35 ms·

The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

206 points by jashkenas 7y ago

peter_retief 7y ago
The Republic, a state of laws to protect democracy and to protect the people from the tyranny of the masses. I love its recursive nature.
amai 7y ago
The basic problem of our democracy in fewer words: „It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.“ Aristotle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)
amilein7minutes 7y ago
What strikes about the theory Lippmann develops in this piece back in 1919, is that the entire argument remains coherent and powerful just as is, a hundred years later in 2019. In the meantime, various implementations of democracy across the world (differing in the way the elections are held, the distribution of power between the legislature, executive and the judiciary and the elections of those etc) have all pretty much encountered the same faultlines emerging. By that I mean that the majority votes based on a confused jumble of propaganda and misinformation and this voting pattern has not produced the best outcome for 1) the protection of the minorities and 2) solving problems that impact every individual, that also require collective effort, such as climate change and poverty. While Lippmann blames the impossibility of gleaning facts from the "inconceivable confusion" that is presented to the common person -- and this problem has only become much worse in 2019, given the ease of access to opinions in the internet age -- is it possible that fake news to undermine democracy is an inevitable feature? In other words, is it possible that even if everyone was presented with crystal clear facts, they would not become rational agents? That the opinion of the masses will still converge to something based on external variables rather than facts? The article gives the impression that once the problem of misinformation is eliminated, the democratic model will truly achieve liberty, as Lippmann defines it, but it does not seem rational to subscribe to this belief, simply because there is no historical precedent (fake news and propaganda are as old as democracy itself and the information age has merely provided infrastructural strength for its spread) and if we were being factual/Bayesian, there is no reason to believe in the redemption of democracy in the absence of misinformation.
awinter-py 7y ago
lippman also wrote a fake dialogue between socrates, thomas jefferson and william jennings byran after the latter died -- worth a read and also it dramatizes his views on elitism in public thought https://artsone-test.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/08/lippman_american-inquisitors.pdf https://artsone-test.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/08/lippman_...
basicplus2 7y ago
"In a passage quoted previously in this essay, Milton said that differences of opinion, ‘which though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of spirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace.’ There is but one kind of unity possible in a world as diverse as ours. It is unity of method, rather than of aim; the unity of the disciplined experiment. There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: the increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs. With a common intellectual method and a common area of valid fact, differences may become a form of coöperation and cease to be an irreconcilable antagonism."
ryacko 7y ago
>If I asserted that the Japanese secretly drank the blood of children, that Japanese women were unchaste, that the Japanese were really not a branch of the human race after all, I guarantee that mot of the newspapers would print it eagerly, and that I could get a hearing in churches all over the country. Given how well Icke is doing, Lippman wasn't wrong.
Iv 7y ago
I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
- ben_w 7y ago
  > For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes. This, but it also needs to be trusted. The losers need to feel that they lost, not just be told they have by the winners. This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. Also, one of the reasons the UK voted to not change its voting mechanism in a recent referendum was that STV was portrayed as too “complicated”, while FPTP has an intuitive definition of “winner”.
  - nl 7y ago
    This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. I don't understand this comment. I agree American democracy was stable after GWB (George W Bush)'s election (although I'm unclear if you mean the end of the vote counting or the judicial process here?). But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all. recent referendum was that STV was portrayed - what is STV? while FPTP has - FPTP = First past the post.
    - afarrell 7y ago
      Single Transferable Vote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI
    - ben_w 7y ago
      > But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all. My memory may be false or incomplete, but I thought Gore ultimately said he’d lost and that Bush has won?
ajna91 7y ago
"If we substitute the word indifference for the word liberty, we shall come much closer to the real intention that lies behind the classic argument. Liberty is to be permitted where differences are of no great moment. It is this definition which has generally guided practice. In times when men feel themselves secure, heresy is cultivated as the spice of life. During a war liberty disappears as the as the community feels itself menaced. When revolution seems to be contagious, heresy-hunting is a respectable occupation. In other words, when men are not afraid, they are not afraid of ideas; when they are much afraid, they are afraid of anything that seems, or can even be made to appear, seditious. That is why nine tenths of the effort to live and let live consists in proving that the thing we wish to have tolerated is really a matter of indifference." EDIT: Wow, the entire article is full of gems like this. Most lucid writing I've ever read in the Atlantic. "But in public affairs the stake is infinitely greater. It involves the lives of millions, and the fortune of everybody. The jury is the whole community, not even the qualified voters alone. The jury is everybody who creates public sentiment—chattering gossips, unscrupulous liars, congenital liars, feeble-minded people, prostitute minds, corrupting agents... If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor’s cow, I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off, and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible."
- yesenadam 7y ago
  I really loved and got a lot from his early books like Liberty and the News–about how democracy needs good journalism–and Public Opinion–about how public opinion was manipulated in WW1, and many other things. I've read it many times, one of my favourites. A Preface to Morals was the first Lippmann book I read, decades ago, and have read many times since. It's about..philosophy/spirituality and the deep needs of civilization. Forgive me sharing a passage from Public Opinion, one of my favourite bits from any book. I call it "Two sides to a fact": The statement is, I think, susceptible of overwhelming proof, that moral codes assume a particular view of the facts. Under the term moral codes I include all kinds: personal, family, economic, professional, legal, patriotic, international. At the center of each there is a pattern of stereotypes about psychology, sociology, and history. The same view of human nature, institutions or tradition rarely persists through all codes. There is a war supposed to affect all alike. Two men are partners in business. One enlists; the other takes a war contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps even his life. He is paid a dollar a day, and no one says, no one believes, that you could make a better soldier out of him by any form of economic incentive. That motive disappears out of his human nature. The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a handsome profit over costs, and few say or believe that he would produce the munitions if there were no economic incentive. That may be unfair to him. The point is that the accepted patriotic code assumes one kind of human nature, the commercial code another. And the codes are probably founded on true expectations to this extent, that when a man adopts a certain code he tends to exhibit the kind of human nature which the code demands. That is one reason why it is so dangerous to generalize about human nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These versions differ by codes in the same person, the codes differ somewhat among persons in the same social set, differ widely as between social sets, and between two nations, or two colours, may differ to the point where there are no common assumptions whatever. That is why people professing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war. The element of their belief which determines conduct is that view of the facts which they assume. That is where codes enter so subtly and so persuasively into the making of public opinion. The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them. That is why, with the best will in the world, the news policy of a journal tends to support its editorial policy; why a capitalist sees one set of facts, and certain aspects of human nature, literally sees them; his socialist opponent another set and other aspects, and why each regards the other as unreasonable or perverse, when the real difference between them is a difference of perception. That difference is imposed by the difference between the capitalist and socialist pattern of stereotypes. “There are no classes in America,” writes an American editor. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” says the Communist Manifesto. If you have the editor’s pattern in your mind, you will see vividly the facts that confirm it, vaguely and ineffectively those that contradict. If you have the communist pattern, you will not only look for different things, but you will see with a totally different emphasis what you and the editor happen to see in common. ... And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgements or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit, we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and consequently in the treacherous character of all opposition. For while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a “question”, they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a “fact.” And they never do believe it until after long critical education, they are fully conscious of how second-hand and subjective is their apprehension of the social data. So where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty. If the pattern fits their experience at a crucial point, they no longer look upon it as an interpretation. They look upon it as “reality”. It may not resemble the reality, except that it culminates in a conclusion which fits a real experience. ...For the opponent presents himself as the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and seen another aspect of it. That would shake the whole scheme. – Public Opinion, 1922, p81
incompatible 7y ago
If you support unrestricted speech, then you support legalisation of lies, fraud, vilification, threats, child abuse pornography, yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres, abandonment of copyright, spreading of state secrets, insider trading, you name it. It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  > abandonment of copyright > spreading of state secrets Nothing controversial about this.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    I can't think of anything less controversial in international main-stream politics than copyright. Pretty much every country in the world has signed up to at least the Berne Convention, even certain so-called rogue states. When was the last time any country reduced the length of its copyright terms? Are there any large political parties, anywhere, that even advocate it? Countries step out of other treaties occasionally, even major things like the EU, climate change and weapons limitation, but copyright is sacred. I suspect that some form of state secret law is also found in practically every country, and any political controversy is only in the details of how its used and misused, not in the concept.
    - matheusmoreira 7y ago
      Copyright was pretty much imposed on the entire world via trade agreements. Adopting US-style intellectual property laws is pretty much a requirement for trading with the US. They even put countries with lax enforcement on a watch list. It's sacred because the multibillion dollar copyright industry spends a lot of its money lobbying governments. This doesn't change the fact that copyright infringement is so trivial copyright might as well be incompatible with the 21st century. Actually enforcing copyright requires sacrificing free computing and the free internet as we know it today. Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. Abolish copyright and let them die if they can't adapt. My problem is not with state secrets but with how governments prosecute their revelation. Whistleblowers are treated like traitors when they reveal the abuses perpetrated by governments under the cover of national security. Of course, the governed doesn't have the privilege of keeping secrets by using encryption: authorities and judges feel disrespected when they can't get access to information and punish people without proof almost out of spite.
walleeee 7y ago
> We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance. Awesome sentence
i_am_nomad 7y ago
Matt Stoller puts this into context in his recent and excellent book “Goliath,” specifically the pro-monopoly, proto-fascist forces dominating America at the time. And of course, he brings this forward to the present, where we are currently contending with and suffering from monopolization.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
galaxyLogic 7y ago
I find this discussion a bit pedantic and ivory-towerish. Fact is that democracy is constantly under attack say voter suppression etc. The question should be about what can be done in practice to make democracy work better, not whether it "is" a perfect system or not. Democracy can be made to work better if people get informed, there are proposals like "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting which should be discussed more in the media. And how about making the election day a national holiday?
- SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
  The other question to ask, is "What actually works better?". Precious few governments in the history of man have not been large-scale atrocity generating machines. Democracies generally seem to offer most, more of a chance than the others. There's always Trump... in democracies, the Trumps are constrained by law. In most other cases, the Trumps wield absolute power. Pick your poison.
  - galaxyLogic 7y ago
    That's the question, what works. I assume access to computers and internet can have a big impact on democracies, so history may or may not be a good guide on what works and what not
- dantheman 7y ago
  I think people being informed is actually part of the problem - you want democracy to do very little. The more informed people are, the more willing to believe they can engineer the society that they want. This seems to always fail.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    I see no reason to believe that ignorance decreases the human desire to act politically.
kiterunner2346 7y ago
I think it relevant to mention Lippmann's statement on Congressional investigations: "So bad is the contact of legislators with necessary facts that they are forced to rely either on private tips or on that legalized atrocity, the Congressional investigation, where Congressmen, starved of their legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish man-hunt, and do not stop at cannibalism. " p. 6, PUBLIC OPINION (1921) by Walter Lippmann http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/pdfs/lippmann.pdf http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
badrabbit 7y ago
> We all use absolutes, because an ideal which seems to exist apart form time, space, and circumstance... A 100 year old typo! I always understood that the terms liberty,freedom,independence,slavery,bondage and servitude must imply a subject to have meaning. Two persons can talk about liberty but they presume the other person agrees the subject of the term in the listener's understand is the same as theirs. I think that's what the author means. But also, it's not just an ideal that is the subject but specific person(s).

206 points by jashkenas 7y ago

The Republic, a state of laws to protect democracy and to protect the people from the tyranny of the masses. I love its recursive nature.

amai 7y ago

The basic problem of our democracy in fewer words: „It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.“ Aristotle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

amilein7minutes 7y ago

What strikes about the theory Lippmann develops in this piece back in 1919, is that the entire argument remains coherent and powerful just as is, a hundred years later in 2019. In the meantime, various implementations of democracy across the world (differing in the way the elections are held, the distribution of power between the legislature, executive and the judiciary and the elections of those etc) have all pretty much encountered the same faultlines emerging. By that I mean that the majority votes based on a confused jumble of propaganda and misinformation and this voting pattern has not produced the best outcome for 1) the protection of the minorities and 2) solving problems that impact every individual, that also require collective effort, such as climate change and poverty. While Lippmann blames the impossibility of gleaning facts from the "inconceivable confusion" that is presented to the common person -- and this problem has only become much worse in 2019, given the ease of access to opinions in the internet age -- is it possible that fake news to undermine democracy is an inevitable feature? In other words, is it possible that even if everyone was presented with crystal clear facts, they would not become rational agents? That the opinion of the masses will still converge to something based on external variables rather than facts? The article gives the impression that once the problem of misinformation is eliminated, the democratic model will truly achieve liberty, as Lippmann defines it, but it does not seem rational to subscribe to this belief, simply because there is no historical precedent (fake news and propaganda are as old as democracy itself and the information age has merely provided infrastructural strength for its spread) and if we were being factual/Bayesian, there is no reason to believe in the redemption of democracy in the absence of misinformation.

awinter-py 7y ago

lippman also wrote a fake dialogue between socrates, thomas jefferson and william jennings byran after the latter died -- worth a read and also it dramatizes his views on elitism in public thought https://artsone-test.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/08/lippman_american-inquisitors.pdf https://artsone-test.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/08/lippman_...

basicplus2 7y ago

"In a passage quoted previously in this essay, Milton said that differences of opinion, ‘which though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of spirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace.’ There is but one kind of unity possible in a world as diverse as ours. It is unity of method, rather than of aim; the unity of the disciplined experiment. There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: the increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs. With a common intellectual method and a common area of valid fact, differences may become a form of coöperation and cease to be an irreconcilable antagonism."

ryacko 7y ago

>If I asserted that the Japanese secretly drank the blood of children, that Japanese women were unchaste, that the Japanese were really not a branch of the human race after all, I guarantee that mot of the newspapers would print it eagerly, and that I could get a hearing in churches all over the country. Given how well Icke is doing, Lippman wasn't wrong.

Iv 7y ago

I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.

ben_w 7y ago
> For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes. This, but it also needs to be trusted. The losers need to feel that they lost, not just be told they have by the winners. This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. Also, one of the reasons the UK voted to not change its voting mechanism in a recent referendum was that STV was portrayed as too “complicated”, while FPTP has an intuitive definition of “winner”.
- nl 7y ago
  This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. I don't understand this comment. I agree American democracy was stable after GWB (George W Bush)'s election (although I'm unclear if you mean the end of the vote counting or the judicial process here?). But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all. recent referendum was that STV was portrayed - what is STV? while FPTP has - FPTP = First past the post.
  - afarrell 7y ago
    Single Transferable Vote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI
  - ben_w 7y ago
    > But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all. My memory may be false or incomplete, but I thought Gore ultimately said he’d lost and that Bush has won?

ajna91 7y ago

"If we substitute the word indifference for the word liberty, we shall come much closer to the real intention that lies behind the classic argument. Liberty is to be permitted where differences are of no great moment. It is this definition which has generally guided practice. In times when men feel themselves secure, heresy is cultivated as the spice of life. During a war liberty disappears as the as the community feels itself menaced. When revolution seems to be contagious, heresy-hunting is a respectable occupation. In other words, when men are not afraid, they are not afraid of ideas; when they are much afraid, they are afraid of anything that seems, or can even be made to appear, seditious. That is why nine tenths of the effort to live and let live consists in proving that the thing we wish to have tolerated is really a matter of indifference." EDIT: Wow, the entire article is full of gems like this. Most lucid writing I've ever read in the Atlantic. "But in public affairs the stake is infinitely greater. It involves the lives of millions, and the fortune of everybody. The jury is the whole community, not even the qualified voters alone. The jury is everybody who creates public sentiment—chattering gossips, unscrupulous liars, congenital liars, feeble-minded people, prostitute minds, corrupting agents... If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor’s cow, I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off, and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible."

yesenadam 7y ago
I really loved and got a lot from his early books like Liberty and the News–about how democracy needs good journalism–and Public Opinion–about how public opinion was manipulated in WW1, and many other things. I've read it many times, one of my favourites. A Preface to Morals was the first Lippmann book I read, decades ago, and have read many times since. It's about..philosophy/spirituality and the deep needs of civilization. Forgive me sharing a passage from Public Opinion, one of my favourite bits from any book. I call it "Two sides to a fact": The statement is, I think, susceptible of overwhelming proof, that moral codes assume a particular view of the facts. Under the term moral codes I include all kinds: personal, family, economic, professional, legal, patriotic, international. At the center of each there is a pattern of stereotypes about psychology, sociology, and history. The same view of human nature, institutions or tradition rarely persists through all codes. There is a war supposed to affect all alike. Two men are partners in business. One enlists; the other takes a war contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps even his life. He is paid a dollar a day, and no one says, no one believes, that you could make a better soldier out of him by any form of economic incentive. That motive disappears out of his human nature. The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a handsome profit over costs, and few say or believe that he would produce the munitions if there were no economic incentive. That may be unfair to him. The point is that the accepted patriotic code assumes one kind of human nature, the commercial code another. And the codes are probably founded on true expectations to this extent, that when a man adopts a certain code he tends to exhibit the kind of human nature which the code demands. That is one reason why it is so dangerous to generalize about human nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These versions differ by codes in the same person, the codes differ somewhat among persons in the same social set, differ widely as between social sets, and between two nations, or two colours, may differ to the point where there are no common assumptions whatever. That is why people professing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war. The element of their belief which determines conduct is that view of the facts which they assume. That is where codes enter so subtly and so persuasively into the making of public opinion. The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them. That is why, with the best will in the world, the news policy of a journal tends to support its editorial policy; why a capitalist sees one set of facts, and certain aspects of human nature, literally sees them; his socialist opponent another set and other aspects, and why each regards the other as unreasonable or perverse, when the real difference between them is a difference of perception. That difference is imposed by the difference between the capitalist and socialist pattern of stereotypes. “There are no classes in America,” writes an American editor. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” says the Communist Manifesto. If you have the editor’s pattern in your mind, you will see vividly the facts that confirm it, vaguely and ineffectively those that contradict. If you have the communist pattern, you will not only look for different things, but you will see with a totally different emphasis what you and the editor happen to see in common. ... And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgements or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit, we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and consequently in the treacherous character of all opposition. For while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a “question”, they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a “fact.” And they never do believe it until after long critical education, they are fully conscious of how second-hand and subjective is their apprehension of the social data. So where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty. If the pattern fits their experience at a crucial point, they no longer look upon it as an interpretation. They look upon it as “reality”. It may not resemble the reality, except that it culminates in a conclusion which fits a real experience. ...For the opponent presents himself as the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and seen another aspect of it. That would shake the whole scheme. – Public Opinion, 1922, p81

incompatible 7y ago

If you support unrestricted speech, then you support legalisation of lies, fraud, vilification, threats, child abuse pornography, yelling "Fire!" in crowded theatres, abandonment of copyright, spreading of state secrets, insider trading, you name it. It's not surprising that few dare to advocate it.

matheusmoreira 7y ago
> abandonment of copyright > spreading of state secrets Nothing controversial about this.
- incompatible 7y ago
  I can't think of anything less controversial in international main-stream politics than copyright. Pretty much every country in the world has signed up to at least the Berne Convention, even certain so-called rogue states. When was the last time any country reduced the length of its copyright terms? Are there any large political parties, anywhere, that even advocate it? Countries step out of other treaties occasionally, even major things like the EU, climate change and weapons limitation, but copyright is sacred. I suspect that some form of state secret law is also found in practically every country, and any political controversy is only in the details of how its used and misused, not in the concept.
  - matheusmoreira 7y ago
    Copyright was pretty much imposed on the entire world via trade agreements. Adopting US-style intellectual property laws is pretty much a requirement for trading with the US. They even put countries with lax enforcement on a watch list. It's sacred because the multibillion dollar copyright industry spends a lot of its money lobbying governments. This doesn't change the fact that copyright infringement is so trivial copyright might as well be incompatible with the 21st century. Actually enforcing copyright requires sacrificing free computing and the free internet as we know it today. Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. Abolish copyright and let them die if they can't adapt. My problem is not with state secrets but with how governments prosecute their revelation. Whistleblowers are treated like traitors when they reveal the abuses perpetrated by governments under the cover of national security. Of course, the governed doesn't have the privilege of keeping secrets by using encryption: authorities and judges feel disrespected when they can't get access to information and punish people without proof almost out of spite.

walleeee 7y ago

> We are peculiarly inclined to suppress whatever impugns the security of that to which we have given our allegiance. Awesome sentence

i_am_nomad 7y ago

Matt Stoller puts this into context in his recent and excellent book “Goliath,” specifically the pro-monopoly, proto-fascist forces dominating America at the time. And of course, he brings this forward to the present, where we are currently contending with and suffering from monopolization.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

galaxyLogic 7y ago

I find this discussion a bit pedantic and ivory-towerish. Fact is that democracy is constantly under attack say voter suppression etc. The question should be about what can be done in practice to make democracy work better, not whether it "is" a perfect system or not. Democracy can be made to work better if people get informed, there are proposals like "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting which should be discussed more in the media. And how about making the election day a national holiday?

SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
The other question to ask, is "What actually works better?". Precious few governments in the history of man have not been large-scale atrocity generating machines. Democracies generally seem to offer most, more of a chance than the others. There's always Trump... in democracies, the Trumps are constrained by law. In most other cases, the Trumps wield absolute power. Pick your poison.
- galaxyLogic 7y ago
  That's the question, what works. I assume access to computers and internet can have a big impact on democracies, so history may or may not be a good guide on what works and what not
dantheman 7y ago
I think people being informed is actually part of the problem - you want democracy to do very little. The more informed people are, the more willing to believe they can engineer the society that they want. This seems to always fail.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  I see no reason to believe that ignorance decreases the human desire to act politically.

kiterunner2346 7y ago

I think it relevant to mention Lippmann's statement on Congressional investigations: "So bad is the contact of legislators with necessary facts that they are forced to rely either on private tips or on that legalized atrocity, the Congressional investigation, where Congressmen, starved of their legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish man-hunt, and do not stop at cannibalism. " p. 6, PUBLIC OPINION (1921) by Walter Lippmann http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/pdfs/lippmann.pdf http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/...

deleted 7y ago

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badrabbit 7y ago

> We all use absolutes, because an ideal which seems to exist apart form time, space, and circumstance... A 100 year old typo! I always understood that the terms liberty,freedom,independence,slavery,bondage and servitude must imply a subject to have meaning. Two persons can talk about liberty but they presume the other person agrees the subject of the term in the listener's understand is the same as theirs. I think that's what the author means. But also, it's not just an ideal that is the subject but specific person(s).