4 ms·
How big philanthropy undermines democracy (2013)
- TomMarius 8y agoWho cares about democracy? I thought the goal is not to have democracy but to be free as much as possible while having a positive society, which is best achieved by limited democracy (and that might or might not be the case today).
- vectorEQ 8y agodon't you see. we need democracy so when people like giving we can give them SHIT and tell them their generosity hurts our values.
- petermcneeley 8y agoYou should watch "The Trap" by Adam Curtis. Basically what you are describing is called Negative Liberty and it is a very particular narrow and limiting type of freedom. https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-trap/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-trap/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty
- TomMarius 8y agoThat isn't what I meant. I wanted to say that I feel like people are focusing on democracy for the sake of having democracy instead of using it as just one tool to achieve maximum freedom like it was supposed to.
- petermcneeley 8y agoYes but "achieve maximum freedom" is a negative liberty concept. Positive liberty is more like parentalism which limits freedom to achieve self-mastery.
- TomMarius 8y agoFor this reason I specifically said "while having a positive society". Not that I don't agree (or disagree) but I don't want to argue about this at all. The point is that we have democracy instead of absolutism to have freedom, not to have democracy.
- deogeo 8y agoIt's very telling that those Parent Trigger laws provide for converting a school to a charter school, but not back to a regular school. Once the Market gets hold of a formerly public institution, it doesn't like to give it back.