|
rudatron posted:If you despise the common person, as you clearly do, then democracy is not favorable to you. For myself, it's unfair to deprive the common person of political power, or create a system where their interests are not recognized. So you're sure you want to rest your argument on rights and fairness? I don't think the world is a better place because bob the nazi has "a say". I think the world might be a better place despite granting bob te nazi a say if the rights granting him a say happen to work.
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 16:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 23:05 |
|
|
on the left posted:The winner in direct democracy is the side most able to boil their position down to the simplest and catchiest soundbite. See "death tax" for one of the most successful of all time. This statement is true in every government ever. In representative democracy, you have to deal with the bias of of the elected career politician instead. There are many examples of democratic parliaments acting contrary to the interest of their nation because of their ideology or agenda. Consider, for example, the British response to the Irish Famine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_famine#Government_response posted:The measures undertaken by Peel's successor, Russell, proved comparatively "inadequate" as the crisis deepened. The new Whig administration, influenced by the doctrine of laissez-faire,[71] believed that the market would provide the food needed and refused to intervene against food exports to England, then halted the previous government's food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without any work, money or food.[72] Russell's ministry introduced a new programme of public works, which by the end of December 1846 employed some half million Irish and proved impossible to administer.[73] Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme because of a firm belief in laissez-faire.[74] He thought "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson". For his policy, he was commemorated in the song "The Fields of Athenry". The Public Works were "strictly ordered" to be unproductive—that is, they would create no fund to repay their own expenses. Many hundreds of thousands of "feeble and starving men" according to John Mitchel, were kept digging holes, and breaking up roads, which was doing no service.[75] Non-democratic governments had it even worse with stupid decisions made either by their leaders, or by the underlings trying to impress the leader. The ship "Vasa" is one of the more hilarious examples. In the 17th century the Swedes built a huge, impressive flagship at the order of their king. Of course, it has to be the biggest, most powerful and most lavishly decorated ship in the entire fleet. Gustavus Adolphus, leading his army in Poland and wanted his new toy fast, while the ship constructors didn't either try enough to get him to wait a bit, or talk sternly about his expectations. In the result, the ship sunk during its maiden voyage, the first time a stronger gust of wind blew. This is an important example, because similar problems happen all the time in large organizations, including corporations and state agencies. Terrible decisions are being made all the time because of unrealistic expectations of that one guy whose decisions can't be questioned ever. There are struggles between individual persons or entire departments - sometimes because of a grudge, but mostly caused by conflicting goals. In software development, for example, there are problems frequently caused by the sales team, who would agree with the customer on unrealistic deadline or approves sweeping changes when the project is almost finished. It doesn't happen because thy are stupid, but because they only have to care about selling the product. Even the perfect technocracies would have to deal with competition among branches of their government, important decision-makers trying to fit everything into their pet theories and refusing to budge, people who would organize their departments into their own petty fiefdoms or even orders from the top getting distorted during implementation. And yes, quite frequently because the important people heard a simple, catching soundbite and won't get convinced by anyone that it's not a good idea. asdf32 posted:So you're sure you want to rest your argument on rights and fairness? Yup, the Third Reich is definitely a great example of a country where they just went too far with democracy.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
He's talking about Neo Nazis voting in modern democratic societies, not the 1930s.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:29
|
|
|
If you're going give an example of too little democracy leading to bad things please be clear on why it's bad and why it's the result of too little democracy. Democratic states can build dumb ships and stand by and watch famines too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 18:56
|
|
|
It seems like the people who are against 'more democracy' are assuming that we'd have basically the same culture and political institutions as we currently do, but with more decisions determined by referendums. The people advocating for 'more democracy' seem to be assuming some kind of big cultural shift that would make people more engaged. Personally I think there are definitely imaginable scenarios where there would be "too much democracy". I'm a big believer, for instance, in some degree of judicial independence, and I think it's important to have some basic rights that are spelled out in a constitution of some kind and which aren't easily changeable due to popular pressure. However, I think that more democracy would be a great thing if it was implemented in the right way. I don't think we necessarily want to just have people voting on everything, but I do think that we could open up some of our institutions to greater popular input. I also think that necessarily any discussion of 'more democracy' needs to touch on workplace democracy, which is something that hasn't really entered the discussion so far. As long as society expects most adult citizens to be working 35+ hours a week I think that giving people a greater say over their economic situations, perhaps through expanded union representation, would be one of the most important democratic reforms we could implement.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 19:06
|
|
|
RagnarokAngel posted:He's talking about Neo Nazis voting in modern democratic societies, not the 1930s. How many neo-Nazi governments have you seen since 1945? Hell, even in Germany 1933 popular support wasn't enough to put Hitler into power, he needed von Papen and Hindenburg to appoint him as Chancellor. asdf32 posted:If you're going give an example of too little democracy leading to bad things please be clear on why it's bad and why it's the result of too little democracy. Actually, a democratic state would have serious problems with starving a large chunk of their population. The Irish could do poo poo, because the ones poor enough to starve didn't have enough property to even vote. The people important for the British Parliament were the wealthy landowners who were interested in keeping the price of crops high. Both these examples, however, were meant to disprove the idea that educated specialists make balanced decisions, while democracy leads to more stupid outcomes because of the need to appeal to stupid people. In the first example, the Whigs didn't want to hear anyone who didn't have uttermost respect for lessez-faire solutions. In the second one, the experts made stupid decisions because they feared to tell their king he won't get his bombastic ship right now. Helsing posted:I also think that necessarily any discussion of 'more democracy' needs to touch on workplace democracy, which is something that hasn't really entered the discussion so far. As long as society expects most adult citizens to be working 35+ hours a week I think that giving people a greater say over their economic situations, perhaps through expanded union representation, would be one of the most important democratic reforms we could implement. I don't think it's possible to get workplace democracy before getting more democracy in government first. But yeah, this would be a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
Gantolandon posted:How many neo-Nazi governments have you seen since 1945? Hell, even in Germany 1933 popular support wasn't enough to put Hitler into power, he needed von Papen and Hindenburg to appoint him as Chancellor. Nazi is a stand-in for idiot. Literal nazis are rare, racists are not if you'd prefer that. There is zero debate that all forms of government can and will make terrible damaging decisions. But trading annecdotes of 17th century ships isn't that useful. And democracy has allowed slavery and segregation. It certainly can't guarantee that a majority won't let a minority starve.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:10
|
|
|
quote:It certainly can't guarantee that a majority won't let a minority starve. IMO more than anything people need to feel that they have had a say in their government. You don't need democracy for people to feel this way - a strongman can be 'their' guy, representing their interests. This is one reason politicians tend towards vagueness, since it allows people to project their own wants and agendas onto the politician. ideally in a democracy people should feel they have a say even if their favored candidate loses. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Aug 5, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 21:49
|
|
|
How do you decide on experts in society? So you just defer to people in those those professions now? Say you have 15 years to set this system up,what would you have to work out. To those advocating more direct democracy how do you deal with populist bursts (9/11 and the reactions afterwards are a perfect example.) To the people who think the current systems are fine,where would you add more democracy and where would you take it away (don't even try to say it's perfect let's be serious here)Use your own countries system please. For everyone which currently existing system democratic or not is the least effective,which is the most effective?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
SirKibbles posted:To those advocating more direct democracy how do you deal with populist bursts (9/11 and the reactions afterwards are a perfect example.) As for the first question - don't. Every society will go bonkers when faced with an event that's shocking enough. The reaction of the American government was sparking two destructive wars, even though one of the targets had completely nothing to do with 9/11. There were also kidnapping foreigners to imprison them indefinitely and torture them and (recently) drone strikes on foreign territory where everyone killed is automatically considered an enemy combatant. I don't think it would be much worse with direct democracy. As for the second - depends of economic conditions, technology and other important factors. A perfect direct democracy where you have to vote in referendum on every single issue would be a hassle, but I can see one where you could empower various single or multi-issue citizen groups with your vote (and withdraw it as you see fit). It would need some fine-tuning to avoid buying votes or situations where an employer forces their employees to give their votes to him, though. asdf32 posted:Nazi is a stand-in for idiot. Literal nazis are rare, racists are not if you'd prefer that. I'm not sure what you want me to do here. I gave you several examples of terrible, damaging decisions caused by decision-makers isolating themselves from the general population and being completely unaccountable to either them or their underlings. Of course direct democracy won't solve the problem perfectly. This doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing. I'm not sure what slavery has anything to do with the issue, given that it existed before the US became a democracy and ended with an anti-slavery party getting elected. Can you give me an opposite example - where the society were led to disaster by populists and was saved by intervention of the elites?
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2014 23:57
|
|
|
Gantolandon posted:As for the first question - don't. Every society will go bonkers when faced with an event that's shocking enough. The reaction of the American government was sparking two destructive wars, even though one of the targets had completely nothing to do with 9/11. There were also kidnapping foreigners to imprison them indefinitely and torture them and (recently) drone strikes on foreign territory where everyone killed is automatically considered an enemy combatant. I don't think it would be much worse with direct democracy. The point of the second question is to get things out of the theoretical so we can talk about actual places instead of both sides talking about the worst case scenario.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 00:14
|
|
|
There is a reason people take their cars to mechanics, most have their children attend schools, do not build their own tools, trust scientists to develop medications rather than mixing chemicals in a sink and so on. They trust people who have become good at those jobs to do it for them because they simply don't have the time or expertise to do it themselves. Law making is a full time job- you need to read documents in non-standard English, get briefings on important issues daily and so on. Why on earth would we WANT everyone to do this? It goes completely against how we treat any other position in modern society. (Yes, lawmakers have long breaks, but they tend to work on these breaks. Like how when Obama is 'on vacation' he is still getting daily briefings and basically still working.) Electing officials to represent your interests and legislate is a perfectly natural thing and follows from how we do almost everything else. poo poo, this doesn't even have to do with smarter or the average person being a dummy or anything like that. There are many jobs where you still have a professional do it even though an average person could probably handle it on their own, for time or other reasons. Cutting some branches or cleaning your gutters for example. Requires tools that are easy to get and the job is not technical or fairly difficult. But most would hire someone to do it because they don't want to risk falling out of a tree or would rather spend their free time on something enjoyable. It really seems complaints against republican democracy more boil down to people suggesting that individuals are not even good at picking people to represent them, in which case I have no idea why you would believe we would be better off with them deciding on far more complicated issues. Also, not to be rude, but do people supporting direct democracy not have jobs or something? How on earth would you have the time to do a full time job and then read all the necessary documents to educate yourself on everything that needs voting on? People barely find time to cook dinner these days. tsa fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Aug 6, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 00:32
|
|
|
If anything, people want more efficiency, not less. It would be great if the government would just give it to you straight on contraception, home ownership, the cost of raising children, the cost-benefit analysis on career choices, etc. instead of having to wade through ideological bs on literally every mildly controversial topic. No one wants to be an expert on more stuff.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 00:37
|
|
|
quote:Keep in mind that the American Founding Fathers weren't a monolithic bloc, so they had differing opinions on how the government should be set up. There's a lot of difference between, say, Thomas Paine and Alexander Hamilton. Like most revolutions the American one went through several distinct phases. Early on there was a lot more space for radical demagogues like Paine... lol I love contemporary American analysis of American history. Paine is a 'demagogue' because he opposed theocratic oppression & was strongly outspoken on the issue of slavery. What a piece of poo poo, that Thomas Paine. Jefferson, meanwhile, is a practical statesman, because land theft, slave economics, cheering on Robspierre & raping your own slaves are the hallmarks of excellent statesmanship.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 00:45
|
|
|
Any non-democratic system will eventually result in rampant corruption, where those in power service their interests before the public interest. This is still the case in the united states and other liberal democracies, because its the rich that run the show. The only way to avoid this is to grant more power to the public, and deny power to individuals or 'special interest' groups.on the left posted:The winner in direct democracy is the side most able to boil their position down to the simplest and catchiest soundbite. See "death tax" for one of the most successful of all time. Helsing posted:The people advocating for 'more democracy' seem to be assuming some kind of big cultural shift that would make people more engaged. rudatron fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Aug 6, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 04:28
|
|
|
tsa posted:Electing officials to represent your interests and legislate is a perfectly natural thing and follows from how we do almost everything else. poo poo, this doesn't even have to do with smarter or the average person being a dummy or anything like that. There are many jobs where you still have a professional do it even though an average person could probably handle it on their own, for time or other reasons. Cutting some branches or cleaning your gutters for example. Requires tools that are easy to get and the job is not technical or fairly difficult. But most would hire someone to do it because they don't want to risk falling out of a tree or would rather spend their free time on something enjoyable.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 09:13
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:If cleaning out gutters worked like politics work in liberal democracies, you would have a choice between the guy who's going to hire a construction crew run by his buddy to tear down your gutters, the woman who's going to hire the same construction crew to build a cage around your entire house to catch leaves, the guy who's going to mow your lawn, and the guy who's going to clean out your gutters and burn the leaves in your oven. If the liberal democracy is America, the choices for having your gutters cleaned are: 1. Not having your gutters cleaned, but a rich guy's gutters get cleaned instead. This party is represented by an elephant. 2. Not having your gutters cleaned, but a rich guy's gutters get cleaned instead. This party is represented by a donkey.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 13:30
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Any non-democratic system will eventually result in rampant corruption, where those in power service their interests before the public interest. This is still the case in the united states and other liberal democracies, because its the rich that run the show. The only way to avoid this is to grant more power to the public, and deny power to individuals or 'special interest' groups. Could you or Helsing talk about the actual policies you think would be different if we had more democracy right now? I think existing democracies do a decent job tracking public will.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 13:36
|
|
|
Tracking public will: in the uk we were involved in a decade long pissing match, the consequences are still being felt with more Radical groups taking over the helm of the groups we spent a decade subjugating. That was a worthwhile endeavour and a shining bastion of the public will being represented. Oh wait, we never got a say and the public was overwhelmingly against the war. Guess that was just a fluke. Our public services are being cut and gutted, ridiculous sums of money are being spent on vanity projects like the new high speed railway to the north that nobody wants. We spent billions bailing out banks that were too big to fail and they're repeating the same mistakes. I could go on and on. Of our interests are being represented it's not easily apparent how.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 15:48
|
|
|
Ddraig posted:Tracking public will: in the uk we were involved in a decade long pissing match, the consequences are still being felt with more Radical groups taking over the helm of the groups we spent a decade subjugating. That was a worthwhile endeavour and a shining bastion of the public will being represented. Oh wait, we never got a say and the public was overwhelmingly against the war. Guess that was just a fluke. The war in Iraq was a closer call in Britain but I see 47/43 support in 2003 for Blair's handling of the war.
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2014 17:20
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:Could you or Helsing talk about the actual policies you think would be different if we had more democracy right now? I don't consider 'voting' to be synonymous with democracy. Democracy is a system where political power is very widely distributed amongst the population rather than being concentrated in the hands of a small elite. Voting on things is just a tool for achieving that goal, it shouldn't be confused with the objective itself. Personally I think the most obvious democratic reforms toward that goal would be a guaranteed minimum income, universal union membership for all workers (or some equivalent in situations where workplace or industrial unions don't make sense), guaranteed and generous retirement pensions, a guarantee of dignified and useful work for anyone willing to take the job, universal and comprehensive healthcare including dental and mental health, nationalization of finance and other major utilities. On the other end I think there should be extremely high income taxes, 90% or more on the top brackets, and more broadly speaking, a government genuinely dedicated to tackling and limiting anything but the most superficial economic inequality. If I had to pick one of those policies I'd probably focus on unions. All workers should be guaranteed some form of collective representation that is actually effective and comprehensive. I'd also be in favour of substantial union reforms: no one in a union should earn substantially more than the actual workers of the union, and union officials should be easy to recall so that the bureaucracy doesn't become disconnected from the rank and file workers. I think these policies would have the effect of redistributing political power more widely and therefore would be a good place to start. Note most of them have only a limited connection voting. I think the key here is to empower citizens to be better able to take care of themselves and their interests. Once we'd reached that baseline we'd be better positioned to think about whether specific areas of policy like policing, urban planning, economic policy, international affairs, etc. could or should be opened up to more popular participation. quote:I think existing democracies do a decent job tracking public will. Yeah, but you seem to define this in a tautological way. You start out with the assumption that our voting system is good at representing the popular will, ergo you assume any outcome of the system must by definition be representative of the popular will.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2014 20:50
|
|
|
Helsing posted:Yeah, but you seem to define this in a tautological way. You start out with the assumption that our voting system is good at representing the popular will, ergo you assume any outcome of the system must by definition be representative of the popular will. No, polls. Polls are the best we have for judging public will and broadly speaking I don't think polls differ from actual policy that much. quote:I don't consider 'voting' to be synonymous with democracy. Democracy is a system where political power is very widely distributed amongst the population rather than being concentrated in the hands of a small elite. Voting on things is just a tool for achieving that goal, it shouldn't be confused with the objective itself. I see you're talking from the perspective of what you think we'd need to be a more democratic society, but I was intending to ask "If society was perfectly democratic today, what differences do you think there would be". I think it's safe to say that in the U.S. anyway, a perfect implementation of public will today wouldn't result in a move towards the types of reforms you're describing. The conclusion you assume: that power is in the hands of the elite requires some evidence and I'm saying that evidence would show up as differences between what the public actually wants and what it gets. I know there are a couple common responses. The first is that there are differences and I think Rudatron posted a study above showing that policy follows the wants of the rich more than the poor. It's probably the most interesting study on this topic though I haven't dived all the way into it. On the other hand academic consensus on the influence of money on elections and policy has generally been the opposite: very little. A second response is that media controls what people want. Even assuming this is true (again, consensus is that it generally isn't), once we reject people's own assessments of their wants we're left with no other objective measures. There may always be better ways to judge what people "actually" want, but at the end of the day it rests on what they tell us. Undermining this puts you at risk of circular reasoning. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Aug 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 16:51
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:No, polls. Polls are the best we have for judging public will and broadly speaking I don't think polls differ from actual policy that much.  Now this doesn't mean people will automatically support policies which will actually bring them closer to this perceived ideal state, but that's kinda the point. Our entire system simply isn't very good at actualizing the aspirations of the population as a whole, especially in the long term.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 17:33
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:I see you're talking from the perspective of what you think we'd need to be a more democratic society, but I was intending to ask "If society was perfectly democratic today, what differences do you think there would be". I think it's safe to say that in the U.S. anyway, a perfect implementation of public will today wouldn't result in a move towards the types of reforms you're describing. Well, if you take his conception of democracy, as in a government where political power is distributed as close to equally as possible among individuals, you couldn't really have a perfect democracy without having those policies in place. I'd argue that Americans who are better off altogether as a result of better social policies wouldn't want them gone. Also, really, do you think that the public will supports poo poo like our lovely tax brackets or the results of the Citizens United case? There's nothing stopping the government from trying to resolve these issues except the wealthy interests influencing them and keeping Americans distracted and ignorant with other issues.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 17:43
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:No, polls. Polls are the best we have for judging public will and broadly speaking I don't think polls differ from actual policy that much. Polls tend to show that the wealthy have different policy preferences than the average citizen and that politicians and state policy is more responsive to the desires of the wealthy. Politicians on an individual level also tend to be more responsive to their wealthiest constituents. Here, for instance, is a study on the responsiveness of US senators to their constituents in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The methodology here is somewhat crude and clearly points to a complicated figure, but the basic take away is that while senators were found to be responsive to the desires of middle and upper income constituents "the views of low-income constituents were utterly irrelevant" (p. 14). From the abstract: Economic INequality and Political Representation, Larry M. Bartels posted:I examine the differential responsiveness of U.S. senators to the preferences of wealthy, middle-class, and poor constituents. My analysis includes broad summary measures of senators' voting behaviour as well as specific votes on the minimum wage, civil rights, government spending, and abortion. In almost every instance, senators appear to be considerably more responsive to the opinions of affluent constituents than to the opinions of middle-class constituents, while the opinions of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution have no apparent statistical effect on their senators' roll call votes. Disparities in representation are especially pronounced for Republican senators, who were more than twice as responsive as Democratic senators to the ideological views of affluent constituents. These income-based disparities in representation appear to be unrelated to disparities in turnout and political knowledge and only weakly related to the disparities in the extent of constituents' contact with senators and their staffs. Another study, by Martin Gilens (which I have not read) apparently found that "Policies favored by 20 percent of affluent Americans, for example, have about a one-in-five chance of being adopted, while policies favored by 80 percent of affluent Americans are adopted about half the time". You can find an article he wrote for the Boston Review which summarizes his academic work here. He writes: Under the Influence, Martin Gilens, Boston Review posted:These patterns play out across numerous policy issues. American trade policy, for example, has become far less protectionist since the 1970s, in line with the positions of the affluent but in opposition to those of the poor. Similarly, income taxes have become less progressive over the past decades and corporate regulations have been loosened in a wide range of industries. Jeffrey Winters published a 2011 book simply titled "Oligarchy" which provides a historical perspective on the influence of material wealth over political outcomes. His conclusion, which is roughly in line with the study posted by rudatron, is that money in the contemporary US directly translates into political power and that the contemporary United States qualifies as an oligarchy (much of his foundational work on oligarchy came from studying Indonesia so it'd be hard to dismiss this book as the grumblings of an academic leftist with an axe to grind). His book was also awarded the "Gregory M. Luebbert Award for the Best Book in Comparative Politics" by the American Political Science Association, which belies your claim that there's some kind of contemporary academic consensus that money doesn't buy political influence. I could go on if you like but I think a basic picture is already emerging. There's a substantial body of research that, on the specific terms you just outlined, demonstrates that policy reflects the preferences of people with money and largely ignores the preferences of people without money. How exactly the preferences of people with money actually gets translated into policy is, admittedly, a much more complicated question. However, the basic idea that having more money will give you greater political influence is really not in question. quote:I see you're talking from the perspective of what you think we'd need to be a more democratic society, but I was intending to ask "If society was perfectly democratic today, what differences do you think there would be". I think it's safe to say that in the U.S. anyway, a perfect implementation of public will today wouldn't result in a move towards the types of reforms you're describing. I find the idea of a 'public will' to be incredibly nebulous and tangled, to the point that it's not particularly useful. Is the public will just the aggregated desires of every person in the country? Does each separate state or county have its own public will? Do the rich and poor have separate public wills? Do blacks and whites, or men and women? Does such a thing as the public will exist on a contentious topic like abortion? Ultimately the question of how you actually define and then measure the public will is incredibly messy. Hence I think that the best way to measure how democratic a society is would not be whether policy matches 'the public will' but rather the amount of access people have to political power. quote:The conclusion you assume: that power is in the hands of the elite requires some evidence and I'm saying that evidence would show up as differences between what the public actually wants and what it gets. Well do you have a response other than "I haven't dived all the way into it"? As I've demonstrated this study is not some kind of outlier. Other respected academics have reached similar conclusions. quote:On the other hand academic consensus on the influence of money on elections and policy has generally been the opposite: very little. This is totally inaccurate. There is no academic consensus here. It's not even entirely clear how we should define 'influence' since different people measure influence in different ways. However, by the specific criteria that you outlined, the US completely unresposnive to 'the public will' of the bottom third of income earners. quote:A second response is that media controls what people want. Even assuming this is true (again, consensus is that it generally isn't), once we reject people's own assessments of their wants we're left with no other objective measures. There may always be better ways to judge what people "actually" want, but at the end of the day it rests on what they tell us. Undermining this puts you at risk of circular reasoning. The media doesn't precisely control what people want but it does a pretty good job of focusing people's attention on some things while ignoring others. The fact that the media spent significantly more time reporting on Tom Cruise' divorce than it did on the LIBOR scandal presumably does have an influence on people's views. The media cannot tell people what to think but it can play a role in determining what issues the public is paying the most attention to.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 18:25
|
|
|
Helsing posted:
The entire field of marketing existing kind of disproves his point about media having little effect on people's decisions. People aren't naturally rational (in the Rationalism sense) it is a skill that has to be learned and refined.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
Yeah living a big part of my life under the influence of media 'made in America' tm, I've found that it did taught me how to desire and it's influence pretty ubiquitous in common day practices everywhere. On the topic of democracy, asdf32 does touch a quite interesting point, in a chicken and egg, kind of way. If democracy can only function given certain egalitarian economic and emancipatory cultural conditions then the question is not 'has there ever been "too much democracy"?', it is more 'how to get "any democracy" at all?'. In a way this seems a more sensible question.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 22:11
|
|
|
Fados posted:Yeah living a big part of my life under the influence of media 'made in America' tm, I've found that it did taught me how to desire and it's influence pretty ubiquitous in common day practices everywhere. On the topic of democracy, asdf32 does touch a quite interesting point, in a chicken and egg, kind of way. If democracy can only function given certain egalitarian economic and emancipatory cultural conditions then the question is not 'has there ever been "too much democracy"?', it is more 'how to get "any democracy" at all?'. In a way this seems a more sensible question. What do you mean by certain egalitarian economic and emancipatory cultural conditions?
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 22:57
|
|
|
SirKibbles posted:The entire field of marketing existing kind of disproves his point about media having little effect on people's decisions. People aren't naturally rational (in the Rationalism sense) it is a skill that has to be learned and refined. No, marketing is the perfect analogy to what I was saying - marketing doesn't determine everything. It's an influence but not a terribly strong one and works much better in instances where people don't actually care that much, I.E. nearly identical sneakers. And actually marketing is more complicated because often what people are buying is the brand image. And just to be clear, Helsing's last post is primarily about a separate issue: do elected officials listen to the people that voted for them. This isn't the same as figuring out the extent to which marketing influences people's votes and opinions.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 23:29
|
|
|
SirKibbles posted:What do you mean by certain egalitarian economic and emancipatory cultural conditions? Obviously Khmer Rouge 2.0. Cultural reform for all!
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 00:29
|
|
|
SirKibbles posted:What do you mean by certain egalitarian economic and emancipatory cultural conditions? Helsing posted:
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 00:44
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:No, marketing is the perfect analogy to what I was saying - marketing doesn't determine everything. It's an influence but not a terribly strong one and works much better in instances where people don't actually care that much, I.E. nearly identical sneakers. And actually marketing is more complicated because often what people are buying is the brand image. It certainly does matter because most people don't care about politics at the moment why this is depends but the point being media is influential way more than it should be especially in an era when you can filter your news source to your ideology. Helsing's point is not that elected officials don't listen to the people that vote for them but that they listen to a specific subset of voters (the rich)more than the rest. I'm in agreement that democracy doesn't equal voting limiting democracy to just that is kind of missing what Democracy is. Fados posted:Something along these lines maybe. By culture conditions I mean primordially that the social authority (not just political and finantial elites, but marketing and even the rhisomatic social networks) stop addressing the individual with an implicitly hedonistic, surplus-value fetishizing discourse. Technically you can have this with Fascism I know nitpicky but still. SirKibbles fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Aug 10, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 01:43
|
|
|
SirKibbles posted:Technically you can have this with Fascism I know nitpicky but still. Not nitpicky at all, indeed it was one the great wagers of Fascism. Still there's a necessity for something else.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 02:31
|
|
|
The reason that politicians listen to the rich aren't actually because they have money, though - it's because the possession of money allows them the time (either their own or time spent on their behalf, ie lobbying) to influence politicians. That's why you simultaneously see rich people having more policy influence and money having little to no effect on elections. There's no conflict at all in those two statements because one addresses how money allows for the exertion of policy influence and the other how money exerts influence on elections.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:36
|
|
|
asdf32 posted:Could you or Helsing talk about the actual policies you think would be different if we had more democracy right now?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 05:50
|
|
|
I haven't reread the Princeton paper on the influence of money in American politics since May, but from what I remember, one of the key reasons why it is so difficult to isolate the impact of money in decision-making behavior is because the public at large often share the same policy preferences as the elite. If we observe that both the rich and the poor want lower taxes in the US and that politicians later lowered taxes, then it is hard for us to discern if "democracy" "works". I fail to recall the methodology, but the conclusion was the obvious "money matters". If we tried to isolate for just the lowest 80% of the income brackets, then their opinions basically do not show any impact on legislation. Regardless of regime type, I think it is important that legitimacy for the current American style of government is abysmal. I haven't heard of a presidential approval rating above 50% in months, and Congress has been stuck under 25% for years. I admit that the standards for leaders are much lower in authoritarian countries and that their statistics are clearly cooked, but Xi Jinping and Putin regularly enjoy approval ratings well over 80%. From personal experience in China, I would guess that the real number is probably no less than 70%. Even if we are more "democratic", the people certainly aren't any more happy about what they're getting. To be entirely fair, Westerners tend to be much more ideological and political than most other people I have talked to. Here are my questions: 1. If democracy fails to be seen as legitimate, then why is it worth having over what is popularly perceived by the locals as "efficient" dictatorships? 2. How should we draw the boundaries for democracies, and what goals should these lines reflect? The American South is a different animal from the American Northeast or even the American Southwest. Political geography have been touched upon in this thread, but I would love more discussion.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 19:24
|
|
|
This may sound ignorant but when people talk about things like "increasing the accountability of politicians," what does that mean, exactly? Like I see "accountability" used a lot these days and it seems to be one of those generic good things that is never clearly defined, except of course if you're talking about (say) teachers in a school, in which case it is used to put all blame for a complex social outcome on their shoulders.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 19:49
|
|
|
Snipee posted:I haven't heard of a presidential approval rating above 50% in months, and Congress has been stuck under 25% for years. Because I can only vote for 2% of the Senate, and 0.23% of the House; it's very easy for me to end up agreeing with an liking my Senators and Representative while detesting the congress at large. And even when I dislike a senator eventually, it could take up to 6 years for me to get to vote them out. Let alone that I can't vote for the other 98% of Senators and 99.77% of the House.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 19:51
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:Because I can only vote for 2% of the Senate, and 0.23% of the House; it's very easy for me to end up agreeing with an liking my Senators and Representative while detesting the congress at large. And even when I dislike a senator eventually, it could take up to 6 years for me to get to vote them out. Let alone that I can't vote for the other 98% of Senators and 99.77% of the House. I am glad you made this point because it ties directly into my questions about state legitimacy and political geography. I am trying to say that the American "democratic" system as a whole is ironically less popular with their locals than Russian kleptocracy or Chinese authoritarianism with their own peoples. What are some moral or practical reasons why we should put up with this? Why decentralize by dividing the country up into 50 smaller entities?
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 20:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 23:05 |
|
|
Snipee posted:
Putin is literally doing a Rally around the Flag to keep up his approval ratings.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2014 20:04
|
|
