Re: Origins of Political Beliefs

From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 09:20:28 MDT


>From: "James J. Hughes" <jhughes@changesurfer.com>

>>Brian wrote:

>>Majoritarian, now there's a word I'm going to remember for a long
>>time, probably with the same icy chill I feel right now.

>In my parlance, majoritarian means trying to building a political
>party/movement that can win a majority of folks to support it. In
>practice, I'm not very majoritarian, since most of my political
>passions

>(progressive taxation,

Current day Democrat (boderline Socialist)

>drug legalization,

Libertarian
 
>polygamy legalization,

Right wing Mormon ? ;)

>world government,

Socialist

>minimum guaranteed income,

Definitely Socialist

>Mars colonization,

Futurist, Dreamer?

>freedom for transhuman enhancements, etc.)

Back to Libertarian

>are supported by less than 5% of the population. But since winning
>these policies electorally requires majorities, there is little
>choice but to try to win over the masses. In that respect
>majoritarian is just the opposite of elitist, putschist or John
>Galtist.

Thanks for the clarification, but as someone has already pointed
out you are using a very non-standard definition for
majoritarianism. You are free to do so of course, but the error
rate caused by doing so is high.

I was a bigger Mars enthusiast a year or so ago then I am now, I
attended a lecture at the Adler planetarium (and dinner afterwords)
with noted Mars expert Dr Chris McKay. He made the (excellent)
point that he thought regular trips to Mars should wait until they
represented the same cost ratio that Antartica represents now.

Darn good point. Although if we could come up with a few billion
copies of "The Young Ladies/Gentlemans Illustrated Primer" (The
Diamond Age), we could be off to Mars in no time.

Brian

Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
Adler Planetarium www.adlerplanetarium.org
Life Extension Foundation, www.lef.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W

 



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