That is only the case, if you have minorities as part of your body politique. I.e. ethnic minorities residing on the same territory of one political unit.
This is not necessarily the case. It rather depends on who the decision makers actually are and whether they are going to make decisions that are wise also in terms of economics. You are however right in terms of the populist or lobbyist that is making election promises and then uses taxes, debtmaking and the like to fullfil them.
about “democracy being bad” - do you mean in its essence (ie. theoretically), or in its far-from-perfect practise form (see added comments in “the use of knowledge in society” forum topic discussion)?
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/
watch this Watts school system video (in the above site) presented by Mr. Carey - would we want this kind of anarchy in all our schools?
To be clear I’m a market anarchist, but if I had to have a government it would not be democracy. It’d be a nightwatchman state, and no more than that - and for this, democracy is inessential. Maybe it’s because I’m European and don’t have the same sentimental attachment you Americans tend to have towards democracy.
Well said!
All this talk of democracy and patriotism makes me want to vomit in rage…
I for one haven’t mentioned anything about patriotism here - nor am I conerning myself here over democracy vs. any other type of government … rather I only ask what makes a self-proclaimed ‘anarchist’ really think that complex market systems can exist without organizations? And doesn’t an organization’s nature require some rellinquishing of personal autonomy to a collective authority inherent to its modus operandi?
As I just wrote in a separate forum topic:
The effectiveness/progress/achievement/productivity of any willingly-cooperative group requires consensus - which also means, at times, a compromise of certain members’ views of what direction/step to take case by case. An organization is always weaker in commitment than the individual interests of its players, but doesn’t have to be deemed ineffective or dysfunctional unless it: 1) allows an individual or subset faction of its total population undue power (usually psychologically-based, such as a magnetic personalityor appearance or disproportional intelligence), and/or 2) creates convoluted policies that result in distorted incentive structures away from the stated goal/purpose of the organization. Sorry to be so wordy, but hope this clarifies how I see things (at the moment, though always willing to understand in a better light). Cheers.
The problem with trying to fix democracy is that it is a naturally flawed system. It is not rule by the people, it necessarily establishes a ruling class and a subject class. The ruling class can externalize all the costs of government to the subject class. There is no voting system that can do away with that.
So assuming that we must become subjects to rulers, the question is what kind of rulers do we want? The 18th century theoreticians believed that democracy could not work unless people personally knew the person they were voting for, and had an idea of his character. This does not exist when 99.99999% of the electorate only ever see their presidential candidate on TV or on broadcast media. Coupled with the fact that one must vote strategically to prevent the worst candidate from becoming your ruler, there is in fact today no such thing as democracy.
How is this to be fixed? First, the ballot system, whereby an entrenched elite decides for whom the electorate is or isn’t allowed to vote, must be abolished. Simply put, people must have the right to vote for anyone, anywhere, under any terms. Write-in votes must be the only form of votes. This makes voting a very personal judgement of the character of the person one is voting for. A single voter will pick the most noble person he personally trusts.
The problem of strategic voting is then to be adressed. Nash Equilibrium strategy implies that if one wants to have his choice elected, one should not vote his own best personal judgement, one should vote for a person many other people are also likely to vote for. This returns power to the broadcast media. The solution to this problem is to implement a system of run-off voting whereby one’s vote passes on to the person one voted for in the following round. If someone judges his candidate’s character to be good enough to rule him, then this implies that this candidate is also capable of picking someone of even better character.
If I vote for Bob, and Bob and Tim vote for Jim, then in the first round I am taken out of the run-off, and another vote goes to Jim.
This process goes on until few enough candidates remain to form an assembly capable of physically governing, and theoretically these candidates will be the most noble, trustworthy men in the country.
I like how the reformists and the “minarchists” think they’re some how going to stop Anarchy from ensuing after they reach their precious government.
Just fewere soldiers that we have to shoot is how I look at it… Hah!
hugh? say what? Umm, now it’s finally dawned on me (did I tell you I was slow?) why it is that most of the Austrian economists don’t spend their time trying to correct the myriad of misconceptions and absurdly radical statements made in the forum - that never mind they don’t know if it’s deliberate misrepresentation to make mises.com members look radical, but they also wouldn’t want to associate themselves with folk who throw out absurd statements about violence and revolt (who would right?) I could be all tongue in cheek and expressed outrage when frustrated with political issues etc, but meaning it is a different ballgame wouldn’t you agree …
erratum - in rereading the above, last sentence meant to say “It could be all tongue in cheek …” (meaning the extreme words about shooting, etc).
Final thought here though - wouldn’t it make sense to say constructive things about what can be changed in the right direction (such as toward smaller government) rather than end discussions by extreme, inflexible utterances? Just wondering … thanks.
Nothing can be changed in the “right direction”. The growth of government only has one direction: more of. This continues until collapse.
but there’s various stages and types of collapse - and most can be defined as periods of necessitated contraction and restart, so therefore restabilizing and likely smaller than before.
When has this happened?
In the 19th century, with continuous runs-on-the-bank and a lack of faith in pecuniary store of value, I’ve read of periods of contraction - when at least Government’s size/involvement didn’t grow … and further back in history such as 14th century Edward III’s heavy borrowing for his war expeditions, that caused a collapse and likely much privatization as in-kind debt repayments. Are we going anywhere with this?
This doesn’t prove that the government rolls back, just that it falls apart sometimes and shrinks before picking itself back up again.
The 19th century, in America, is the story of a massive expansion of government power through military force. That was never rolled back.
The only way the government is rolled back is through a revolutionary event, such as the barbarians moving into the Roman Empire, or the parliament forcing the magna carta upon the king. What this requires is an independent, alternative center of power to make a claim against the government that the people can get behind.
Stranger - I like what you’re throwing back at me (honestly) … do you think that Government is ever-expanding, or does it simply exist regardless of its temporal this-or-that state? Are there really ever degrees of intrusion, and is it quantifiable - or is the stark face of reality that its power is omnipresent, to be exercised at will? Because if the answer to these questions is the latter, then why all the constant talk about the eventual dawn of a purely free, autonomous market system - when the truth is that there will always be persons with a vested interest in a biased, contrived system over that of a equally competitive, “what the market will bear” system? Your citing the barbarian onslaught of Rome as a revolutionary event only rings to me as “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” … so how many more anecdotes without exception will it take? Instead, the best a society and its market system can hope for is to strive at limiting waste, fraud, and abuse - in working toward the Jeffersonian ideals of only essential government (since the nature of all bureaucracies is to keep growing and growing, and it’s up to the citizenry to stay vigilant in curtailing that propensity).
Huzzah. [Y]
Democratic government is socialized government, because the power is publically rather than privately owned.
In theory, I believe it to be “just as bad” as other forms of government.
In practice, democracy has achieved a level of slaughter, theft and deciet that only Lucifer himself could have imagined.
So then MacFall, what went awry in the Founding Father’s envisioning a country that professes that all are created equal, and have rights to the pursuit of happiness (which was originally written/intended as ‘pursuit of property’ - which was subsequently thought too specific)?
Well, the founding fathers who believed that all men are created equal and that people have rights (at all) and that governments derive their just powers by the consent of the governed did not create this nation.
The Constitution was not written by the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and it is no coincidence that it reflected little of the spirit behind the Declaration. The revolution was not fought to overthrow one national government just to replace it with another. Had that spirit won in the years following the war, things would be different, and I think, far better.
The U.S. government was not the result of the revolution and the ideals for which it was fought. It was the result of a coup by powerful men who lost out big-time when the colonies won the war. Effectively, they claimed a false mandate and manipulated their way back into power. And the men who truly believed in liberty - Jefferson, Franklin, Henry et al, were effectively marginalized.