From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Nov 12 2000 - 20:56:55 MST
At 07:41 PM 12/11/00 -0800, Max wrote:
>an important point about the differences between
>markets and democracies. In a democracy, pure or not, the majority gets
>what it wants and the rest are out of luck.
I don't wish to get into a Politics 101 argument (which I'd surely lose),
but that's certainly not how soi disant democratic politics works where I
live.
Leaving aside that the majority actually get what they've mostly been led
by the nose to agree to, from a stunningly limited menu of options, you
usually find that representations by parliamentarians from the non-ruling
party still have some effect; that there are all kinds of effective levels
of feedback and consultation; that the press, despite being muzzled by its
immensely rich owners, does play some kind of role in allowing a diversity
of voices to be heard, etc.
So let's say that the majority gets what it wants--but in times of
reasonable prosperity and comparative security, what the majority appears
to want (in Oz at least) is a `fair go' for everyone, according to their
lights, as long as their lights don't involve egregiously punching out the
lights of their neighbors.
Damien Broderick
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