On Fri, 2009-10-23 at 09:33 -0400, c b wrote: > CB: I don't think it would be that difficult to figure out how to meet > every last person's basic needs given the material abundance possible > with modern technology, although there are looming problems with the > fossil fuel base of our current technological regime. > > The reason an individual voter in a socialist democratic decision > making process would be better equipped and motivated to "measure the > true costs and benefits" , etc. is that they would be secure in the > meeting of their basic needs, food, shelter, clothing, education, > health care, free of the threat of war, and unalienated from the > "system".
> CB: Based on a thorough examination and analysis of the facts by > everybody makign the decision. I don't know that the > republican/representational principle wouldn't still operate, though > more of the big decisions might be made by direct democracy, > especially give the capabilities of computer technology for voting and > examination of the evidence. For the voting part there are big issues with computer-only voting. As for "examination of the evidence" by the voters, there must be available evidence to the voters in the first place, and that means transparency in things like law and judgments, tax collection, public spending and accounting, various socio-economics statistics, etc... to all voters. But hopefully there's relevant things new that we (voters living in rich countries) didn't have even a few years ago: - ubiquitous internet clients and servers - cheap storage (probably all econ datasets fit in $N00 worth of disks) - cheap processing power (and free as in speech software to use it) These things mean that public bodies can now make available just about every piece of data they have to all voters immediately for about $0. And voters don't face a "capital" barrier to meaningfully acquire and process this data. Of course there's huge resistance from government and economists (who are the only trusted priest with access to some data) to make those datasets available (for various fallacious reasons like privacy or secret needed to avoid manipulation of inflation, ...). Then we can ask interesting questions like: can public scrutiny make a government run car "company" better than a private one? (public scrutiny did wonders for software code). Who's really benefiting for this and this action by the Fed? Is the government action redistributive overall? Laurent _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
