Should decentralized governmental power be a fundamental goal of democratic society? That’s the current NFL LD topic and I would love it if anybody would offer some enlightened philosophical input.
This is what I’ve established to myself so far:
Democracy has to defined. If it refers purely to direct democracy or as close to pure democracy as can be reached, then society has already achieved the maximum state of decentralization.
If a broader definition of democracy is used, including a representative democracy, then, perhaps, the topic needs to be divided into centralized democracy, defined as the representative democracy, and decentralized democracy, defined as direct democracy.
The obvious failing of direct democracy is its ineffectiveness when applied to large populations. How large is the optimum government? Is it a global one? Or small self-governed states? Or something in between?
The obvious failing of the democratic republic is that although representatives are elected by the majority, the leaders are still a minority making the decisions. A good analogy for this sort is a gun. The people aim it and pull the trigger. But the politicians are still the intruments of the people. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Ok. That’s a bad analogy, but that’s why I’m asking for help.
The ideal government is a totally decentralized absolute confederacy (also accurately described as a functioning anarchy).
It isn’t demonstratably impossible. It isn’t impractical. It isn’t implausible. It isn’t even unlikely.
I hate it when folks say you can’t have it simply because their first raw image, 10 billion some-odd people in a town meeting hall, strikes them as unworkable.
(That’s kind of like determining that space flight is impossible after deciding a wooden ship would not do well under the stresses of attaining escape velocity).
Use some bloody imagination. No one said you can’t use a structure, and a centralized conventional hierarchy of authority is NOT the only possible structure, folks!
Well, actually, I did mention that in my original post…
I said, “The obvious failing of direct democracy is its ineffectiveness when applied to large populations. How large is the optimum government? Is it a global one? Or small self-governed states? Or something in between?” I assume you were relating it to the original, or else who were you accusing? Please just read the question before responding.
People decide on a form of rule in any number of ways. One: they have litle choice if they want to avoid risking their life: militaristic dictatorships. Two, recognition of a divine right: monarchy. Three, agreed-upon goals: communism, democracy, republics, blah blah blah.
Without sounding trite, democracy itself isn’t for or against anything that doesn’t directly destroy democracy itself (and with regards to the US’s bill o’ rights I wonder even then). Thus to ask:
is to receive the answer: depends on what we want out of a government. If we want minimal interference, a Libertarian or-- as Ahunter mentioned-- anarchistic state (ha oxymoron if I ever heard it) is the goal of democracy.
I don’t find that as a given either. Provided the results are the same I don’t see why representation in a government body changes anything. I do, however, agree that the US’s form of representation lacks quite a few characteristics.
Total democracy as defined as every one having a vote on all laws is pretty unworkable. I certainly don’t have the time to understand all the issues to make good choices about all the things that governments currently seem to decide upon. For that matter I probably don’t have the time to throw darts at the wall to come to these decisions.
AHunter3’s points about government I pretty much disagree with except for the idea that we should be trying to improve what we have got.
I don’t like the idea of a global government because that lends itself too much to existing just to support itself and the main stake holders in the government. With other governments around there is at least the hope of shaking things up because if a government becomes to self serving it stands to loose prominence to other countries that meet the wants of it citizens better.
It’s another “straw man”. Decentralization means not having to be involved in every decision. Nor need every decision be equally binding upon people at every stage of its permanency.
??? Yes, I know, and I sort of tore into you (and other folks who dismiss anarchy with an uncontemplated nod in that direction). As I said, kindly QUIT conceptualizing a total democracy as necessarily a “town hall meeting” of all the world’s denizens, as if the form that makes sense for a small band of people were the only form it could possibly take!
How decentralized are we talking about here? There are lots of decisions that need to be made. I would even go so far as to say my family meaning my wife and myself don’t make all decisions that would affect the family discussing it with each other. We just go ahead and make decisions so that we can go on with our lives.
Lets say our small decentralized units are small towns. There is a lot to running a small town let’s just look at road building. There are hundreds of decisions that go into to building a road every body in the town cannot be involved in all those small decisions. One solution is to assign someone to come up with a couple of proposals for roads. We have now delegated decision making power to somebody no longer pure democracy.
Ahunter3 as for you tearing into other peoples arguments all you have said is that isn’t true use some imagnination.
The lack of value premises is a major problem here, incidentally. And justice isn’t a value, unless it’s used merely to describe something moral as just, and then it’s as good as no value at all. Of course you want to do whats moral. It’s like saying, “Yes, the supreme value of my case is good.” It flows too easily either way. Like utilitarianism.
Why do you say this? If I get to vote on a policy that will directly affect someone living thousands of miles away from me, that does not strike me as decentralized.