"I do not believe it is possible to “cut back” on government in any
substantial way without radically restructuring  society."

Sure, so what I would add then, is, that's probably how it is about most
people's belief systems, be it political, economic or religious. In other
words,  ideally, even subconsciously, we want the world to function in the
ideals we believe in. But that's not going to happen in any substantial way
without radically restructuring society. So certainly, from this much
broader standpoint, I agree with what you are saying.

Therefore, it also follows with what you mentioned about having a mindset
of generosity. Oh how I wish more people could have this attitude! The
world surely needs more compassion and generosity. But trying to cultivate
this, among many hundreds of millions of Americans, and billions of people
worldwide, is quite a daunting task. But, we can have hope! Without hope,
all this is useless.

And to add to that vein, none of what we are discussing here, should ever
stop us from having our beliefs, standing for them, and not backing down
from them, which I certainly don't, on anything I've said. At the same
time, we should have open,rational  civil discourse about our beliefs,
without trying to impose our beliefs on anyone else.

And at the end of the day, where do these political, economic,
religious beliefs, etc. come from? They come from each individual. So in
terms of the bigger - actually ginormous, - picture of society, that's all
we can ultimately work on - ourselves, each individual at a time. Well as
the great Confucious once said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a
single step."



On Sat, Nov 22, 2025 at 10:47 AM Ernest Prabhakar <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Dear Vik,
>
> If we disagree about anything, it is that you appear to wish we could just
> cut back or stop growing.  I must correct you on your interpretation
> here. I only said to cut back on government.
>
>
> Ah, let me be more precise then:
>
> I do not believe it is possible to “cut back” on government in any
> substantial way without radically restructuring  society.
>
> If you have a concrete proposal otherwise, I’d love to hear it.
>
> In my view, government (all identity, in fact) is a complicated
> negotiation between various internal and external parts.
>
> Like software, it is much, much easier to tack on a new feature to solve
> an immediate problem that rewrite an entire stack other people are still
> using.
>
> Also, most rewrites fail, or make other things worse. Yet,  sometimes we
> reach our generative limit and have no option left but to try something
> different…
>
> E
>
> --
> --
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