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Unrestrained equality leads to dictatorship. Unrestrained liberty leads to dictatorship. Democracy requires a balance between equality and liberty, and the poli

Unrestrained equality leads to dictatorship. Unrestrained liberty leads to dictatorship. Democracy requires a balance between equality and liberty, and the political pluralism that is inherent in the vying for power. Partisan fanatics who breathlessly wait for the total victory of their side would do well to remember this.

Kenji 10y ago
I strongly doubt that liberty & equality (before law) lead to dictatorship. Unless you mean liberty that goes as far as harming others. But that would infringe on other people's liberty.
- jackcosgrove 10y ago
  More and more liberty leads to extreme wealth imbalances and eventually the rich form an oligarchy.
- joncrane 10y ago
  There's something to be said for the statement of "the tyranny of democracy." Put more power into the hands of the common people and you end up with someone like Trump as a nominee. Don't you think in a weaker country with more classism like Venezuela, that if a Trump were elected, that you'd end up with something like this?
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    I believe it is the tyranny of the majority, hence why legal frameworks like a constitution are so important. The majority can turn a democracy into a dictatorship.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Venezuela had a constitution. The author of this piece is mourning its ineffectiveness. What's important is the continuity of the constitution.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  The thought, so far as it goes: In many "classless", free-market capitalistic societies (and a bunch of similar ones), society ends up approximating social class by the logarithm of the wealth of the person. In these cases "liberty and equality" really mean "lack of government interference in use of wealth", which ultimately translates to government restraint on social status to influence society for your own benefit. In cases where there's no special laws targeting the wealthy, you essentially have a feudalistic society without any formalized duty of or decorum from the higher classes to the lower classes, which ultimately leads to an exploitative and abusive relationship. As with many cases in politics, the lack of an explicit structure merely means a more abusive invisible structure. The further argument is that this is why we should have laws which target the wealthy to provide civic funding/service, eg, higher taxes above say, $250k/yr. That allowing the dynamic class assignment of free-market economies, but formalizing the duty of the higher classes to provide for those under them, provides for the strongest and most resilient societies. Which is generally speaking what the data shows. Similar arguments can be made about why you should have laws which provide damages if you buy a newspaper and lie about your business rivals molesting kids.
  - jackcosgrove 10y ago
    Liberty and equality are at loggerheads. Liberty is the animating principle of the modern right, and equality is the animating principle of the modern left.
    - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
      I'm not sure I agree. I'd probably phrase it as the US leftwing and rightwing have different importances placed on different kinds of libterties a person can have and different notions of equality. Gun rights, for the left, are an issue of liberty; while abortion, for the right, is a matter of equality. Too often in American politics, we pretend that what are orthogonal axes are different choices in a dilemma. Here I think we have an instance of that: liberty and equality are related but mostly orthogonal groupings of several related concepts, the preference of which can lead to radically different notions of "equality" or "liberty". That's what makes politics hard: the other guy wants liberty too, but he understands that in a fundamentally different way than you.
jimmywanger 10y ago
There is a fundamental discord between property rights and democracy. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0ZB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0ZB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?.... It speaks a lot about market dominant ethnic minorities. The Chinese and the Jews are the target of a lot of these attacks. If you're filipino, and ethnic filipino, it's easy for a populist government to incite economic confiscation and persecution of the ethnic group that tends to hold all the money, which happens to be the Chinese in the Phillipines. Same thing happened in Venezuela. "All the rich people have the money! Let's go take it back! They must have cheated us somehow! Nationalize the factories."
- tptacek 10y ago
  There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships, so I'm not sure how much we can learn from your observation.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships This is true. However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, and don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". Most left wing ideological governments usually go down the bitter road to the end, and do things for political rather than financial purposes. They usually end in either a referendum or revolt when all the money goes away and there are no other exits. That's what Venezuela is doing right now. And it's also quite interesting that your response is "Oh yeah? Well the right wing does it too." What's your point? Maybe it does, and they should be strung up by the thumbs as well. We're talking about left-wing governments who believe in central control of methods of production.
    - eternalban 10y ago
      > However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". I'm curious. Do you have a specimen in mind? [p.s.] > right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven And I question this as well. The ideological basis of right-wing is precisely that the natural order of things is a rigid & hierarchical and that such hierarchies are by nature more stable. And anywho, minus the superficial comrade this and people's soviet that, what was the difference between Stalinist Soviet Union and some right wing system with a generalisimo on top?
tnzn 10y ago
That might be the worst political analysis I've ever seen. Opposing equality and liberty, how hilarious.
tnzn 10y ago
That might be the worst political analysis I've ever seen. Opposing equality and liberty, how hilarious.

Kenji 10y ago

I strongly doubt that liberty & equality (before law) lead to dictatorship. Unless you mean liberty that goes as far as harming others. But that would infringe on other people's liberty.

jackcosgrove 10y ago
More and more liberty leads to extreme wealth imbalances and eventually the rich form an oligarchy.
joncrane 10y ago
There's something to be said for the statement of "the tyranny of democracy." Put more power into the hands of the common people and you end up with someone like Trump as a nominee. Don't you think in a weaker country with more classism like Venezuela, that if a Trump were elected, that you'd end up with something like this?
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  I believe it is the tyranny of the majority, hence why legal frameworks like a constitution are so important. The majority can turn a democracy into a dictatorship.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Venezuela had a constitution. The author of this piece is mourning its ineffectiveness. What's important is the continuity of the constitution.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
The thought, so far as it goes: In many "classless", free-market capitalistic societies (and a bunch of similar ones), society ends up approximating social class by the logarithm of the wealth of the person. In these cases "liberty and equality" really mean "lack of government interference in use of wealth", which ultimately translates to government restraint on social status to influence society for your own benefit. In cases where there's no special laws targeting the wealthy, you essentially have a feudalistic society without any formalized duty of or decorum from the higher classes to the lower classes, which ultimately leads to an exploitative and abusive relationship. As with many cases in politics, the lack of an explicit structure merely means a more abusive invisible structure. The further argument is that this is why we should have laws which target the wealthy to provide civic funding/service, eg, higher taxes above say, $250k/yr. That allowing the dynamic class assignment of free-market economies, but formalizing the duty of the higher classes to provide for those under them, provides for the strongest and most resilient societies. Which is generally speaking what the data shows. Similar arguments can be made about why you should have laws which provide damages if you buy a newspaper and lie about your business rivals molesting kids.
- jackcosgrove 10y ago
  Liberty and equality are at loggerheads. Liberty is the animating principle of the modern right, and equality is the animating principle of the modern left.
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. I'd probably phrase it as the US leftwing and rightwing have different importances placed on different kinds of libterties a person can have and different notions of equality. Gun rights, for the left, are an issue of liberty; while abortion, for the right, is a matter of equality. Too often in American politics, we pretend that what are orthogonal axes are different choices in a dilemma. Here I think we have an instance of that: liberty and equality are related but mostly orthogonal groupings of several related concepts, the preference of which can lead to radically different notions of "equality" or "liberty". That's what makes politics hard: the other guy wants liberty too, but he understands that in a fundamentally different way than you.

jimmywanger 10y ago

There is a fundamental discord between property rights and democracy. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0ZB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC0ZB2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?.... It speaks a lot about market dominant ethnic minorities. The Chinese and the Jews are the target of a lot of these attacks. If you're filipino, and ethnic filipino, it's easy for a populist government to incite economic confiscation and persecution of the ethnic group that tends to hold all the money, which happens to be the Chinese in the Phillipines. Same thing happened in Venezuela. "All the rich people have the money! Let's go take it back! They must have cheated us somehow! Nationalize the factories."

tptacek 10y ago
There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships, so I'm not sure how much we can learn from your observation.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  > There's also an even clearer historical tension between property rights and right-wing authoritarian dictatorships This is true. However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, and don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". Most left wing ideological governments usually go down the bitter road to the end, and do things for political rather than financial purposes. They usually end in either a referendum or revolt when all the money goes away and there are no other exits. That's what Venezuela is doing right now. And it's also quite interesting that your response is "Oh yeah? Well the right wing does it too." What's your point? Maybe it does, and they should be strung up by the thumbs as well. We're talking about left-wing governments who believe in central control of methods of production.
  - eternalban 10y ago
    > However right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven, don't pretend that what they're doing is just "for the good of the people". I'm curious. Do you have a specimen in mind? [p.s.] > right-wing authoritarian dictatorships aren't usually ideologically driven And I question this as well. The ideological basis of right-wing is precisely that the natural order of things is a rigid & hierarchical and that such hierarchies are by nature more stable. And anywho, minus the superficial comrade this and people's soviet that, what was the difference between Stalinist Soviet Union and some right wing system with a generalisimo on top?

tnzn 10y ago

That might be the worst political analysis I've ever seen. Opposing equality and liberty, how hilarious.

tnzn 10y ago

That might be the worst political analysis I've ever seen. Opposing equality and liberty, how hilarious.