Apologies for lack of posting today - rather difficult 'mother visit' and on my return home I noticed that Earwig had a guest post on Max Farquar's blog.
Change of URL
13 years ago
Sunday 20 November 2011
Sunday 20th November 2011
Labels:
Democracy,
Earwig,
Max Farquar
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4 comments:
Our present system is fine if we could only get decent people in charge and indeed, Mandarins fired.
Yes. Our system is very fine, apart from tptb having a certain length of piano wire going upwards from their necks towards the top of that lamp post above their heads.
Well, Earwig has the fault part more or less right, except for his naive belief our system ever had any real interest in democracy. It has not so much been subverted by human nature as operating exactly as it was designed to.
His solution of randomly (with caveats) chosen representatives is also naive in the extreme. He uses the jury system as an example but it is not a very robust system in our modern world. It worked very well when the local community averaged a hundred or two souls, every man was more or less equal and everyone knew everyone else, including the accused. Wherever the accused was a stranger it is pretty certain they were found 'guilty' whatever the evidence.
For me the only 'true' democratic system would effectively be based on Bills being presented in referenda. Bills written in plain English with clear clauses, not the obfuscating gobbledegook they employ today in order to keep everything understandable only to the initiated elite. Aside from day to day management of the offices of state politicians would have no place whatsoever. There I do agree with Earwig, a central tenet must include the total excision of the political class.
Or; Surprised you think so, really. It is far from fine as in fact it is no more than an elected dictatorship.
k: Quite agree.
PC: And that is where my participatory form of democracy scores as it provides for the total negation of politician the their usurpation of power.
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