I’m sorry, but I’m not too clear on this point: how would conflict be resolved? For there to be any resolution of conflict, there must necessarily be a person with authority, and if there isn’t, then who will enforce contracts and such? Wouldn’t the lawyers, or those who interpreted the “rules” then be the ones in de facto authority?
If private industry takes the role of the government, then government becomes a capitalist entity. From that moment, as capitalism is defined, it will attempt to benefit itself, whether or not it benefits the public. This is an postulate that can be easily corrupted.
I belive that the United States is too large for the method by which its current democratic-republic structure is run.
The centralization of government that began with the Republicans circa the Civil War has undermined the original spirit under which our system of government was founded. Too much power over too many people in the hands of too few.
Add to that the comparatively poor US education system, and you have a democracy that has a great deal of difficulty functioning as one.
If you like Plato, you should move on to Aristotle’s Ethis and Politics. He provides a survey of government types:
Rule by the many (democracy and its corruption, anarchy)
Rule by the few (aristocracy and its corruption, oligarchy)
Rule by the one (monarchy and its corruption, dictatorship)
Those are pretty much your choices, although it must be realized that nations usually run on a combination of systems (Britain, e.g., historically had a monarchy, but this was balanced by a powerful aristocracy, as well as a House of Commons).
I would rather have representative democracy on this country over any other form of government, but serious adjustment needs to be made, IMO.
private industry would not “take the role of government”. We would be able to contract private entities to perform services instead of relying on government to provide those same services, on a service by service basis. In other words ABC Corp. would not be a government, but they may provide, say, transportation. If XYZ corp comes along offering the same or better service at a competitive or cheaper price, consumers would be free to change service providers.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html
R J Rummel has done research showing democracies are less warlike (with each other) and have better economies. They also have many fewer problems with hunger and civil unrest
However, i know that some countries have developed very rapidly under dictatorships. CHile under Pinochet, South Korea under Park Chung Hee, China under communism, probably Tiawan & singapore too, etc.
This is not the basic role of government - many countries do, in fact, privatise public transport. The basic role of government is to create property rights, without which things like paying for services wouldn’t even happen.
Why sure, if you don’t like your cable TV company there are oodles of private suppliers standing around anxious to provide the capital needed to install cable to one cusomer.
Yes, I know that there is satellite, but they provide hundreds of channels that I pay for but don’t want and most of them don’t give me the local channels that I do want.
Ivory tower free-enterprise is no improvement over ivory tower socialism.
Right to property exists outside of government. Enforcement of those rights can be readily handled without government interference. Karl Fielding of William and Mary summarizes this concept very well here … he even uses some John Locke theory in there, you’ll be happy to know.
For David Simmons, If you are the only one on the end of your street, then, yes, the cable company has little motivation to provide a service where there is little demand. There are, however, several satellite TV providers, and as demand increases supply will increase.
This issue (two parties or more of them) isn’t really related to the presidential or parliamentary systems. It’s related to the voting system. You can perfectly have a bunch of parties in a presidential system and bipartism in a parliamentary system, depending on the way the vote is handled. If the representants were elected proportionnally, you would get multipartism, but the US would still be using a presidential system (executive branch totally independant from the legislative branch).
Man, verbenabeast, you and Brad Edmunds almost make Libertarian’s views look moderate and reasonable…and that’s saying something!
HEH… you don’t get a nickname like “Beast” by being moderate!
Brad Edmonds is actually a friend of mine. I think his stuff is pretty good reading even when I don’t necessarily agree with all of it. He has a book coming out soon called “There’s a government in your soup”… extreme libertarianism and food… how can you NOT like it. He asks that I tell y’all to keep an eye out for the book on Amazon. But that is too crass and commercial, so I won’t.
First of all, there is no mention of enforcement of property rights in the linked article.
Now, the linked article refers to the “personal judge”, which basically means the soverignty of yourself over the whole world - you have the right to whatever you desire, as long as you can hold on to it. The conclusion of the article states that free market courts are more “fair” in that if they were not fair, they wouldn’t be used and would go out of business. There are so many things wrong with this, but I have to start somewhere.
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Even if the free market courts reached a judgement, it would be unenforceable. So, what’s the point? Why enter into contract if it would be unenforceable anyway?
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The point of the courts and the whole legal system is the degree of security and stability it provides. If I want to enter into a contract, I want to know if I can enforce the terms on the contract, and if there is a conflict, or a breach of contract, I want to know what the remedies are. Free market courts cannot provide this certainty.
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The courts are legitimate because they are financially independant, not because they are financially dependant. Can you imagine a court that had to depend on the claimant to survive? Can you imagine the pressure to find against the poorer party? Even if both the claimants had to pay equal amounts to the courts, finding against the poorer party would ensure that the richer ones would feel more secure in applying to that court, and thus enabling the court to charge higher fees
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Without the protection of the courts, who would protect the consumers? Do you know how much legislation there is out there to protect the consumers interests, such as laws to prevent companies from excluding liability for injuries caused to comsumers by defective products, or misrepresenting goods, or simple negligence? Or the remedies in law that you have if you obtain a defective product, and wish to return it? Also, if someone commits a tort against you in the course of employment, did you know that it’s the employer’s pocket being dug into for damages? Without the current legal system, let’s see you try to squeeze out enough money from the poor milk deliveryman to cover your medical bills, which, by the way, are not subsidised by the taxes, since there are none. You get injured and it’s not your fault? Tough.
Really, if it worked, someone would already have tried it, at least. Even with the regulation now, can’t you see the failure of the market in areas like, oh, M$? If the eeeeevil government didn’t step in, IE would be busy cleaning all rival web browsers off your computer right now. And M$ would be busy getting all major retailers to pre-install M$ products, too. And even with all that crap working against M$ now, they still dominate the market. Even though Linux, Apple, and all the other OSes are probably more stable and less vulnerable, and even though mozilla and all the other browers less vulnerable to exploits, unlike IE.
Well, if you’re shooting for the stars and hope to win by colonizing Alpha Centauri, then clearly, Democracy is the best form of government. But I highly recommend you have at least the Equal Rights Amendment Wonder in one of your cities, as well as Michelangelo’s Workshop and a full complement of attitude-adjusting city improvments, not to mention the United Nations.
However, if world domination is your goal, then I suggest Monarchy. Some people make Communism work, and Republic has it’s benefits (especially if you’re involved in a massive ground conflict), but I recommend going the Naval and Air domination route, and nothing works like a Monarchy for ruling the high seas. Lots of Spy units help immensely, too.
Of course that means getting and keeping the Lighthouse and Magellan’s Expedition Wonders.
Hey, no one said winning CivII was easy.
The supporters of the Constitution were the “Federalists”. They were the strong central government party. If you doubt it go read the sixth resolution from their original plan:
" Resolved that each branch ought to possess the right of originating Acts; that the National Legislature ought to be impowered to enjoy the Legislative Rights vested in Congress bar the Confederation & moreover to legislate in all cases to which the separate States are incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual Legislation; to negative all laws passed by the several States, contravening in the opinion of the National Legislature the articles of Union; (4) and to call forth the force of the Union agst any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof."
If the “Federalists” had gotten their way Congress would have had a veto over state laws and a general grant of power. Instead they had to settle for judicial review and a specific grant of power. But once they got their new government they adopted a loose interpretation of the document they had created and took more authority then was specifically granted. Centralization IS the original spirit of our “federal” government. That was the very reason for drafting the Constitution.
I think our government has exactly the opposite problem as you do. I think power is in the hands of too many. If the central government was run by only a few representatives we could keep an eye on them. They wouldn’t be able to duck responsiblity by blaming failures to act on others. There would be no others. They would have no choice but to do a good job or else we would find someone who could. Our democracy could be a lot more efficient than it is but never as efficient as a government that doesn’t have to take the wishes of the populace into account. But then, is efficiency worth living under a dictatorship? I don’t think so.
I do agree that a major problem is our poor education system. History in particular is butchered. Since Americans generally don’t understand how we got here they don’t really understand where “here” is. Most of us lack the knowledge of the past to put the present into perspective. And the schools spend too much time telling us what to think and hardly any time at all teaching us how to think. They shove that “Checks and Balances” horseshit down our throats like it was Holy Writ without giving us the resources to come to our own conclusions.
I have believed for quite some time that, while the U.S. three-part structure of government is a good one, the electoral process is pretty much hopeless for several reasons. One is the reason I also believe Libertarianism (such as that described in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) will not work - society has become too large and complex (especially since technology is so complex) for the ordinary voter to be sufficiently well-educated to vote knowledgeably on the vast majority of issues. Another is that you have that Tyranny of the Majority thing. A third, and most compelling, is that the qualities needed for most people to be elected to anything larger scope than strictly local (community) government are very much qualities that are undesirable in a public official.
The solution that I came up with is to have a pool of registered citizens. To qualify, you must demonstrate a certain level of literacy and basic arithmetic ability, period. Then all office holders are selected by lot from the pool that applies to the office in question - i.e. President from the nation at large, Senator from each state at large, Representative from each district. Supreme Court justices would continue to be nominated by the President and approved by Congress. The penalty for corruption, if an official were to be found guilty, would be life sentence in prison, no parole.
The benefits? Over time, the demographics would be far more representative of the population than elected officials have been. With certain legal safeguards in place to prevent officials from slanting their offices to benefit friends and family, no elections for fundraising, no re-election bid to worry about, etc, office-holders would have very little to distract them from the concept of actually trying to do the best they could according to their principles. Yes, there would be the occasional nut-case or idiot in office. But our governmental structure is such that, unless the nut-case or idiot was extremely persuasive, s/he wouldn’t be able to do all that much. The problem with, for example, the current administration (assuming you dislike it) is less the outright power of the Presidency than the President’s ability to persuade Congress to let him do what he has done. How much of that has been his own ability to convince, and how much has been Congress’s pandering to their perception of the public will is unknown. But anyone who gets elected has demonstrated some degree of persuasive ability, and some degree of ability to win people’s votes. A nut-case or idiot in the Presidency would not have either of those things going for him/her.
I believe that most people, when not corrupted by greed or further ambition, will rise to their responsibilities. A government by lot would be the most representative government the world has ever seen, and would truly put government in the hands of the citizens.
Yeah, like it’ll ever happen…
At bottom, democracy is not a theory of good government, it is a theory of legitimate government. It is not based on the assumption that the people know what is good for them. It is based on the assumption that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and bad.
Beautifully stated.
Every nation has the government that it deserves. Democracy is for those who are willing and ready to take and keep it.
Highly, highly suspect. Under all circumstances, and especially so in large and technologically advanced countries such as USA and most of the world today, bordering on impossible. I think democracy is fundamentally flawed. Personally, even without the technological advances, I think humans are cows anyway - see the heyday of organised religion. If human desires can be shaped so easily, it is meaningless to say “the people deserve to get the government they want” if what they want can be shaped by other people.
On the other hand, most things called democracies are not exactly such, for example, the UK. More like a elected dictatorship than anything. PM is elected, sure, but then he has the power to do anything he wants. Literally, anything. No constitution to stop him, and he could even suspend the vote should he want to (legitimately used during WWII).
I think the Mencken quote goes something like “Democracy is based on the theory that the common man knows what he wants and deserves to get it good and hard.”