On 12/18/2014 9:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 11:12 AM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/18/2014 2:05 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 9:07 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 12/17/2014 8:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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.
They accepted it out of Puritan theology: that this life is just a test
and
indulgence in any pleasure is suspect and possibly a sin. It's the same
strain
of thought that wants to ban any recreational drugs, pornography,
prostitution,
homosexuality,...
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.
But people who live in a community do need to decide on some rules of
behavior
in order to live without conflict. The important thing is distinguish
between
a sphere of personal morals and a sphere of public ethics. This is the
thing
missing in Islam (and was missing in the West before the
Enlightenment). The
great advancement of the U.S. was not democracy, the Greeks and
Scandanavians
had invented democracy long before; it was the invention of
constitutionally
limited government and inalienable human rights.
I agree. I am a great admirer of the american constitution. Sadly, I think
it
eventually failed.
In my view the flaw is that the constitution still requires interpretation.
If it
could be written in some formal mathematical language, then it could be
directly
implemented by every citizen, policeman, judge, soldier, etc.
That's a pure fantasy. The Constitution was written if fairly plain
language, but
it could not (and should not) have foreseen every technological advance. It
said
little about privacy, only prohibiting "unreasonable search" because
surveillance
was impractical in 1780.
Requiring interpretation, the state ends up being ultimately ruled by the
supreme
court. Giving life tenure to the supreme court judges is a good strategy
but not a
perfect one. Eventually we arrived at one of the most terrifying scenarios
that the
constitution was designed to prevent: total surveillance of the state over
its
citizens. The majority is ok with it, and so democracy risks ending up in
tyranny
once again.
In the founding father's plan tyranny was to be avoided by having many
competing
factions. I think they didn't realize that the way elections were set up
would
necessarily force a two party system. And of course they couldn't foresee
the
effect of mass communications: radio and television, and its implications
for those
with enormous wealth.
Perhaps what's needed is a constitution based on game theoretical concepts, with proofs
that cases of disequal power or ursurped are inherently unstable and rapidly decay back
to more decentralized and equitable distributions of power. Perhaps this property is
already a part of the human condition, but a framework for achieving it without violence
or necessarily having to change government would be valuable. I think this was partially
the intent of "checks and balances", but the founders wrongly assumed the branches would
always be antagonistic towards each other, rather than cooperative. What's needed is a
system of checks and balances where the more power one faction accumulates the easier it
becomes for other factions to reduce that power. The perennial problem humanity faces is
that those with wealth and power so rarely want to give that up, and often find the best
way to preserve their wealth and power is to seek more of it.
All this debate may be pointless however, as traditional states based on territories,
become obsolete once once there are individuals running in software. Henceforth they
lose all ability to regulate or control: you can't imprison someone who can be
reinstantiated elsewhere, or eliminate a program which can be copied/backed up anywhere.
You can't tax virtual wealth, nor use laws to regulate the kinds of experiences others
can have in virtual reality.
So do you think that all those things are done proves we're not living in a
virtual reality??
Brent
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