On 9/23/2015 3:15 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 22 Sep 2015, at 23:55, John Mikes wrote:
Bruno, I am at a loss with your explanation. I lived the active first
50 years of my life in Europe and never heard about such 'liberalism'
(for a short time was even connected to the Hungarian Liberal
Democratic Party).
In my counntry the right party has the name "parti libéral", for
example. Liberal means "open to free markets".
May be that is only in West Europa.
"Liberal" was in no connection with right/wrong, or even right/left,
only pointed to some freedom of action in the political arena. And
the other thing:
Democracy IMO is an oxymoron, the full "demos" cannot exercise it's
full "cratos" for ruling,
Democracy means, for me, presence of election. It can be partial, like
in the beginning where woman did not have the right to vote, or like
in the antic greece were election was for the educated class, and not
for slaves, or it is "universal", meaning everyone can vote. In some
country it is "everyone *must* vote (in Belgium election are obligatory).
Then a democracy can be corrupted, and/or under the influence of
corporatism, and/or sick etc. Democracy is not the final state of
politics, it is the prerequisite of having a representative politics.
If the main powers (mainly justice and press) are not independent, a
democracy can be de facto a tyranny disguised into democracy. I think
that is the case today (since prohibition).
It is the like the Islamic bill or right, which is a copy of the
universal definition except that they have added "as long as it
verifies the Charia" for each principle (which of course changes the
very idea). The same with Obama who signed a text which respect the
human right except for a category or people, but something have to be
universal to make sense. The human right applies to all humans, or
there is no more human right at all.
Democracy is necessary but not sufficient for good government. Supposing
that democracy is enough was the mistake of George W. Bush and the
neo-conservatives. They thought that if we just held elections in Iraq
all would be well. But there must be limitations on government,
constitutional restraints and traditional restraints. Otherwise
whomever has the majority assumes that democracy means they can oppress
the minority.
becuase every person has different aims, goals, interests, etc.
Those, who call a "majority-rule" a democracy are establishing a
minority whose interests are trampled down by the so called
"majority" which is not even so sure, to BE a majority indeed. Voting
is cheating, candidates LIE in the campaign and the voters compromise
their (real?) interests for the least controversial lies. What is
even worse: the "elected" persons don't even follow their own lies
later on in practice. They go after their (untold???) interest.
Impeachment is difficult.
Yes, but that is because our democracies are sick. It is not because a
car is broken that a car is not supposed to be driven.
And I wish the minority having no power, but a problem with more than
two parties is that the minority can have tremendous infuence. Indeed
the minority will often makes the difference when the majorities
disagree. But the french Condorcet has already studied the
impossibility of satisfying everybody by a voting procedure, and
democracies can evolve, and we can change the rules, ... unless the
system has been corrupted.
It is not because we can die of cancer that we are not alive. It is
the same with democracy, they can get sick, and the election might no
more represent what the people desire.
I am opposed to referendum and participative democracies, because this
can give all the power to the media.
One word about 'capitalism' - with a caveat not to fall into Marxist
traps:
it is the open exploitation of the power of wealth over the
have-nots, be it by employment, marketing, or production policy. Not
the "haves" - mind you, but the oligarchs, super-wealthy owners,
political donors, etc. etc. established since Adam Smith.
I disagree, even if in practice, some facts can lead to the
perversion. But the non-democratic ruling consist in putting the
perversion right at the beginning. Free-market is a win-win game, when
it is not perverted by a minority (like today). The rich needs, in
that case, to enrich the poor, as they have interest to make the poor
into clients. It works, in the sense that most democracies have much
less people starving than tyrannies. Now, when the rich exploit the
poor, it means that the democracy is not functioning.
Growth is NOT maintainable with the limited resources existing.
Computer science provides a non limited resources.
And a
(cut-throat?) Competition as life? thanks, but no thanks. .
I would defend the universal allocation, and the right of laziness,
but for this, we have to be lucid and realist on the economical
difficulties which can rise in that case.
We also have to have a lot of resources and considerable inequality so
that taking from the richest to give to the poor and lazy does not
significantly burden them.
I personally hate competition, but it is right, and without
progressing in politics, instead of regressing, it is a necessity.
Do you mean cooperative and collaborating goodwilling people dead?
On the contrary, without a democracy, cooperation is quickly
impossible. It leads to the ruling of the strongest, like with mafia.
democracy, I think, is the main tool for cooperation. people do my
milk, and I teach math to their kids. That is win-win.
The hard problem here is that after a long productive cooperation,
some people or group of people can multiply the gain immensely by
cheating, and up to some amount, they can hide the cheating by
corruption. I have no definite solution for this, but I don't think
that is a reason to abandon the democracy, by which I mean a voting
system (I recall). We can try to have laws making corruption harder,
but there is no absolute vaccine against that.
I don't think that stopping prohibition will restore automatically a
sane democracy, but I am sure that not-stopping the prohibition will
perpetuate and aggravate the sickness of the current democracies. So
stopping prohibition is the first thing to do. It is the main engine
of corruption and terrorism of all kinds.
So you think the 9/11 attack was because Bin Laden because Islam forbids
drinking alcohol? the Iraq war was because W. couldn't legally buy
marijuana?
Brent
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