On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 8:26 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 6/13/2014 6:41 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > > On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 7:47 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> 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. > I worry about both, and tend to think that they are two aspects of the same thing. Take the rise of fascism in XX century Europe. In Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal and other countries fascist republics with the superficial appearance of democracies where introduced by populism, and this power was used to maintain corporatism, which ultimately placed the means of production in the hands of the usual few rich families. So I would argue that populism and plutocracy are synergistic in corrupting democracies. Worryingly, the UE is showing signs of vulnerability to populism once again... Telmo. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
