From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Nov 12 2000 - 20:05:23 MST
At 05:56 PM 12/11/00 -0800, samantha wrote:
>In a pure democracy the majority can violate any and all rights
>of the individual when and if it wants to. ...A "perfect" democracy is
perfectly horrid.
Well, the accepted word for the system you pillory is an ochlocracy - mob
rule.
The implication is that people en masse are likely to abandon all decency
and history and respect for each other, a rather strange opinion in a list
where the market (a device for summing the expressed values of all players)
is held in highest regard. True, most markets are highly asymmetrical in
the purchasing power of different individuals, so if it's thought to lead
to a superior outcome than ochlocratic summations presumably the richer you
are the more moral, decent, thoughtful, prudent, insightful, just, kindly
and so on you are as well.
Look at it another way: If `In a pure democracy the majority can violate
any and all rights of the individual when and if it wants to', in any other
system some minority can violate any and all rights of the individual when
and if it wants to. I guess it depends on how much respect you have for the
other humans out there. My own opinion varies. (As I once put it, call me
Pelagius of Hippo.)
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:31:55 MST