Yoused
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- Aug 14, 2020
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Circling back to the OP,
We do not have a democracy for a reason. It simply does not work, as the Athenians discovered all those centuries back. In a pure democracy, the people vote for what the people want, which ends up being a sort of mob rule situation, in which practical, workable solutions to real problems tend to get pushed aside in favor of the easy, comfortable policies that often have knock-on effects that are more troublesome than doing the difficult thing. And, of course, minority voices get lost in the greater vote.
Political leaders function best when they are not bound by constituencies or parties. When they can make the hard choices, when they can reach the difficult compromises that no one really likes, rather than it being a matter of this side or that side "winning" the vote, as though it were some kind of sporting event.
Machiavelli was pretty well on the mark when he said that, fundamentally, every nation is a democracy, even if its configuration is not. It is just that the people->government response time may be slower in an autocracy. Hence, who the politicians answer to is rather a moot point, as they do ultimately answer to the people.
In a working system, the government must be the strongest element, because if they are not, the actual government is someone else. This is what we are dealing with right now (and, really, since 1789). The people/entities with the most money are the government – otherwise the oil companies would have been erased at least a decade ago, if not three, and copyright terms would be no more than the lifetime of the creator.
Money is the disfunction in our system, not the "will of the voters" or even the major parties. I have not seen strong evidence that there can an objective assessment of "good" vs "evil", but it does look to me like the defining component of "evil" is power, and money is the embodiment of power. Thus, a government ruled by money is inclined toward bad things.
We do not have a democracy for a reason. It simply does not work, as the Athenians discovered all those centuries back. In a pure democracy, the people vote for what the people want, which ends up being a sort of mob rule situation, in which practical, workable solutions to real problems tend to get pushed aside in favor of the easy, comfortable policies that often have knock-on effects that are more troublesome than doing the difficult thing. And, of course, minority voices get lost in the greater vote.
Political leaders function best when they are not bound by constituencies or parties. When they can make the hard choices, when they can reach the difficult compromises that no one really likes, rather than it being a matter of this side or that side "winning" the vote, as though it were some kind of sporting event.
Machiavelli was pretty well on the mark when he said that, fundamentally, every nation is a democracy, even if its configuration is not. It is just that the people->government response time may be slower in an autocracy. Hence, who the politicians answer to is rather a moot point, as they do ultimately answer to the people.
In a working system, the government must be the strongest element, because if they are not, the actual government is someone else. This is what we are dealing with right now (and, really, since 1789). The people/entities with the most money are the government – otherwise the oil companies would have been erased at least a decade ago, if not three, and copyright terms would be no more than the lifetime of the creator.
Money is the disfunction in our system, not the "will of the voters" or even the major parties. I have not seen strong evidence that there can an objective assessment of "good" vs "evil", but it does look to me like the defining component of "evil" is power, and money is the embodiment of power. Thus, a government ruled by money is inclined toward bad things.
