Socialism vs. Capitalism

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Well then he doesn't do it. (if he is not willing to)

Have you walked down Broadway to see whats left of the occupy moment lately? I saw a few of them still at it but no one was paying attention. Whereas the Tea Party now has significant power. Politics aside, its pretty clear which one has been more effective in mobilising their supporters.



I have. The framers of the constitutions that developed representative democracy, at least in the US and Australia designed systems to limit the negatives of majoritarianism. Direct democracy has no such checks unless it is significantly moderated. As I said, I am open to increased participation but majoritarianism is something that all governments, regardless of how democratic they are, ought to be wary of as it provides no natural protection to the individual as a sovereign entity.



Sounds like a recipe for nothing getting done.



Nonsense. I have been to states that are considered to be all three. When leaving North Korea for the first time, I departed my plane in Shenyang and immediately felt more free than I had been. In the totalitarian state you have no social freedom and the state impedes on all aspects of your individual life. China's government is authoritarian because it really does not care that what you think as long as you accept the rule of the Communist Party (although as I said, general statements about China are really difficult). In a democratic state, you have a social contract and state structures that reflect it but I cannot see any good reason for thinking that this is the same as life in the PRC, because in reality, it isn't.

@LKL, sorry NK is my only reference to that sort of system, I would however like to visit Cuba and see for myself. Although I would need a good reason as I hate giving money to those sorts of governments.

Part of what makes me so nervous about the modern libertarian movement is that they seem to deny the existence of, and need for, exactly that social contract.

OWS got pushed out by the cops.

Direct democracy is not majoritarianism, it's about finding a reasonable consensus for decisions that effect everyone. Direct democracy is not a rejection of self sovereignty.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQPJhIXEfjA[/youtube]

Can you elaborate?

I didn't say they are all same, I'm just saying although some are less authoritarian than others, that does not mean they should be free from criticism.

That is very simplistic.



I can see that this view appeals to you and I can see what you value in it. The benefits you see from increased participation are quite useful however systems are designed to function under duress, when people are attempting to exploit them. A consensus based system is a very good idea in theory, which is something you find discussed at length in the Federalist Papers. What the framers sort to avoid was mob rule, which does not have a very good track record of checking the power of the individual, as much as you might think that is counterintuitive to you own interoperation. A consensus based system is open to significant abuse when it is unrestrained, which is why we live in societies where a constitution reigns supreme and defines the limits to the power we can wield over one another. However, you consider such organised authority to be authoritarian, as if somehow if that term is misapplied to democracy it will reveal the extent to which we are dependent on what are in your view, unnecessary articles of authority. While I support a suspicious view of power, I cannot embrace the interpretation you have put forward. Rather, I see constitution and state offices as being the result of significant discussion about how we wish to be governed as a people and how we want to protect individual sovereignty. As a result of these internal discussions, most highly functional democratic states have at their core a social contract enshrined in law and or constitution that seeks to protect the needs of the few from the tyranny of the many. The reality of the risks of majoritarianism necessitated an answer to protect those less fortunate, as a result we have power in the system that compels people to respect the rule of law. The benefits I see in the present status quo, which protect the individual would need to be replicated within any alternative system in order for it to be any way equivalent or better. From what I have seen from anarchic systems, they do not achieve this, mostly due to their opposition to institution, and so I refuse to support them.



In an active democracy nothing is really free from criticism but there are ways to be heard and there are ways that will get you ignored.

@LKL, Yes, I find libertarianism to be really anti-community. If you can stand by while your neighbour's house is burning then there is something wrong.

Last edited by 91 on 15 Oct 2013, 12:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

I like state directed market socialism .

What social contract? It's not a contract if one side doesn't get a say in it... the child of someone who sold themselves into slavery would not be violating a contract by freeing themselves.

This was actually a significant problem affecting some of the Native American plains tribes, and possibly others as well. The elder council would get together and decide to make a treaty, but they couldn't constrain any of the tribe members to actually follow it - just try to convince them that it was a good idea. If someone lost their temper, or just didn't agree, and violated the treaty, there really wasn't anything that the elders could do about it but be very disapproving. When the Europeans then demanded that the perpetrators be handed over for trial (which was fairly reasonable, when the council said that the tribe as a whole wasn't responsible), they could only say that individual tribe members had a right to do as they wished, and couldn't be punished for it - so a few people could blow the treaty for the whole tribe.* Likewise with battles; even if all of the more skilled warriors agreed that it was best to hide and ambush a troop of soldiers after they had all passed a certain point, nothing but their own limited self-control kept the younger hotheads from going off early and running in for some glory of their own, thus blowing the trap for everyone. Even after the Natives obtained western weapons, this lack of coordination was a large part of why they were driven off of their own lands.


*Note that this is NOT to say that the Europeans didn't violate treaties too, all the time (and ongoing).

The social contract is the unwritten set of mores and cultural norms by which we all get along with each other and tacitly agree to follow the same laws; we accept limitations on our own rights in exchange for other people being similarly limited. Part of our problem as aspies is that we have a harder time instinctively figuring out the social contract on an individual, micro-level, and people seeing this difficulty in us is what makes us seem 'creepy' or makes other people nervous. It makes us unpredictable to them.
A slave who frees him- or herself, in a society that accepted slavery, would indeed be violating the social contract, but that doesn't make it necessarily wrong. There are many different types of social contract in different societies, and many of them seem odious to our modern, western perceptions (often this odiousness is, or would be, mutual). If you don't like the social contract as it stands, it is legitimate to try to change it (this is what feminists did in the past and are continuing to do today), though some methods of change are more reasonable than others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/

^^^^^^

Very interesting.

A market runs on supply and demand as manifested decisions the players make of their own free will. How can a government -direct- free will without violating free will?

Market Directed Socialism is bound to fail. Even in the now gone Soviet Union they had to allow the kulaks to own some of their own land and sell their produce at prices determined by supply and demand of the buyers and sellers. Under pure government direction, Russia actually starved.

ruveyn

You agree to a contract before hand. Fare or not you can choose to agree with it or not. With government you are forced to comply. There is no contract.

I agree to whos contract? Why do I need to? With government I am forced to comply to the rule of it's selected owners of society.