Visit my rebuilt website at:
http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/
> Ed Weick wrote:
> >
> > Keith Hudson:
> >
> > > Coming to the basic issue, however, modern society is becoming far too
> > > complex to be governed by the simplistic process of
one-person-one-vote.
> [snip]
> > Because of the internationalization of
> > the economy (globalization), governments, with the possible exception of
the
> > United States and the Taliban, have lost a considerable degree of
control
> > over domestic affairs. Perhaps the only reservoir of countervailing
power
> > we still have resides in the courts. Witness the US Justice Department
> > taking on Microsoft.
> >
> > I would agree with Keith that all of this is taking us somewhere, but I
> > would very much like to know where.
>
Brad McCormick:
> I was expecting that last sentence to read more like: All of this
> is taking us somewhere, but I am not eager to find out where.
Brad, in spite of everything, I remain an optimist and curious about how
things will turn out.
> The human lifeworld is an unprecedented "evolutionary experiment".
> The hypertrophy of communication technologies coupled with the
> enormous number of people in communicative interaction is strongly
> unprecedented. Clearly, it is possible that the "problem" will
> not have any other than a "Darwinean" solution, which may take
> the form of some kind of widespread collapse and/or a fascist
> "rescue".
I don't think fascism or any other of the traditional "isms" is a
possibility, at least not for a time. Both fascism and communism placed the
interests of the state above those of the individual, while capitalism
places private interests above public interests. What I see coming is a
somewhat anarchic situation in which large blocks are battling each other
for primacy and domination of what remains of public space. For the most
part, this battle proceeds behind the scenes and goes unnoticed, but every
once in a while, when the time is ripe, it flares up into something quite
violent, as it already has in Seattle, Washington, and Prague, now will
shortly again in Quebec City.
What I find most difficult to understand is who these blocks are and what
they purport to represent. On the one side you have increasingly
internationalized capital aligned with people who genuinely believe in the
benefits of freer trade. On the other side you have, at least here in
Canada, what remains of the democratic left seemingly aligned with
anarchists and other people who seem bent on blowing things up. Caught in
the middle, and in a terrible muddle, is government, trying to appease all
sides, but at the same time putting up three meter fences and sending in
very large contingents of cops. What makes government seem so irrelevant
is that the lead appears to have been taken away from it. None of the
serious protagonists believe that governments can get it right or do very
much about the situation.
My personal take on it is that we should expect to live with something that
just barely escapes being chaos for some time.
>
> As for voting, I think it works best at the "scale" of
> an organization's board of directors. America's last presidential
> election showed it is not even a reliable opiate for the masses.
True, but then what else have we got that still has some semblance of peace
and sanity about it?
Ed
