Democracy

[Prospero]

Oe of the great thing about freedom and liberty is the right of people to cleave to absurd and unworkable and crackpot theories - as an8150 so eloquently proves through 21 pages now.

[Odelay]

Was going to post this link, and then not, and now I will, but not for the original reason that I was going to post it, i.e. it's content surrounding the primary topic of this thread - coercion.

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/11/coercion.html

No, the reason I post this piece from one of my favorite liberal bloggers is because it shows just how easy a good argument can be countered. Skip down to the comment by "ryan" and you have a cogent reply to Freddie's piece. I believe one reason for this is that we are frequently arguing soft topics... topics like religion, politics, philosophy, etc., where opinions differ and the agreed to set of facts are often few or even non-existent, many times precluding anything resembling proof. But I do feel things are changing, and not for the better, in how some arguments are raging over what I call, hard topics.

No sane person argues if gravity is a real thing. It's remarkable to me that the rapid warming of the earth isn't more broadly and generally accepted. Granted, it's not immediately and conclusively testable like gravity, but the scientific evidence for it is now voluminous and that sort of matches up with our own anecdotal experiences such as this last very hot summer or the fact that there are half the glaciers in "Glacier" National Park, today, than there was when I grew up 36 miles outside the park entrance.

We are moving towards a world where "we" question everything. And I don't think that's a good trend.

[Stavros]

Was going to post this link, and then not, and now I will, but not for the original reason that I was going to post it, i.e. it's content surrounding the primary topic of this thread - coercion.

http://lhote.blogspot.com/2012/11/coercion.html

No, the reason I post this piece from one of my favorite liberal bloggers is because it shows just how easy a good argument can be countered. Skip down to the comment by "ryan" and you have a cogent reply to Freddie's piece. I believe one reason for this is that we are frequently arguing soft topics... topics like religion, politics, philosophy, etc., where opinions differ and the agreed to set of facts are often few or even non-existent, many times precluding anything resembling proof. But I do feel things are changing, and not for the better, in how some arguments are raging over what I call, hard topics.

No sane person argues if gravity is a real thing. It's remarkable to me that the rapid warming of the earth isn't more broadly and generally accepted. Granted, it's not immediately and conclusively testable like gravity, but the scientific evidence for it is now voluminous and that sort of matches up with our own anecdotal experiences such as this last very hot summer or the fact that there are half the glaciers in "Glacier" National Park, today, than there was when I grew up 36 miles outside the park entrance.

We are moving towards a world where "we" question everything. And I don't think that's a good trend.

An interesting post, Odelay and an interesting blog, but I wonder why the word coercion has become the currency in the debate between the libertarians and 'the rest'? And where does this State of Nature come in these days? I challenge the concept of coercion, and the state of nature.

In the first place, if by coercion one means forcing someone to do something they don't want to do through threat or sanction, how much coercion is there in reality, and how does one understand it? One the one hand it is true that people labour because they have to, that most do not get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work (and a tiny minority get a fabulous sum of money for very little in terms of real labour), and that they cannot enjoy the fruits of their labour for extended periods of time because the money they make is insufficient, the holiday time they get barely two weeks a year, while poverty and illness are often interlinked.

On the other hand, thousands of students choose to become lawyers, engineers, scientists and media specialists; or medical students because they want to practise medicine of some sort, maybe for the money, maybe because it is an honourable profession, with high social standing.

Millions of women in Europe and North America in the 19th and 20th centuries went to work in factories because they had to (latterly in war time), because the family needed the money -but while many on the left have absorbed the image (if not the text) of Marx's terrifying vision of The Working Day (Capital, Vol 1 Chapter 10), what Marx does not consider for the 19th century, which became evident later is that for many of those women work was liberation from a home life that was less than ideal; this was particularly true of the First and Second World Wars. In this context, work became a degree of freedom, and this is also to some extent true of women in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

And yet, if one agrees that capitalism can only survive by spreading like a virus until everyone and everything has become a commodity that can be bought and sold, and money becomes the symbol of private property, but something noone in a capitalist society can live without out, then everyone becomes enslaved to it, so that words like liberty appear not a contradiction of the facts, but an insult to them.

Crucially, we do not live in a state of nature, which is that of war or civil war and anarchy; Hobbes wrote Leviathan to point out that the alternative to a state of nature is a Common-Wealth which is what we have these days, the form of government in many appearing to be a democracy, rather than a Monarchy or an Aristrocracy. In the USA, if you wanted to be precise about it, there are 46 states, as Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachussetts and Kentucky call themselves 'the Commonwealth' of...

[nitron]

Democracy , to many dumb assess. Including myself.

[Ben]

Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/201..._campaign=8315