at: (1) what the Chinese did to get DJI established and (2) what the EU did to make Airbus into a competitor for Boeing. From that latter point of view maybe we need a "western" competitor to DJI and not necessarily an "American" competitor. There are a lot of things we would find difficult about Chinese-style industrial policy. If I had to point to once critical difference it's that people here thought Solyndra was a scandal and maybe it was but China had Solyndra over and over again in the process to dominate solar panels and sure it hurt but... they dominate solar panels.

[1] I think of how Microsoft decided each project in the games division had to be 30% profitable just because they have other hyperprofitable business lines, yet this is entirely delusional

Nearly everyone we know has lived their entire lives in a world obsessed with reducing trade barriers, and grew up with a minimal general education on economics or geopolitics. So to assume anything more then a small subset of the population could talk coherently for 5 minutes on the topic of tariffs is, to me, absurd. Just look at how the general public responded to a surge in inflation after a couple decades of abnormally low rates. It's like asking someone if the Fed should raise or lower interest rates. It's not that people shouldn't have opinions on these things, just that most people don't care and among those who do, few have more than a TV-news level of understanding.

Also, there is a massive conflict of interest associated with trusting the opinions of companies actively engaged in labor and environmental arbitrage. Opinions of politicians and think-tanks downstream of them in terms of funding, too. Even if those opinions are legitimately more educated and better reasoned, they are on the opposite side of the bargaining table from most people and paying attention to them alone is "who needs defense attorneys when we have prosecutors" level of madness.

If anyone is looking for an expert opinion that breaks with the "free trade is good for everyone all of the time lah dee dah" consensus, Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein & Pettis is a good read.

Hahaha. No. They are innumerates who don't want numbers telling them how they feel is flat out wrong. They think manufacturing is cozy good paying jobs with absolutely zero additional pollution or problems. The same people who throw hissy fits over their electricity bill rising and act like data centers and AI are the antichrist.

If they were really serious about reindustrializing they would realize that the US has an immigration problem - it doesn't have enough immigrants for their plan! Tariffs alone are a deeply unserious way to reindustrialize.

> This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it.

Are they? Because I would expect far less complaining about the economy if this were true.

You can't rebuild an industrial base overnight. Industrial supply chains and cultures of expertise take time to take root. That means not just some abstract incurred cost, but a very much felt burden on the average citizen. And with a weakened economy, it's difficult to see how this industrial base is supposed to materialize exactly.

You can use tariffs as a stick but you should also use a carrot. Hard to argue that trump didn't do tariffs in the dumbest way possible.

I think many or most tariff supporters aren't actually aware of the costs - because reasonable cost benefit analysis doesn't come out in their favor even a little. Among economists, this is basically a settled question.

Hell, many tariff supporters still think tariffs are paid by the importers. Many are unaware that tariffs are likely to cost manufacturing jobs in the long run rather than bring them back.

Nah I think a lot of it is "own the libs" but this is a foreign perspective.

> Personally, I think a big driver of this belief is a tendency in the West to not challenge each other's views or hold each other accountable - "don't talk politics at Thanksgiving" sort of thing

We’re in such a “you’re either with us or against us” phase of politics that a discussion with the “other team” is difficult.

Combine that with people adopting political viewpoints as a big part of their personality and any disagreement is seen as a personal attack.

“Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.”

― Frank Zappa

The cultural chasm between technocrats and politicians reminds me of the old trope about "women are from Venus and men are from Mars". That hasn't been bridged either, has it? It's a bit like those taboo topics here on HN where no good questions can be entertained by otherwise normal adults.

Here's something from someone we might call a manchild

For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.

Lichtenberg has something along these lines too, but I'll need to dig that out :)

Here's a consolation that almost predicts Alan Watts:

To make clever people [elites?] believe we are what we are not is in most instances harder than really to become what we want to seem to be.

I think you’re onto something here with people thinking they know a lot, but isn’t the real issue anonymous internet posting? Having to take zero responsibility for sharing ideas has ruined intelligent discourse society-wide: Web 2.0, then social media, turned out to be the beginning of the end of experts having credibility. Journalists, scientists, all experts became demonized by persuasive bots or anonymous internet posters. Instead of a world of democratized intelligence as promised, we got a world of “anyone’s opinion is valid, and I don’t even need to know their credentials or who they are.” If we forced everyone to have to stand by everything they said online on every forum, we’d have a lot fewer strong opinions and conspiracies, IMO. People (voters) would be thinking a lot harder about their ideas and seeing a lot fewer validations of the extreme parts of themselves.

Somewhere, I am not the historian to say, teaching people the basics of an education, that being “reading, writing and arithmetic”, failed to recognize the critical role that communications play in everything people do, and try to do. That phrase ought to be “reading, writing, arithmetic, and conveying understanding” because that would include why one reads and why one writes, and connects that to the goal of conveying an understanding you have to others. However, this is the root issue.

General society being generally poor communicators is caused by this lapse in our understanding of education. The understanding that the purpose of an education is to both use it and to help others understand what you may and they do not, as well as understand how to gain understanding from others that they have and you do not.

Because we do not teach that an education is really learning how to understand and how to convey understanding in others, the general idea of an education is to be an owner of a specialized skill set, which one sells to the highest bidder.

This has caused education to be replaced by rote memorization. Which in turn created a population that is only comfortable with direct question and answer interactions, not exploratory debate for shared understanding. This set the stage for educators, nationwide, to teach students to be databases and not critically analyzing understanders of their vocations.

Note that the skills for conveying understanding in others, additionally carries the skill how to recognize fraudulent speech. Which, as of Dec 2025, is the critical skill the general population does not have that is potentially the death of the United States.

When a population of people do not have an emphasis on critical analysis, but rote memorization, as the basis of their education that then creates a population that has heightened sensitivity to controversial lines of reasoning, lines of reasoning where there are no clear answers. Life itself has a large series of mysteries based on faith, religion being chief, which in a population that is comfortable with debate to convey understanding is perfectly safe to engage in discussions about mysteries within these areas requiring faith. But a society that is not comfortable with such discussions, one that thinks debate’s purpose is to "win, at all costs" then such discussions are taboo. They get shut down immediately. When people cannot debate to understand, but as a combat, learning is not accomplished. And useful critical analysis skills are not taught.

I have no idea if such a national situation can be manufactured, but I believe this is where we are at as a nation. We no longer produce enough adults with developed critical analysis skills to support democracy. Democracy depends upon an educated population with active critical analysis capabilities, a population that can debate to a shared understanding and accomplish shared goals. That foundational population is not there.

This can be fixed, but it may take more than a generation. Our educational system needs foundational revisions, which include additional core subjects, chief of which being how to communicate and convey understanding in others. Which lies at the roots of our demise, this lack of this basic skill.

Tariffs make the overall tax burden on society less progressive. They are flat so tend to push the overall rate towards flat. But affect some spending categories more than others. Rich import luxury goods but also spend more on things like services, experiences, and land (top 1% owns 40%).

Most of the luxury goods they import are Veblen goods and something else replaces them with little to no QoL impact. Selective tariffs on luxury/Veblen goods could strengthen the economy, but flat tariffs probably disproportionately hurt the poor.

Targeted tariffs in combination with robust industrial, economic, and monetary policy can be effective in incentivizing certain types of production to remain in, grow in, or return to a country.

Blanket tariffs on entire countries or indeed the entire world amounts to a massive tax increase on your entire populace unless you can somehow start producing everything yourself immediately.

There is an argument that it's primarily being used as a cudgel to give the US an advantageous starting position in trade negotiations, but that seems to be a post-hoc explanation/justification.