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The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#161

Post by sovietcattle »

majos wrote: post #155
sovietcattle wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think this is nonsensical" ... "Actually I have a hard time charitably following his reasoning". Let me help you a bit by over-simplyfing the logic: - If I state an argument to you, it can either be true, false or indeterminate. No matter what argument you make to me in that regard, you'd end up agreeing with that argument, which means that specific argument is "a priori". Moreover, you can only reach a conclusion…

Still confused. The argument goes: we can only assess the truth of statements through computing, computing requires control over some resources (e.g., you can’t have somebody come in and flip some bits randomly, or else your computation might be flawed), thus any use of logic requires control of resources because they are finite, hence private property? Doesn’t the first step conflate verification of truth with truth…

Argumentative ethics is not about determining "truth".

It's about deriving the minimal ethical that we can agree upon using a logic derivation.

If the aim is to determine possible agreement it requires arguments.

Coming up with arguments require private property, starting with self ownership, and extending it to objects that can be delimited, modified, and protected.

Turns out the requirement for private property is the minimal ethical, as we can only agree (or disagree) that we can form arguments.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#162

Post by carapace »

peterwwillis wrote: post #93
pdonis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key thing to remember about Lippmann, though, is that when he says these "lucid" things, he is not actually complaining; he's describing what he and people like him intend to do to "manufacture consent". Lippmann actually had no problem telling the people lies if he thought it was in a good cause. His objection to the lies others told was not that they were lies, but that they were not in what he considered to be…

And this is basically Machiavellian political theory. Acting in an immoral or unethical way is not necessarily a bad thing if it is warranted to bring about a good thing.

Remember the title: "The Prince". It's a manual for the folks you see in Game of Thrones.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#163

Post by foogazi »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #51
Iv wrote: post #5

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.

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.

This reminds me of this GoT quote:

>Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys...

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#164

Post by buzzkillington »

harimau777 wrote: post #132
buzzkillington wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the British empire was as evil as the Nazis there would be no Indians left.

I don't think that's necessarily accurate. The Nazi's conquered many countries without exterminating their population. As I understand it they only attempted to exterminate Jewish people, homosexuals, and the disabled. Granted even that is deeply evil, but it doesn't mean that they would wipe out any given people group that they conquered.

> The Nazi's conquered many countries without exterminating their population.

On top of Generalplan Ost the holocaust had 12 million victims, 5 million of whom were Slavs. The only reason why they aren't counted as genocide victims in the West is because it was not convenient to admit that during the cold war.

As a percentage of the population of the time it would have been similar to the British gassing 17 million Indians after starving another 45 million. And that would have been in three years of occupation, not a century and a half.

So yes, India was incredibly lucky to have the UK as their colonial overlord.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#165

Post by EliRivers »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #154
Digit-Al wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end justifies the means? The problem is that 'everyone is the hero in their own story'. Everyone who spreads falsehoods in service to some cause is convinced that they are doing the right thing and are trying to "bring about a good thing". Is there any advantage in winning the war if by doing so you lose your soul?

>The end justifies the means? Well, yes. For all the popularity of the phrase "the end never justifies the means", I have never met someone who actually believes it. Just to begin with, almost everyone agrees with state sanctioned violence as means to maintain a social order, even if they find the action itself horrible. I found the phrase itself more commonly used as a way to dismiss certain ends on the grounds of P…

I have never met someone who actually believes it.

I've definitely met people who agree that choice and liberty is so important that it's better people lead shorter, less healthy and more miserable lives through their own choices, than be tricked or forced into prosperity, health and happiness.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#166

Post by _0ffh »

Iv wrote: post #127
_0ffh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Anarchism is ultimately but radical direct democracy with strong emphathis on the principle of subsidiarity. A paraphrase of a bit from the Makhno article on Wikipedia: """ The first Congress of the Confederation of Anarchists Groups issued five main principles: 1) Rejection of all political parties 2) Rejection of all forms of dictatorships (including the dictatorship of the proletariat, viewed by Makhnovist…

"Democracy is one of the forms of bourgeois capitalist society. [...] As a result, democracy is merely one variety of bourgeois dictatorship, its fictitious political freedoms and democratic guarantees are a smokescreen designed to conceal its true identity. " [1] In his "constructive part" [2] he carefully avoids talking about assemblies or votes. It is clear he does not know really how to solve conflicts and just h…

I'd say it stands to reason that in these quotes the word "democracy" is used as a stand in for "(centralised) representative democracy".

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#167

Post by pdonis »

api wrote: post #140
0x445442 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "doing the greatest good to the greatest number of people" Determining this, even with the information available today, seems like folly; like a never ending circle of statistical manipulations and justifications to support preconceived notions. Action on just about any social issue of note can be argued one way or another to be satisfying this guideline.

I recall a rather amazing paper a while back arguing that markets cannot be perfectly efficient unless P=NP. There are too many brutal NP-hard optimizations involved. I suspect the same would hold for any attempt at central planning. If these things were possible we would live in a utopia.

> I suspect the same would hold for any attempt at central planning.

It would be worse for central planning, because in addition to the problem you mention, central planning has the problem of getting the necessary information to the central planner, which in the general case is impossible: the information goes up as the exponential of the population size, but the bandwidth of information channels to the central planner only goes up linearly with the population size.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#168

Post by sovietcattle »

shantly wrote: post #158
Iv wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are very perceptive :-)

From what I can tell, having followed several mises.org links over the years, castles-built-on-sand reasoning is kinda their whole thing. They rely on the reader missing some obvious objection, or some unjustified leap or connection between two things, early in their “logical” argument to make it all work. It’s dumb writing in smart writing’s clothing.

Would you mind referring to some articles as examples of the fallacies you're describing?

Or is it the case that you simply don't like the content and therefore you dismiss it using whatever excuses you find convenient?

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#169

Post by nl »

sovietcattle wrote: post #168
shantly wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell, having followed several mises.org links over the years, castles-built-on-sand reasoning is kinda their whole thing. They rely on the reader missing some obvious objection, or some unjustified leap or connection between two things, early in their “logical” argument to make it all work. It’s dumb writing in smart writing’s clothing.

Would you mind referring to some articles as examples of the fallacies you're describing? Or is it the case that you simply don't like the content and therefore you dismiss it using whatever excuses you find convenient?

Well the one you linked to is a good example.

If property rights are derived by the ability to argue then babies can't own property. But they can... If the argument is that someone else does the argument on behalf of the baby then anything can use that argument.

We see other numerous counter examples - court cases on behalf of animal rights, collectively owned property etc.

It's a simple circular argument disguised in lots of complicated writing.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#170

Post by nl »

ben_w wrote: post #152
nl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. 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 ha…

> But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all. My memory may be false or incomplete, but I thought Gore ultimately said he’d lost and that Bush has won?

Yes he conceeded after the court case "for the good of democracy" but his supporters felt the case decision had holes.
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