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Re: Questioning Democracy
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I was shooting from the hip, rather (don't have a lot of time right now)
but WHY shouldn't the people have the power? they are the ones affected
by the decisions, after all.
There is an awful lot of political theory on how & why bureaucratic
democracies (in the +ve sense) work ... but it seems to me to come down
to stability: there are checks and balances. In a democracy, there is
probably more of a closed circle of accountability than in business. I
elect you in, I thereby give you authority to make the law for me (to
'lead' me if you like), but I can help to get rid of you if I don't like
the way you do it.
Of course, I don't get everything I want, but why should I expect that
when there are 60m other voices out there? If I don't like your abortion
policy, I'd rather have the chance to get rid of you than to be stuck
with you for ever (or until the men in grey suits, or sandals, decide
THEY want someone else...)
best
nj
Matthew Hodgetts wrote:
OK, I admit that it might be hard to form a system so that everyone is
always accountable. But that doesn't mean that we should shrug our
shoulders and say, "Oh well, it might as well be the public." It just
occurs that in a business everyone is accountable to someone higher
than themselves: bottom-rung people to middle management to senior
management to senior executives, who in turn are responsible (often
but not always) to boards, whose members have their personal bosses.
Nobody need not have anyone above them. But I think I am slightly
twisting what you are saying Nick, You say
> The thing about democracy is that it recognises that everyone has
interests.
You think that the specifically the people should have oversight. Fair
enough, but be careful not to presuppose this (ie democracy) when
trying to defend democracy. I want to know whether a government should
even be trying to serve the interests of the people. I know that it is
hard to decide what the 'right thing to do is,' but I would much
rather have ethicists decide my countries abortion policy than the man
on the street.
Just on a pedantic note, it's not true that in a democracy politicians
do not follow their own (or their party's own) agenda. Of course they
do, we don't have the people's wishes served just like that.
Politicians do things the people don't want ( e.g. the war against
Iraq had a majority opposing it, yet it still happened, (not trying to
comment of rightness or wrongness of that btw), and they fail to do
things that the majority of people in this country want (e.g.
reinstating capital punishment).
I think that we can say a lot about the failings of democracy and the
possible advantages or disadvantages of 'meritocracy,' but I wonder
what people think about the presupposition of democracy that
government /ought / to be just trying to satisfy the wishes of as many
of the electorate as possible? (Perhaps this isn't a good definition
of what democracies are supposed to do, I don't know).
Matthew
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