Ask HN: How do most dry theory writers struggle to get started?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44980673

by zywoo • 11 months ago

1 13 11 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

I’m an independent researcher working on political modeling and some philosophical theory. Every essay I publish disappears without notice. I’ve decided not to chase current events just to get clicks.

The problem isn’t quality of discussion, it’s that nobody even opens the articles. What else can someone in my position do?

smcin7• 11 months ago

I can't view your substack that you linked to previously.

nobody even opens the articles

Speaking for myself, if your article was (say) "Why [do] [the] UK and Japan still keep their monarch", you need to put your thesis in the title or tagline or first paragraph. If I don't see a coherent premise that at least sounds interesting or informative or novel (or contrarian, or satirical), I'll bounce. (Do you have analytics on which channels incoming readers come from? Experiment.)

And you could personalize the article with some anecdote/ historical reference/ quote/ illustration so it isn't all dry theory, which few will read. (Not to the degree popularizers like Freakonomics did, but somewhat.)

Anyway the reason the UK still keep their monarch is centuries of political inertia; if they abolished that they'd have to abolish peerages, the social order, honors lists, end the CoE being established state church (that issue alone is a hand-grenade), then they'd have to decide if they wanted an elected or appointed President etc etc. The fact that they never had a (long-lived) revolution means they don't have a (written) Constitution. It would also cause shock waves on their status wrt Canada, Australia, NZ, the Caribbean. So it's too anachronistic to persist, yet it's too complicated to change. Realistically they only get to make changes whenever the monarchy e.g. passes from Charles to William.

Japan is different: it was what the US permitted them to retain after WWII, to maintain continuity as they reshaped postwar Japan. If the US had forced too much change too fast, there could have been resistance.

zywoo6• 11 months ago

I have not yet finished my paper on Britain and Japan. My current project is an attempt to go beyond the traditional separation of powers by proposing three additional dimensions of democratic resilience: the Constitutional State, the Popular Referendum, and the Ceremonial Sovereign. My argument is that only when these dimensions are deliberately coupled can democracy gain both legitimacy and resilience.

The first two essays explain what these new dimensions are, with the second focusing on the logic of coupling. The third essay, which I am still working on, turns to detailed case studies.

If you are interested in reviewing or analyzing my arguments, I would be deeply grateful. I’ve attached my Medium link below and would very much welcome any feedback or criticism.

https://medium.com/why-democracy-fails/beyond-separation-of-...

smcin7• 11 months ago

Ok but I already gave you my short version on UK vs Japan:

In 7+ centuries Britain(/UK) the ruling class never had a revolution/civil war that lasted longer than a generation, hence the builtin default action is to continue with the monarchy and associated class system. This also avoids all the (enormous) internal and external turmoil I cited. (PS In the age of social media I don't think you can call a popular referendum 'democracy', Brexit being the very obvious example. It depends on how literate the electorate at large are, and how tight(/loose/nonexistent) the controls on media spending to manipulate them are.)

Whereas in Japan, it was the US occupation post-WWII which intentionally decided to keep the monarchy for social cohesion, while reducing it to being titular, and abolishing the nobility. This was the US's (and MacArthur's) architecting, not Japan's. It's not like Japan had a referendum or parliamentary debate about the Showa Consitution [0]. And one intent was to prevent Japan fracturing internally, but to keep it from going imperialist again, and totally dependent on the US militarily. (Japan didn't even have provision for a constitutional referendum until a decade ago, and if it ever achieves the 2/3 support to have one, it'll more likely be about removing the Self-Defense Clause than abolishing/reducing the monarchy.)

It would be an interesting what-if to conjecture how the US might have reshaped Britain in the 1940s, like Japan.

Re your article, it's a strength not a weakness that the US doesn't have a national/federal referendum, most states have a pretty active ballot initiative system, so e.g. state taxation, legalizing marijuana etc. can be tried out and then we have statistics to inform federal (legislative) policy-making, plus there's less inertia to undoing bad decisions, like when Michigan nearly taxed itself out of existence and all its jobs and young people emigrated (internally).

I wouldn't say the UK has a disciplined approach to referendums. You can't even tell what % of GDP was spent (by third-parties) on political/social-media influence campaigns during 2015/6 (Brexit referendum), not even now a decade later. Not just [1] but all the other campaigns and interest groups.

[0]: Showa Constitution of 1946, seems pretty clear it was authored by the US not Japan [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Japan]

[1]: "Arron Banks and the mystery Brexit campaign funds", FT 11/2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382116

Archive: https://archive.ph/V4aHb

smcin7• 11 months ago

zywoo, you're getting shadowbanned or stalked or something, every time you post it gets killed instantly. You should contact the mods to have that removed.

zywoo6• 11 months ago

Can you see my comment now?

Ask HN: How do most dry theory writers struggle to get started?

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