On 22 Dec 2014, at 00:36, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 18 Dec 2014, at 10:58, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
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).
Given a currency that cannot be manipulated by a central bank and
that is based on some limited resource, why not just implement
democracy through the free market?
OK, with some regulation, and a way to tackle propaganda, etc.
Everything you pay for is an instant vote.
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.
But once the education system is both compulsory and under the
control of the state, if the state gets corrupted how to spread
education logic and reasoning and still work within the system?
Well, if the state is corrupted up to the point of teachning 2+2=5,
it means the democracy does no more exist. In that case you need a
revolution (non violent if possible).
It is not the system which makes bad people. It is bad people which
makes the system bad.
I disagree. Systems can make bad people by learned helplessness.
How?
In my view: by showing you over and over that virtue is not
rewarded. Brains are adaptive survival machines, very attuned to
learn what works in their environments.
Virtue is the reward. If someone practice a virtue for a reward, then
it is not virtue. (Note that this is the basic wrongness of religion:
it leads to people doing virtue for reward and not doing the wrong for
fear of punishment, but who can really appreciate someone doing the
good to you just because it fears a punishment? You get the fake virtue.
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?
I still have problems with discussing "democracy" as if it was a
single, well defined system. If you tell me that a state is a
democracy, I still want to know more, especially along two lines
that I could call ethical and scientific:
Ethic: what are the limits on what the majority can impose on the
individual? How were these limits derived?
The majority cannot impose anything, except rules of laws. "not
killing, not crossing red fires, etc.".
Yes but these rules can go too much into the private-sphere. Thus
the need for the constitutional meta-rules.
No problem with this.
Then with democracy liberty can grow with the evolution of
mentality. Only in democracies have the right of homoseulas been
recognized. In all non-democracies they are still persecuted, etc.
There have been many societies that had had no problem with
homosexuals. Modern homophobia and sexual morality sees to have
spread from the protestants through the power of the English empire.
One example of an ancient civilisation that discovered sexual
repression in modernity through the victorians is Japan.
Democracy makes it possible to live differently from the mainstream.
It is not easy, and democracy is not enough, but it can help better
than a tyrant or community enforcing arbitrary rules without means of
contesting them.
Scientific: how are bad decisions reversed? How is the "menu" of
things that I can vote for created?
By you, in case you find 500 people signing your program. (Well,
that the method here). Of course, it does no more work when the
bandits got the power. But that is lack of democracy, not democracy.
But it's not just the bandits, it's also game theory. Modern
democracies suffer from a strong tendency to become Keynesian beauty
contests. Very easily the optimal strategy for the big parties
becomes a move to the average opinion. Some people say this is a
good thing. I think it's a dangerous thing because it's self-
reinforcing and because consensus and truth are very different things.
That is why science is not democracy, but politics is not science, and
consensus has no rôle. But democracies accept multiple temporary
consensus. You have the choice to be with the gouvernment or with the
opposition and with some hope, with the next government. Without
democracy, you have to wait the death of the rulers.
So I think removing the bandits is not enough. It is also necessary
to analyse the democratic system scientifically and understand the
incentives it creates.
But in the human sphere, science asks only for more modesty and
acceptance of the unknown, and to some flexibility. Then we can think
and ameliorate the democracy. Sure. At no time will everyone be
satisfied, but democracy allows change, and satisfaction of a
majority, when it works of course.
Bruno
The problem with making attacks on "democracy" tabu is that it also
the discussion of the above questions also becomes tabu. Just
because we have a democratic system doesn't mean we have a good
one, from the infinite set of possible democratic system.
Yes. democracy is necessary, but nver sufficient. democracy is the
start, and it can be improved, unlike all other systems known.
Unless you have a better idea, but usually, those against democracy
are either utopic belief in the nature of the humans, or want to
impose a way of life to everybody. I think.
Bruno
Telmo.
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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