Open Thread, March 1-15, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I'd reply as I think Thomas Sowell would, with his standard question "compared to what?"

I agree with this criticism, yet I find it ironic that what I think is the strongest argument in favour of democracy is a fundamentally small c conservative one. Modern society (unwisely in my opinion) doesn't let such arguments stop it from changing things. Yet when it comes to democracy someone just bringing up a quote by Churchill is enough to dispel all doubts.

You are the happiness generating machine; it is the freedom protecting machine.

I don't think having government be a goodness generating machine is a good idea. I start here with an argument for setting up a democracy as one as someone who thinks this would work would present it. Hence the draft, before proceeding to critique it I wanted to make sure I was attacking a steel man of moderate social democracy the currently reigning Western ideology.

Looking from the outside it seems pretty obvious the US government is expected to be a goodness generating machine. This is especially true among the classes engaged in opinion making, let alone among the kinds of people who actually make up the USG and run the country. It also seems obvious democratic means will not change or restore it into an effective guardian of negative rights.

Recall what I said:

Secondly because educated opinion in America and Europe seems to admire the idealized version of this model.

Goodness generation is also the standard rationalization for the existence of everything from the department of education to an army geared for foreign intervention. For a reason, democracy basically is early stage socialism. Plato and Aristotle didn't think much of democracy because of this. And we know from previous patients that early stage always gives way to late stages eventually, sometimes in a matter of months or years like in the case of the Russian revolution, sometimes decades and even centuries as is the case with the American one.

What does the "pro-freedom" or negative rights camp have? A few internet blogs and think thanks? Recall that even on lesswrong the Libertarian position is called "far right". This is not an accident. In a democracy wealth redistribution with the pretext of higher goals is how elections are won. Even more damningly in a democracy the sate perhaps does not control the press but the press controls the state, and recall state power is supposed to be tied directly to public opinion! What we see is a power pump where public opinion drives changes in governance and changes in governance drive public belief. Nature finds a way, be it with birds loosing flight or herbivores finding a taste for meat or with "negative rights" memes suddenly finding themselves invested and nested in memeplexes supporting state expanding projects. I mean look at the Republican party.

And we know from previous patients that early stage always gives way to late stages eventually, sometimes in a matter of months or years like in the case of the Russian revolution, sometimes decades and even centuries as is the case with the American one.

No way, the Provisional Government wasn't overthrown because it stuck to negative-rights-based policies and didn't offer anything more - it was overthrown because it was too high-handed/spineless in Petrograd politics, carried on with a massively loathed war which stirred up the unrest in the first plac... (read more)

0buybuydandavis14y

If the goal was to discuss a steel man of social democratic theory, it seems to me that you've done a reasonable job. But not being a social democrat, I don't know that my opinion should count for much. You disagree with the social democrats for some reason. You don't share some of their premises, so that what is steel as evaluated by your premises (or mine) is likely not so steely to them. I like your basic thrust, of first identifying what government is supposed (by them) to be for. I was actually meaning to ask this of the social democratic crowd in our next monthly politics thread. As I related, in the US we have a specific narrative of what government is for, grounded in the ideology, events, and documents of the creation of the country. I don't have a real sense of where Europeans get their answer to the question, "what is government for?". Should it be a goodness machine? I liked your explicit identification of it. That's starts sounding uncomfortably theocratic, because it is. But I haven't liked your using "democracy" as a short hand for the party platform of generic social democrats. Calling it Social Democracy would at least consistently make it clear that you mean a complex of procedures, programs, and values, and not just voting, which was my initial impression when I've seen you question democracy in the past. Unless you're really opposed to voting per se, your use of democracy as shorthand for social democracy easily leads to mistaking your views on voting, and is just unnecessarily unclear regardless. [...] That's the thing. The news you get is filtered through European Social Democratic media perusing American Social Democratic media. That's the view you get from the outside. But those who control the centralized levers are hardly all of the country. You're not hearing what's said at churches, and picnics, and group emails, and talk radio, and small town newspapers. Many people hear these voices instead, and don't spend so much time listening

6

Open Thread, March 1-15, 2012

6

6

6

Open Thread, March 1-15, 2012

6

6