101–110 of 200 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How well would have Ghandi fared if he were not in the British Empire? If he was in the USSR or Nazi Germany he would have been quietly murdered one night.
Let's not pretend British Empire was any bit less evil than the other ones. This seems to be a common theme everywhere including in India. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-35-milli...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. One of the best features of small "d" democracy is that it lends the government a pretty powerful argument for legitimacy. Which is perhaps the most important feature a government needs to last. Edit: Consent of the Governed is probably the most powerful legitimacy arguments there is beside maybe Divine Right.
I disagree that democracy provides consent of the governed. To write with broad strokes: Half of people don't vote. Half that do don't get what they want. Half that do don't understand the issues, and without understanding can't give consent. You don't know what laws your representatives will write. You don't know how the obtuse legal language will be interpreted through a myriad of other legal artifacts by unelected…
Inventing a better form than democracy would be a huge boon to the humanity. It's a pity that research for better forms of democracy doesn't get that much funding, if any at all. For some reason it's considered less important than yet another food delivery service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> probably a clusterfuck Why do you believes this? I'm not an advocate of direct democracy but I have no idea why this valuation is so ubiquitous.
understanding the world is a full time job. not saying the current crop of politicians are doing a great job of it, but the chances for Joe Random to understand the ramifications of his voting in direct democracy are slim Moreover the risk of unmitigated populism storming the masses into voting some real shit is ever present; while a populist leader still have to work within the framework of the houses it would be ex…
Not only that, any time I read such criticisms, they seem to overlook the fact that DD would change the landscape. Perhaps people are "ignorant of the facts" now, and I certainly don't disagree, but can you blame them? If a democracy offers you only two choices of party, who differ very little if viewed from a perspective outside the Overton Window (which is constantly drilled into people's minds as a true representation of reality), then why bother putting much effort into it?
Of course, the average Joe's reasoning doesn't get down into such detail, but I believe the common man has a reasonably accurate intuitive sense for discriminating between sincerity and theatre.
To know with any level of confidence whether DD could work, it would have to be tried, with many variations, over a very long period of time. To me, this seems unmistakably true due to the complex nature of reality - and yet, the overwhelming consensus opinion seems to be that It Is Known that it could not possibly work, full stop. To me, this seems like yet another an example of intuition being mistaken for fact, a general idea that this [0] excellent comment touched upon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see no reason to disbelieve that ignorance decreases the human desire to act politically. If you don't know you've been wronged (or limited) and you don't know what change is effective, or you are supplied with necessarily limited misinformation...you spend your efforts in other pursuits.
I neither believe or disbelieve in this hypothesis. Given an absence of evidence upon the issue I see no reason to believe either way.
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
> For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes. This, but it also needs to be trusted. The losers need to feel that they lost, not just be told they have by the winners. This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. Also, one of the reasons the UK voted to not change its voting mechanism in a recent referendum was that STV was portrayed as too “complica…
I don't understand this comment. I agree American democracy was stable after GWB (George W Bush)'s election (although I'm unclear if you mean the end of the vote counting or the judicial process here?). But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all.
recent referendum was that STV was portrayed - what is STV?
while FPTP has - FPTP = First past the post.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt it. Jailing Trump would be counterproductive. Taking such an extreme step would be destabilizing and make it more difficult to bury the whole affair of the Trump presidency. Would you really want a slow drip of Wikileaks about how compromised a US President was going public? If I were a victorious president-elect, I would offer to pardon him with the condition that he STFU, and appoint a special counsel to in…
The problem is that the president can only pardon for federal crimes, but it's quite likely that some of Trump's action also constitute state crimes - indeed, there are ongoing investigations. As president, he is still immune to prosecution on those grounds, but that ends the moment he leaves the office. And there's an especially strong motive for state-level actors in blue states to prosecute - it's a massive politi…
I think it's a difficult situation, and the only way I see out for the US is if someone developed another powerbase within the Republican party (quickly!) and it was in their interest to see him removed from office.
Outside that it just breed contempt for the rule of law. Ether he is convicted in a Democrat state and Republicans explicitly use that in the culture wars, or he's not and people see that the powerful don't even have to pay lip service to the law.
It seems pretty clear that in 30 years time we'll look back at this and think it is a miscarriage of justice that he wasn't removed from office (I'm assuming he won't be). But in 30 years it will be pretty irrelevant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd encourage you to read about the logic derivation of natural law based on private property through argumentative ethics, as described in the article I mentioned.
I have. I think they are bollocks. Have you read and understood them and are ready to defend steps and axioms of this thesis or are you just enamored with his conclusions? Specifically, I think this is nonsensical: "Second, it must be noted that argumentation does not consist of free-floating propositions but is a form of action requiring the employment of scarce means; and that the means which a person demonstrates…
I think you are being very polite in your assessment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You give consent for a given group of people to govern you, not for every decision they make. That would be direct democracy (and probably a clusterfuck).
> probably a clusterfuck Why do you believes this? I'm not an advocate of direct democracy but I have no idea why this valuation is so ubiquitous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They certainly don't work for me. I have to pay something between 20-80% of all my income and financial gains to governments despite the fact I don't agree with anything they do, or with their existence. I never signed a contract with them agreeing on that sort of taxation, and if I don't pay the taxes the government imposes on me I can have my property taken away from me, get arrested and even be assassinated. I als…
And who prevents the criminal or military leaders from taking over once the governments fail in your scenario? Are you saying there won't be anyone around who attempts to seize power? That isn't how things have played out in areas of the world where central governments have failed. The more likely scenario is that we're headed toward a world state. That's the direction civilization has been heading since nation state…
A fourth (ideal) way is a true New Enlightenment - true as opposed to (for example) what globalism is often mistakenly considered, imho due to hardly anyone thinking in a disciplined and critical manner, but rather rationalizing their personal in-group ideology.