On Power

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1. jamcohenFeb 2021
   A lot of Caro’s responses are included, almost verbatim, in his more recent book “On Power”: https://www.amazon.com/On-Power-Robert-A-Caro-audiobook/dp/B...

   Definitely recommend the audiobook if you haven’t heard it already. Caro’s got a thick Brooklyn accent and a manner of speaking that’s really compelling.

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2. wonder_erAug 2020
   You pointed out exactly why I mentioned it:

   > except in that it often points out that authoritarian governments are free to ignore any feedback, feedback of the kind that incentive schemes are usually designed to generate.

   A view of the modern state is made more accurate if one views the state as an entity desirous to ignore feedback from citizens, rather than actively responsive to citizen opinion.

   Robert Caro has written amazing books. I'm half-way through this two-hour dialog titled "On Power"[0].

   He says he essentially stumbled into writing The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York[1] after observing how Robert Moses (an unelected bureaucrat) completely controlled huge "democratic" institutions.

   I mention the books because they highlight some of the means and ways in which the state encourages it's people to think it is responsive to them, but this responsiveness is a slight of hand, even as plenty of participants in the system (both as citizens and as representatives of the state) earnestly believe that the state is responsive to public input.

   [0]: https://www.audible.com/pd/On-Power-Audiobook/B06XNKVH16

   [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1111.The_Power_Broker

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