On 6/13/2014 6:41 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 7:47 PM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
On 12 Jun 2014, at 13:39, Telmo Menezes wrote:
The inconceivable freedom is in your heart, but give time to time,
You are right and I'll shut up now :)
Please don't shut up!
As long as we stay polite the fun is in the conversation, ... in the
detours sometimes.
My main motivation for shutting up here is that I fully agree, but sometimes forget,
that freedom is 1p.
I do feel bad for going off-topic. I think that you and others, who contribute a lot to
the main topic of this mailing list, deserve more leeway than me in going off-topic. So
since you're asking, I feel comfortable with arguing a bit more.
(I was being sarcastic when I said the politician "misspeak". I was referring to the
sort of doublespeak and euphemisms they employ. Of course they lie.)
The reason why I suspect that democracy is not stable, is that it might always degrade
to a Keynesian beauty contest. Modern democracy originated from enlightenment ideals, of
raising human potential -- raising the average. The trouble is that, the best strategy
to win elections is to pander to the average. A political movement that attempts to
raise the average will lose to the Keynesian beauty contest players in the long term. So
I am arguing that democracy contains in itself the evolutionary pressure that generates
its own demise. I hope I'm missing something.
I think what you're missing is that the voters idea of beauty is malleable and given
enough money can be maninpulated. And when it takes a lot of money to win elected office
the elected officers are likely to be indebted to very rich people. You seem to worry
that democracy is unstable against populism, but it may also be unstable against plutocracy.
Brent
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