On 17 Dec 2014, at 13:03, Alberto G. Corona wrote:
Starting from the fact that The NHS was introduced by Bismark in the
German Empire. for the same reasons that it is sustained today by
"democracies": populism.
Since the introduction of NHS in England no new hospital was
constructed until recently.
Democracy, an element of the liberal state, lives on premises that
it can not itself guarantee. (Bockenforde). It is based on the idea
that people will not act or vote for their inmediate interests but
will vote for anything that maintain the common good forever. That
is absolutely false. The only thing that maintain democracy is not
democracy, but the morality of the people. That morality is
contunuously underminded by democracy itself by means of the logic
of populism and the formation of majorities that produce false and
impossible and incompatible political promises for different groups
of people. That divides and confront ones with others.
It is based on the idea that a million idiot votes within an urn
produces wise decissions. On the idea that consensus produce truth.
Democracy is destined to be hyaked by false democrats that do not
believe in democracy but want to abuse it from inside . They are the
worst antidemocrats. And the responsibles of that hyaking are te
dumb people that believe acritically in democracy.
I disagree. Democracy is based on the fact that people will vote for
their immediate interest, and that it will be implemented reasonably
well by opportunist politicians, and if they don't succeed people will
stop voting against them. (so it is not just vote, but a promise that
you can vote again if dissatisfied).
Democracy is not perfect, and indeed it can regress easily to tyranny.
Like a living being can die, or a cell become cancerous, democracy can
easily be perverted and misused by bandits or ideologues. There is
nothing we can do about that, except investing in means (like
education, logic, reasoning, ...) helping people to not fall in the
trap of the demagogs.
It is not the system which makes bad people. It is bad people which
makes the system bad.
How americans have ever accepted prohibition remains a bit of a
mystery to me. In this context, I am not so much for legalization of
drugs than for penalization of prohibitionists, and education
explaining how prohibition illustrates well a technic to kill
democracy and its most important key features like the separation and
independence of the different powers, including the press.
But the institutionalization of religion, especially when the state
and the religion are not well separated is a deeper cause of the
problem for democracies. It is that mentality which has made possible
prohibition: the very idea that other people can decide for you
between the good and the wrong. That would not have happened if the
spiritual domain remained what is really: an investigation domain like
any others, calling for experiments, experiences and dialog, and no
normative rules ever. Those are object of laws, voted by the people or
representative delegates of the people.
What would you suggest in place of democracy? If a democracy can be
hijacked, don't you think that anything else couldn't even more easily
be hijacked?
Bruno
2014-12-16 15:44 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>:
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.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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