On 27 Dec 2014, at 23:40, Kim Jones wrote:
On 27 Dec 2014, at 11:44 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 27 Dec 2014, at 03:11, Kim Jones wrote:
Democracy is a concept. It can be implemented in various ways. I
like Liz's conceptualisation of it as communist-style sharing of
astcronomical wealth and resources among the elites with
cockroaches and urine for breakfast for the rest of us (that's
what prisoners in North Korea get given for breakfast according to
QC Geoffrey Robertson.) No one who gets jugged hare and Beluga
caviar for lunch around Pyongyang feels like they exist in
anything other than a perfect democracy.
Bruno: I doubt this. I am sure that all dictator knows pretty well
that they are not in a democracy. They fight democracy by all means.
So why do they call this place "The DEMOCRATIC People's Republic
of Korea (DPRK) ?? Is this some kind of joke or insincere label?
Typical insincere label of a non-democracy. By democracy I think it is
usually meant that people can vote, regularly, with a representation
of opposition party, and some level of education (without which voting
does not really work).
The secret of the vote is imperative. Voting with hands does not count
(for obvious reason).
Oh, that's right - they have simply misunderstood the true nature of
democracy, because they don't subscribe to this list, silly me.
?
We might have a problem of definition. I think it is just the
definition of the term. Democracy is just when we have the right to
vote.
They have defined "democracy" the way they choose; just as does
every country who finds this a useful concept. As I said: democracy
is a concept and concepts have many many ways of being implemented
or delivered.
I am not sure. Democracy is mainly the right of voting. The east
european countries could not, before the Berlin wall felt, and are
democracies after. Tunisia, Egypt, even Russia are doing step toward a
representative democracy, which obviously is hard to implement due to
the conflicts of interest.
Clearly, the trick they employ in the DPRK is to define "the people"
differently to other countries. That something like two-thirds of
the "population" of the DPRK don't even officially exist (ie no
birth record kept) appears to be the magic trick.
The DPRK is not a democracy at all. Nobody would believe it is a
democracy, not even the leader Kim, except for some tyrannic purpose.
The kernel concept of democracy is government by the majority.
Not always. This is complex according to the number of party. With
multi-partism, sometimes we are governed by a tiny party which can
influence between two bigger parties which are close to 50%. That is
the case in my country now: we are governed by a party which is not
representative of the majority. In Israel also, very often, little
minority parties get a lot of power. This is the main reason why I
favor bi-partism, although this has some problem too. If the politics
go too much on the right, you can vote on the left, and vice-versa.
This works, unless the parties are manipulated by non transparent
powers, like in America today, at least for for some political
questions. This is a failure of a sick and old democracy. We can think
about how to correct that, but democracies, like living being, are
fragile by nature. They can die, like in Germany in the thirties.
So, all you have to do to have a workable majority is to erase a
sizeable part of the population.
Voilà. Government for and by the majority.
If the majority is erased or impeach to vote, the democracy is faked.
You cannot criticize the heart by pointing on people having heart
disease.
Bruno
K
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