From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Tue Aug 06 2002 - 05:02:08 MDT
On Monday, August 05, 2002 11:33 PM CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>>Look at the track record of indirect representation at, say, the UN or
>>other international agencies, such as the European Parliament.
>
> The UN is a far more benign organization than its component pieces.
> Yes, it's socialistic etc., but given that until recently its majority
> was nasty vicious dictatorships it's pretty good. Its faults mostly
> reflect the still widespread acceptance of dim Marxists concepts
> like class war and nationalization, which needs to be attacked from
> the intellectual side.
I think the UN's being more benign than some of its component pieces --
the US Congress is no doubt more benign as a whole than some of its
worst elements too -- because it is not a full-fledged government. Give
it that kind of power and watch it get much worse.
> The current EP is directly elected.
I stand corrected.
> I'd the old EEC also compared favorably
> to
> its components and deserves tremendous acclaim for creating free
movement
> of goods and people in Europe.
First, that could have been done without an EU or an EP. In fact, for
much of the 19th century that was just what happened without them.
Second, it also imposes regulations on economic activity, so the EU is
not totally benign in this sphere. It's kind of like a big mob boss
taking over a large area and stanardizing some of his business practices
across his turf.
>>Why not instead advocate decentralization of political power --
>>eventually down to the individual level?
>
> I'm all for that. But in any case, we need to break the current
fetish
> of democracy as the only way to do things. Improving government by
> reducing democracy would help people look at alternatives to the
current
> systems.
It's not "reducing democracy" per se, but reducing all government.
After all, forms of nondemocratic states have come and gone as well as
much more limited democratic states than the ones we see all over the
globe today. The common bad thread running through all of them is
government.
The sortition experiment would be a good one to try, though I fear it
will only be of limited help in taming the worst aspects of democracy,
since ultimately it does nothing to reduce government power or to set up
an alternative self-reinforcing, self-limiting system. After all,
there's little to stop a sortitionist or even a demarchist government
from issuing emergency powers -- the "Crisis and Leviathan" scenario we
see all too often in the growth of government -- and thereby quickly
obviating its limitations -- as we see, e.g., with Congress giving war
powers to the President, thereby obviating a check on executive
warmaking powers.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See "Testing Evolutionary Explanations" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Testing.html
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