Why power is both necessary and a potentia

· 00:01Well greetings everyone. I'm, Professor Goss, and I am the instructor of record, this semester for Poly. Psi. One introduction to government,

· 00:10and I just want to tell you it's a it's a new semester. I'm really excited to get going There's so much going on in the news out there that ah certainly connects with our course matter to this semester, so I will do everything I can to get those things involved in my lectures. Try to spruce it up and make this

· 00:28useful to you. You know something that you can apply to the real world that's going on as we're in class a little bit about me. I am in my thirtieth year, Long Beach City College, in the history of all a side apartment,

· 00:40been at a long time and a senior, most member of our department, and it was Department Head for a long time, and in the Faculty Association.

· 00:50Now i'm just playing on Professor Goss, and I love the job. I do. I love teaching. I love teaching about government and politics. I've been

·

Unknown Speaker

00:58interested in it all my life.

·

Unknown Speaker

01:00Of course, if you looked at my

·

Eugene Goss

01:04profile when we went into the canvas page. You'll probably notice that I am a sitting. See, I am the mayor of the City of ceremony as we speak, I elected official the City of Ceremony, which is right next door to Pasadena, about thirty minutes away from due north from Long Beach,

· 01:22and I've been doing. I've been on the City Council in ceremony for eight years, and i've been mayor twice. It's a one-year assignment this is my second time. So

· 01:31and i'm presently running for re-election. So I i'm going to be able to bring a lot of personal experience in politics and government into this class in campaigning and all sorts of things. So I I think that you're going to find it real interesting.

· 01:45Anyway, i'm going to every time we meet. I'm going to present a Powerpoint presentation. As I speak. You want to make certain you take careful notes of things i'm saying not just what you see in the Powerpoint Presentation,

· 01:58and because the things that I have to say and the things on the Powerpoint, both are testable material. On the chapter exams are taking, and the four big unit exams you're going to be taking. So

· 02:11please watch every lecture, good aggressive notes on it. If you go through and hear those notes and something's confusing to you. Give me a call or visit me during my office hours in t twenty, three, thirty, one in the T building on Monday and Wednesday

· 02:26from one thousand two hundred and forty, five to one hundred and forty five, just because you're online doesn't mean you can't come to the campus and see me personally, but I also have email.

· 02:36So I wanted to just give you a heads up. The first module really has to do with the first half of chapter one in the magstat text, Your your pardon me the magazine

· 02:49you're reading the magazine, and I want you to make certain that you read the assigned chapter before you see the lecture. So you should have read at least the first fifteen pages of chapter one. I have a wetext. This lecture will cover that

· 03:03module the module to lecture the next one you'll be seeing will pick up in the middle of chapter one and finish chapter one

· 03:12and do chapter two. So make sure when you before you open up the module to lecture in about a week, that you make sure you've read the second half of chapter one

·

Unknown Speaker

03:25that's confusing to you again brought me an email,

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Eugene Goss

03:28happy to explain anything as many times as it takes, because I know that it's a It's an exciting time. But I know you all. Many of you are working, and you multiple classes. Sometimes things get a little overwhelming. That's when you take a deep breath and call Professor Goss and i'll do what I can help.

· 03:44Okay,

· 03:46i'm going to go ahead and do a share screen and get started on the

· 03:51yeah

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Unknown Speaker

03:52lecture of the day

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Unknown Speaker

04:01is there we go

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Eugene Goss

04:02the inaugural lecture of Polys. I one fall, two thousand and twenty two.

· 04:08Um. I would like to tell you that every semester I teach online classes asynchronous classes where we're not meeting in person. I always provide fresh lectures for the semester.

· 04:22So i'm i'm doing this a few days before the begin.

· 04:27All semester all my lectures. This semester will be ah fresh this fall, and you're not going to be seeing recycled videos that have been ah posted for several semesters or several years. These are all fresh this fall. If you happen to be watching this taking this class.

· 04:44You're in the winter block. Sorry they'll be a little bit a little for you if you're in winter glass. That's about a couple of months old, but they're still quite relevant and impertinently to the world that you're living in right now.

· 04:56And of course I pride myself in providing, not just lectures, but up to date fresh lectures. Because I think that's important. I think you all kind of expect that.

· 05:06Okay? Well, enough of that. Nothing of the housekeeping. Let's get right down to business. She me i'm gonna I need to say another thing.

· 05:13The last couple of years I've been dealing with a kind of a mild throat condition. It's very benign, Doctor says nothing serious going on,

· 05:21but I I have to clear my throat pretty regularly, or i'll start coughing. I have some issues there, so what I do is clear my throat every now and then. Maybe i'll cough a couple of times again. I'll probably doing this. Excuse me,

· 05:34be sipping on some water or some coffee,

· 05:38and i'll be doing that pretty regularly, so I can keep my voice and not have to cough.

· 05:43I appreciate you uh bearing with me, and

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Unknown Speaker

05:46I know sometimes it's room. Someone's in a problem in the middle of a lecture middle of a presentation, and they stop, and they bring something.

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Eugene Goss

05:52I I just hope you'll accept my apologies in advance,

· 05:56and this No, I it's not Covid. No, I had that back in January. I've been tested. I'm fine. It's It's just something else other than that.

· 06:04Okay, So I've got a screen out in front of you, and we're going to start out the lecture of something positive. You know a lot of people in America today have a rather jaundice or cynical view of

· 06:16kind of government's never been a top topic that Americans have been in love with, that we are. The Our constitutional Republic was founded on in a revolt. But we're against the King and a government so. And ever since then Americans have always been kind of skeptical and not real

· 06:32Ah! Crazy about their government, or at least about government power in their lives. I remember that good old days, and you ever heard in the old timers. I remember the good old days. Well, you know, back in the one thousand nine hundred and sixtys they weren't always the we had. We had our problems,

· 06:47but I certainly we certainly had a different attitude towards the Government. Remember, in the sixtys we were just about a little less than twenty years out from having one World War Ii, and having defeated Hitler,

· 06:58the Japanese Empire in the Pacific at the same time, and we built this incredible economy in the fiftys and in the sixtys.

· 07:05John F. Kennedy's challenged America during this this this boom period of the sixtys to land a man on the moon at the end of the decade. Sure enough,

· 07:15by one thousand nine hundred and sixty nine. We accomplished that, you know. Kennedy had been dead and buried long before it happened.

· 07:22President Nixon was depressing at the time. But the truth is that this was an amazing achievement, and it was just a further proof to Americans that their government

· 07:31it was worthwhile that it was confident, and it could be trusted, and it was doing big things. So back in the sixty S. Americans just had a very positive view of their government, and that it started to fall apart in the late sixty S. And early seventy S. With the onset of the with the continuation of an unpopular war in Vietnam,

· 07:50and then, when President Nixon was found me involved in the watergate skin, and the ballpoint was our first President to resign. A few years later. Since then Americans had just had not had that same positive attitude, and right now it's it's surveys of going for the last ten years or so

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Unknown Speaker

08:10we're so. The government's image in the eyes of the people is struggling.

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Unknown Speaker

08:13I like to go back and just remind you there was a day

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Eugene Goss

08:16when people thought the United States Government was pretty spiffy.

· 08:21Okay, So having said that,

· 08:23let's get into some baseline concepts that we're going to be using In the course of this semester we'll start with about the

· 08:31politics and political sciences terminology

· 08:34your textbook definition of politics. This is the process by which decisions are made and carried out within and among nations, groups and individuals.

· 08:44Um,

· 08:48I think that's pretty much self-explanatory. But remember when you see when you hear the word process, something that you should come to mind the politics you should always remember. It involves a process by which things or decisions are being made

· 09:01right,

· 09:02and this politics can take place in in your community. It can take place in your family. It can take place in your city, your neighborhood, your county, your State ash in the nation, and internationally between nations.

· 09:16So politics is a is a very common thing in human life. It's been there since the very beginning,

· 09:23and it's a required subject matter for you to learn if you want to get a bachelor's degree

· 09:29the state of California.

· 09:31But let's do our user operational definition, because i'm going to say that definition sounds good. So if I ask you to left test, what is the textbook definition? You'd answer the first. If I asked you, what is the operational definition you should be able to say? Well, politics is a struggle for power, Professor Goss.

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Unknown Speaker

09:49It determines who gets What? When, and how.

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Eugene Goss

09:53So the key here is There's a There's a power struggle among people and groups to make decision to be able to make decisions about who gets what, when and how that could be Just about everything Today an American like just about everything as a political sign to it.

· 10:09Very recently a President Biden has has from the executive authority, decided to ah relieve some people of the college loans that they had done that they had

· 10:23ah

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Unknown Speaker

10:24taken out for their college education.

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Eugene Goss

10:27And that's just another example of how politics

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Unknown Speaker

10:31has kind of just seeped into just about all aspects of our lives. That's just the latest example.

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Eugene Goss

10:38Political science, therefore, is the study of politics, and you are in the history and political science and ethnic Studies Department.

· 10:46The Political science program is in that department. So political science and the study of politics, or the study of the decision making process, or who gets what.

· 10:57So for who gets what went in now.

· 11:01So, as a political scientist, I'm. Interested in studying

· 11:05that power struggle. One of the most important things we study is political scientists is power between individual leaders and people and groups,

· 11:14and we study those decisions and what goes into those decisions. And then we study what happens because of decisions.

· 11:20How do those impact people and talk about who who wins and who loses and who pays the price? Um! And so political science is really about a lot of things, and it's really quite a fascinating endeavor if you really get into it. I think you're going to get hooked, maybe be a Polysai major Who did that happen?

· 11:40Uh, maybe it happens to some kids, some soon.

· 11:44Political science is generally concerned with these three basic questions, and these go all the way back to Aristotle, you know, over two thousand years ago

· 11:53who governs?

· 11:55So the fundamental question is, Who should our rulers be? Who should govern us?

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Unknown Speaker

12:01Should it be Democrats? Should it be Republicans? Should it be men?

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Eugene Goss

12:05Uh it should be African-american,

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Unknown Speaker

12:08and so that question racially should be Asian-americans white Americans?

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Eugene Goss

12:12The American you name it,

· 12:14you can answer this cool questions, whoever in any way you like,

· 12:18should it be people with Phds. And should it be people just high school, should it be, should be people who live in California or anybody but live in California. You can answer any way you like, and this is part of the debate and argument always goes on in politics. Well, I don't want him to be my president. I don't want her to be my president,

· 12:39and these are the reasons. And here we go.

· 12:42So who governs is a fundamental question that all political entities, all political communities, have to answer from time to time

· 12:54for what ends. Well, when that that individual, or when that group

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Unknown Speaker

12:57who has representatives gets into the office of sometime, maybe Mayor the

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Eugene Goss

13:03you know, maybe a governor, and maybe maybe school Board, maybe President, maybe Congress,

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Unknown Speaker

13:08What are they going to do? What's their whole point? What are they going to accomplish when they, and what is their goal and what they didn't intend to accomplish.

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Eugene Goss

13:15So when we have people running for office, one of the first things we ask them. Will you tell us what your platform is? Tell us what you would do when you get into office?

· 13:22Well, i'm at a lower taxi government regulation, or I'm going to. I'm going to build a train from L. A. To San Francisco. That's what we're talking. So the second major question is for what is, what is the

· 13:35what are the goals of the people you'd like to have governing?

· 13:40But how are they going to do it? Let's say you want to build a train from La to San Francisco. We're in the process of trying to do that. That's a very complicated thing. How you going to actually achieve that, How you going to raise the money to pay for it? It's gonna cost us tens of billions of dollars.

· 13:57How are you going to get people who have property along the way to give up their property, so you can run a train straight through. There are all sorts of challenges, so on anything that told a politician wants to accomplish for what ends you need to ask them the follow-up question. Okay, how you going to do it?

· 14:14Who's going to do it? When's it going to get done? How much is it going to cost? How's it going to benefit people right?

· 14:20So, anyway, politics is about a lot of things. But you should be able to know that political science generally is concerned with those three questions, and how people answer,

· 14:30Let's get down to the concept of power for a minute

· 14:34power is obviously the key to politics. That power struggle. I'm talking about

· 14:39Bertrand Russell, the famous philosopher said. The power is the ability to achieve intended effects.

· 14:46Power is the ability to achieve intended effects.

· 14:50The two maxims of power that come with that number. One

· 14:54power exists in the context of human relationship. So if we're studying one person by himself or herself,

· 15:02they're not involved with anyone else. There's nothing going. There's no interaction of any type of any other person. We can't study power,

· 15:09but as soon as that person encounters another individual, or a group, or a whole nation, or it doesn't matter as soon as they encounter one person. There is now a relationship power, it can take place.

· 15:20So the first thing when we're studying powers. There has to be

· 15:23a human relationship of of at least two people, or could be a relationship between a leader and hundreds of millions of people like the President of the American people, but there has to be a relationship.

· 15:35Secondly, that power that is used in that relationship

· 15:40can be used in many different ways.

· 15:42It's highly variable.

· 15:45So, for instance, if I say I have the power to, if i'm in a classroom and i'm standing up in front of everyone. I see a guy in the back. He's got a baseball cap on,

· 15:55and if I say to somebody, I can get his baseball cap on,

· 15:59I still Haven't shown you power, because what's that? What's Bertrand Russell saying?

· 16:04Powers the ability to achieve intent effects. You'd have to see me get his hat off. Right. So i'm in a relationship with him because we're in the same room, and I see him right. That's That's enough of a relationship.

· 16:16And let's just say I was able to convince the guy standing next to him to knock his hat off. Well, I have now used power. We're all standing back and watching gossip power. I've just successfully used power.

· 16:28But what you know about that guy with the hallows. He doesn't want that He didn't want that to happen first time. You know what happened the second time. So let's say we try that again the next day. Do you think he's going to allow the guy next to him, like his hat off.

· 16:40So for me to use that use power over my might have to try a different approach. That's what I need, my variable or dynamic

· 16:47human beings are thinking creatures.

· 16:49We learn from experience, and so power is very dynamic. Power can be used one way today in a very different way tomorrow,

· 16:57subject to change

· 16:58again. How is the ability to achieve intended effects? So we want to see if a person's actually able to do them by you observing them,

· 17:06and we want to mix. And then that person has to have be able to achieve intended effects within a relationship with at least one other person just standing in the middle of an empty building. There is no potential for power.

· 17:19Finally, Powers very, very variable and dynamic.

· 17:24Oh, excuse me, I Here it comes.

· 17:31So we're not going to spend much time. This semester talking about personal power, and a psychologist can focus on this.

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Unknown Speaker

17:38Excuse me,

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Eugene Goss

17:41but we will, for now, just to get the idea of power and relationships down. So i'm going to say that if you have personal power and we're using the ideas of Robert Dahl, famous political scientist

· 17:52you have. I'm going to say your person. If you have personal power, I mean to find it this way you're person A, and you have power of a person. B. When you're able to get person B to do something, you wouldn't have done everyone.

· 18:05So first you're in the relationship with Person A, and then you're able to get them to do something that they would not

· 18:11have done otherwise had they not been in that relationship with you had you not done that

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Unknown Speaker

18:15to them.

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Eugene Goss

18:16And we'll say that's a use of power. And then we confirm that through observation,

· 18:21observation is important.

· 18:23That's the empirical method, the scientific method to be empirical. Em Pir ica out to be empirical, the

· 18:32to observe and to try to make factual notation, it seems, as they actually are. Now.

· 18:41Now, I'm going to lay out a scenario. You have been standing and let's say you're on campus tomorrow.

· 18:48You've got two classes right after each other. They're long classes, and you didn't get much sleep last night,

· 18:54and you're at the end of your first class, and you go into our cafeteria. You only got about twenty minutes, and then you're going to have to get your next class, and you want to get in line to get a cup of that fancy coffee. But there's a long line there,

· 19:06and so you decide right then in there you're going to rest. Sit down at rest, and you're going to get

· 19:11the person in front of you on the line to get you your cup of coffee.

· 19:15So here's and so the rest of us are going to be standing hidden. We're all going to be, you know, our White Lab coats and our clipboards. We're all so political science. We're studying this. How? How is person? A your person? A going to get Person B to get them your coffee?

· 19:29Okay. So

· 19:31the first thing that that comes to mind the first thing that most students in my classes say as well.

· 19:39I'd offer him or her a couple of coffee

· 19:43to stand in line to buy my cup of coffee.

· 19:47Well, that's not a use of personal power, and i'll tell you we will call it an economic, simple economic exchange

· 19:54or a simple contract. Here you take. I'm going to give you money to buy my coffee, but i'm giving you enough to buy your own coffee. And is that okay? And they say, Well, sure that's a good deal. They stand in line and get your coffee when they bring it back to you. Well, you did change them. Have they not been in that relationship with you? They wouldn't have done that, but they changed you, too.

· 20:14Had you not been in that relationship with him you wouldn't have to give them.

· 20:18So we're going to say It's kind of a a standoff. And this is basically the building block of of of a free market. Capital system is the idea that each individual can voluntarily enter into a transaction with each other, make a judgment with each other for themselves about whether or not the transaction is good enough as long as no one's forcing you

· 20:38right. There's no no, no, uh uh pressure being applied.

· 20:42Both parties agree to a mutually beneficial arrangement without outside coercion,

· 20:47you know, in in business terms that's a simple contract.

· 20:52So I want you to understand. That's not an example of personal power, though it's It's usually when my students consider to be the first, and I think it's a very normal way in which Americans

· 21:02approach this this, this challenge, the

· 21:05the second way is to simply say, Hey,

· 21:09you know I

· 21:11I am.

· 21:13Ah, I've got a really bad knee, and if I stand too long I I i'm in a lot of paints. I'm gonna I'd like to sit down here. And would you mind getting me my coffee while I rest, and if a person takes pity on you, or or expresses some passion for you and says, Okay, sure, what do you want.

· 21:31They stand in line. They get the coffee and bring it back and give it to you. Have you use personal power?

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Unknown Speaker

21:36Yes, you have.

·

Eugene Goss

21:37They use power. They they! They got that power out of the goodness of their hearts, and it was based on true circumstances. You have a bad meaning. It would have created a lot of pain stand there, and so you did not mislead them or from them in any way.

· 21:52So i'm going to call this a benevolent or benign use of power. Benevolent hormonine, benevolent means, good or benign, meets neutral, so benevolent or benign uses might need a simple request based on true circumstances that relies on another person's kindness or perception of mutual interest

· 22:10folks. This happens all the time it happens in families. It happens at work. It happens There are many examples every day of our lives, of people who do things for other people when asked

· 22:21out of the goodness of their hearts. And if this is perfectly innocent and perfectly fine, as the person in person A who asks for something from personally. Have they use power? Yes, they,

· 22:33but they used it in a benevolent urbanide way.

· 22:37The third generals category of uses of power is something completely different.

· 22:44This is when you get in line

· 22:46you lie to a person you say. Look, I've got a bad knee. I need to sit. Would you mind getting me a cup of coffee, and they take pity, or they show compassion to you,

· 22:55and they get in line and get you a cup of coffee, and when they bring it back and hand it to you, we are all watching, we go well. That person use power. But when we find out that it was a lie. Now that's a that's a use of power, but it's what we call a negative or a malevolent use of power.

· 23:11Okay, Another version of that might be

· 23:14You get up and you you're a much bigger person, and you physically grab them, Shove them, and you get up there and look down and physically intimidate,

· 23:23and to get me my coffee, or else.

· 23:26Well, that's a use of force. That's also a all level and use of power.</p

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