The problem with integrating all points of view is that it creates a single system, and then the only game in town is, who owns it? Democracy is actually furthered by incommensurability.
The problem with corporations is, they are not organisms, but owned machines for creating profit, and the rules of that game seem to lead inexorably to concentrations of wealth and power – tyranny. The democracy project is a project in a state of multiple tensions. Its relation to corporations, capitalism and markets is not well understood yet. Modeling of this would be terrific. It has been said that we have a business culture that knows how to create wealth, but not how to distribute it. Democracy I so far as it is based on the idea of the core identity of persons as being equal, is not in keeping with evolution. It may be that humans have the capacity, through democracy and the idea that “all people are created equal” to opt out of evolution for more human purpose. Evolution as we know, leads to death and replacement of species. Maybe we don’t want to go there. From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mike Oliker Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 9:51 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [FRIAM] Democracy and evolution The Genius of James Madison was to see that a large country with many factions would be freer from factionalism that a small country would be. The factions would cancel each other out. Factionalism was the greatest threat to democracy that the founders saw. Much the same applies to corporations and the marketplace -- we are saturated with islands of self interest, but have a system which has them cancel each other out -- except insofar as they mostly line up, i.e. except for the widely held positions. It's like filtering out all but the DC signal. Democracy as an evolutionary matter, once it is well established, is pretty good at allowing agreement to emerge from the cacophony of viewpoints. It's rapid spread (from one to more than 100 democracies in two centuries) attests to it's evolutionary superiority. There has never been a time when those in power didn't believe in suppressing all other viewpoints. It is the essence of all non-democracies. In democracies people always want to achieve that, but they they are structurally inhibited. If they ever succeed, then they are no longer have a democracy. "Democracy is Well Established" == "No One can Suppress all other Points of View" Mike Oliker -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.15.14/578 - Release Date: 12/7/2006 1:27 AM
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