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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

by 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.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      You've probably seen this, but for those who haven't George Lakoff give's this a fairly good treatment in this[1] on 'Moral Politics'. By 'this' I mean the idea that the Left and the Right have different experiences of what is moral. My issue with politics is that I think we need to extricate it from morality. Like we have separation of Church and State a la Secular Society, we need amoral politics. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM

by 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.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
    You've probably seen this, but for those who haven't George Lakoff give's this a fairly good treatment in this[1] on 'Moral Politics'. By 'this' I mean the idea that the Left and the Right have different experiences of what is moral. My issue with politics is that I think we need to extricate it from morality. Like we have separation of Church and State a la Secular Society, we need amoral politics. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM