On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 3:44 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 15 Dec 2014, at 19:51, LizR wrote: > > What is funny - as well as sad and frightening - is the number of people >> here who apparently don't believe in democracy, even in principle. >> Democracy is the idea that we can elect people to do things for everyone >> else (the NHS, conservation, social security, infrastructure, regulations, >> police, army science etc etc). Yet all I can see here is people saying that >> it doesn't work. I think the truth is that it can be hijacked and THEN it >> doesn't work. The NHS (despite everything) was one of the greatest >> achievements of the 20th century, after all. And it was introduced by a >> government because of its beliefs and principles. >> > > I agree completely with you. Like academies, democracies are the worst > except for anything else. > Many people criticize the system, and this *benefits* those who pervert > the system. Our democracies are sick (and partially hijacked by corporatist > interests), but this needs we must heal them, not condemn it. >
This is a bit too simplistic. "Democracy" means a wide range of systems, from the Athenian random draw to the complex representative system of modern America. One problem with democracy is that it does not prevent tyranny. You can still fall in the situation of the majority electing tyrants. People were dismayed to find this happening after the Arab spring. I suspect that we are on the last stages of a failed experiment to solve this issue: constitutions. The idea is beautiful: start with a document that clearly states the individual rights that cannot, in any circumstance, be voted away by the majority. The Weimar constitution did not prevent the rise of the nazis and the American constitution did not survive the secret courts and the re-interpretations of the XX and XXI century. Some people are making valiant efforts to fix this, working within the system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_PAC In the US, revoking the personhood of corporations and preventing them from donating money to politicians is the single most effective measure I can think of to returning things to a sane balance. They are surely going to meet formidable adversaries. My fear is this: what if they succeed and it still doesn't work? What if the supreme court judges re-interpret whatever they write in the constitution in a way that pleases the oligarchy, like they always seem to do these days? Telmo. > > Bruno > > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > > -- > 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.
