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"democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest" That's until you realize that representative democracy (rule of majority) is effectively an
by sovietcattle 7y ago
"democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest"
That's until you realize that representative democracy (rule of majority) is effectively an authoritarian system, which is based on the monopoly of force and the monopoly of currency, and which incentivizes politicians with low time preference to spend more money than what they take (by force) through taxes, therefore indebting and impoverishing the whole population progressively.
There's a social organization system that allows for individual freedoms: free markets with no centralized governments. It's not a setup that will be implemented through revolutions, reforms or good will. It's inevitable that we'll get there as the cost of transactions becomes increasingly small (therefore making centralized systems of organization not viable). Refer to the work of Ronald Coase to understand why that is.
- skywhopper 7y agoWow, you are truly delusional. Markets don’t work in the absence of a governing body with a monopoly on force. If you relish the thought of explicitly living in a world run by gangsters, I guess it’s true we are headed that way. But the emergent properties of such a future do not include anything you or I would call “individual freedoms”.
- dang 7y agoPersonal attacks aren't ok regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Please edit such swipes out of your comments here. We've had to ask you this more than once before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It leads to tedious, repetitive, and usually nasty discussions—see first reply below. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sovietcattle 7y agoMy observation is not ideological, it's a reference to the work of an economist...
- dang 7y agoPeople understand these words differently, but by the standards that apply on HN, it's definitely ideological and generic. These are things we're trying to avoid, because internet forums don't have anything new to say about them. The arguments just get increasingly repetitive and nasty.
- big_chungus 7y agoWhy pick on this comment, though? The whole thread here is an ideological debate between forms of government and is repetitive; you may as well lock the whole thing at this point.
- dang 7y agoThe comment was significantly more generic, which makes for worse discussion, especially on divisive topics: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... One thing to look for is whether a comment remains anchored in the specific content of an article, or has become unmoored from it. Most of this thread retains at least some contact with it. Even the parent of the comment I replied to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21866584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21866584), which is pretty generic, has at least a wispy string connecting it to the OP. But https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867096 just goes into talking points.