7 ms·

"The philosopher John Stuart Mill noted more than 200 years ago that, once decent living standards were assured, human efforts should be directed to the pursuit

• RichEO 4y ago
  > A business? No. A bank? No. A country? No. In a modern democracy, only one of those three could conceivably have your interests at heart. Lumping them all together damages participation in democracy, which exacerbates the problem.
  • kortilla 4y ago
    Democracy absolutely does not care about you and thinking it does is damaging to democracy. Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. If your interests don’t align with thah majority, the country is not acting on your behalf. Knowing that an participating in democracy without tying up your identity in the outcomes is critical.
    • MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Well it does care about you, just that the level of care you receive is roughly what hundreds of millions of others also get. 1/250000000 is a pretty small amount in the grand scheme. We typically round down small fractions to zero so a very niche opinion with a few hundred folks is still approximately zero.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        No, that math isn’t correct. If you are in the minority, there is no compromise in democracy. The level of care you receive is exactly 0 if the majority voted against you. 20 years ago you couldn’t have 40% of a gay marriage, it was just no gay marriage.
        • MichaelZuo 4y ago
          People typically live for more than just a single issue. Averaged over many thousands of issues, some of which you end up enjoying benefits from and some of which you end up suffering penalties from, and after many years of residence, it does work out that way.
          • pksebben 4y ago
            it might. It might, if we didn't split votes by district, then by county, then by state, and bundle them. It might if our representation weren't purposefully skewed to favor states with let populations. It might if there were runoff voting. It might if there weren't an electoral college, circumventing all that already miserable voting procedure. It might if voting we're a national holiday. It might if we had a choice that wasn't "this pile of shit over here" versus "that mass of excrementt over there". Really, they're different! It might if, after the elections were over, there wasn't a whole industry, made up of politician's former colleagues, making truckloads of money to peddle influence on behalf of big business and billionaires. To believe that our democratic process does anything to connect the political zeitgeist of the people to actual policy is to believe in the tooth fairy.
            • MichaelZuo 4y ago
              Yes, the things you believe in are ostensibly 1/250000000th the importance of the sum total of what everyone in the U.S. believes in. For example, if the 'political zeitgeist' your referring to is comprised of 50 million eligible voters, and if the other 200 million are fence sitters on believe in another 'zeitgeist', then it's in fact correct for the U.S. as a country to completely ignore the 50 million. i.e. to block it from having any effect on 'actual policy'. After all, minority rights are only guaranteed up to the 3/4 threshold, after which a constitutional convention could do anything, such as reinstating slavery, prohibition, or even abolish the existing constitution and all laws passed by Congress entirely, etc...
    • eyelidlessness 4y ago
      > Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. Only if you’re a dictionary. Democracy as practiced routinely resists the will of the majority (eg attitudes towards climate, reproductive rights), and also routinely reinforces minoritarian protections once established (eg accessibility for people with disabilities). Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        You’re quibbling over the layers of indirection a representative democracy adds, but it doesn’t fundamentally change. If the majority of people wanted to strips rights for those with disabilities, they would be well within the constitution to do it. > Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever. Sure, but the point is that regardless of governing mechanism, the government is not acting in your interest (unless you’re an authoritarian dictator and even then there is internal resistance).
        • eyelidlessness 4y ago
          I’m not quibbling anything.
          • kortilla 4y ago
            Yes, pointing out the delay representative democracy induces as proof that democracy doesn’t represent the will of the people is quibbling.
            • eyelidlessness 4y ago
              You must have misunderstood my comment. Only one of my examples might conceivably be delayed. One is explicitly being reversed, and the other is protection of a vulnerable group regardless of majority status. My point isn’t that democracy fails to represent the will of the people. Democracy is more complicated than that, in some ways more flawed and in some ways better.
  • yucky 4y ago
    Democracy is incompatible with freedom. As soon as enough people decide I should die or lose my possessions or do some other thing I don't want to do, I am forced against my will with violence. So we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom and foresight of the masses. No wonder we're screwed.
    • glial 4y ago
      Curious to know your definition of freedom, and what system of government it is compatible with.
      • gibspaulding 4y ago
        I was expecting some sort of pivot to "but of course all government is incompatible with freedom, and democracy is better than most, and anarchy doesn't scale well, so democracy it is!"
      • yucky 4y ago
        If there are no systems of government compatible with freedom, does that indicate there is a problem with the idea of freedom or a problem with the idea of government?
        • fulafel 4y ago
          It would seem that groups of people getting along always necessarily involves some compromise between these, whether structured ("government") or the law of the jungle.
    • jerojero 4y ago
      I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? Much like any political system you can imagine, a democratic system requires a complex web of rules and regulations to function properly. For one, so-called democracies always require more specification. Are you talking about direct democracy? Are you talking about deliberative democracy? Are you talking about representative democracy? Democracy does not mean, by the way, the "rule of the majority" because "demos" does not mean majority but people. And for the common people to rule you need a system to encompass it. Of course, over time there have been a lot of criticism and a lot of work done in deciding which rules and which structures are the most appropriate to make the necessary compromises for our political systems to work. To put things on perspective, in Switzerland for example they have decided that the will of the swiss people is above international treaties. And this does pose a problem, for example there was a referendum a couple years back for the banning of face covering; a policy which affects everyone, yes, but affects most a particular group (muslim women). But in most cases, swiss people have a very full participatory democracy and their political system is incredibly stable. It's not perfect, and a lot of experts in the field consider countries should never be above international treaties such as the human rights treaty that most countries have signed. When you say "we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom of the masses" you're making a pro-elitism argument. In that the masses ought to be ruled by people better than the masses; and in many ways, this is the approach countries like China have taken. To me, a big problem with this approach comes from the ego of individuals. Is it really possible to change someone's mind who happens to be in a position of power such as that? Is it easy? Personally I believe this to be a much more dangerous prospect. A good example of this can be seen, I think, in Meta (the company) where Zuckerberg is pretty much destroying the company and everyone but him can see it. Yes, this man build the company, but does that expertise translate to every future challenge? It is why we tend to prefer collective decision making, usually smaller bodies, but could there be space to make better use of bigger collectives? I think so. So in short, I think you should probably read a little more about political philosophy to be able to say something as big as "Democracy is incompatible with freedom". It's a pretty big statement.
• jahewson 4y ago
  I don't know, there's plenty of people competing over social progress, competing over moral progress, and completing over leisure. I suspect that Mr Mill would take a dim view of this.
• zsz 4y ago
  Wrong turn? Rat race? Compared to what? Your ancestors 200 years ago were malnourished, working the fields all day to eke out a miserable existence, never enjoying a single luxury in life. They didn't know how to read or write, and in any case wouldn't have had time for such luxurious activities. Human progress has brought us to the point where we have the free time to complain about how disadvantaged we are and how unfair life is, without giving a thought to the fact that our daily lives are far more luxurious than those of kings who lived 200 years ago.
  • dendriti 4y ago
    Literacy rates in Western Europe and North America were quite high. There was an bustling trade in almanacs, pamphlets, periodicals and Bibles. Go read about Charles Dickens' career and how he succeeded by appealing to the tastes of the common man.
    • koheripbal 4y ago
      "quite high" but still horrible by today's standards.
  • fulafel 4y ago
    The "once decent living standards were assured" part covers this.
    • leetcrew 4y ago
      "decent living standards" are a moving target; the definition is always relative to what is currently possible. in mill's time, this might have amounted to having a roof to sleep under and a reliable source of calories. germ theory of disease was just starting to gain acceptance in the latter part of his lifetime. today we seriously consider providing free healthcare to all, and in some countries this is already a reality.
      • thayne 4y ago
        In any major city in even the wealthiest of nations it isn't hard to find people who don't have a roof to sleep under and a reliable source of calories. For large portions of the population, things are definitely better than they were 200 years ago. But we are still a long ways away from decent living standards being assured to everyone.
• harry8 4y ago
  You're assuming zero population growth and that people "over there" who look and/or talk different that it separately doesn't matter if they starve. When we make things more efficent it is reasonable to remember this is the /world/ economy getting more efficient and the most important thing we are making efficent is growing enough food for 7b people through specialisation and trade and espeically technical progress. The second most important thing is making it so that parents don't routinely and commonly watch their children die in pain. In Mill's time at the height of the biggest empire ever known, right at its centre of wealth children starved. Their parents watched them die from what we now refer to as "preventable disease" and are outraged when any child in the world dies of it. I'm taking that faustian bargain we took as a species every f*king time. No we did not "take the wrong turn." There remains plenty to discuss on how to do it better going forward. 2c worth, YMMV.
  • diordiderot 4y ago
    IMHO The idea that the the current economic order is the most efficient is... idealistic > "over there" who look and/or talk different that it separately doesn't matter if they starve. The global economy is about expanding the wealth and consumption of the.01% while maintaining a standard of living well enough that the next 20% won't murder them and guard then from the bottom 80% > is growing enough food for 7b people We're well well beyond this capability. Westerners need to eat less meat, waste less electricity (more fuel for fertilizer etc). Most westerner economies are rentier economies. They need more wealth taxes and more antitrust. Rishi Sunak, the billionaire banker, conservative leader of the UK himself said that cutting corporate tax doesn't result in more productive investment
    • antupis 4y ago
      It is best what we have and doing pretty good job https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-death-rate-since-1860s-revised.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/03/Famine-death-rate... and https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literate-and-illiterate-world-population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literate-and-illiterate-w...
    • harry8 4y ago
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  >human efforts should be directed to the pursuit of social and moral progress and the increase of leisure, not the competitive struggle for material wealth" What about not directing anything and maintaining a free world where any individual can pursue what goal he or she sees worthy? I grew sick of governments or groups of self appointed elites trying to tell people how they should live their lives.
• leroman 4y ago
  Id suggest this is what is fueling the political craziness across the globe, people lost faith in the system and politicians, instead of fixing the issue, use peoples anger to advance some agenda.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• marcyb5st 4y ago
  Ouch. This hits close to home as I feel exactly in that "rat race" you mentioned. And I was thinking about this very topic few weeks back after rewatching "into the wild". Before stopping thinking about this I "converged" on an overall happiness score combined with a sustainability index. In this context sustainability is in a wider sense like: are the policies of a government sustainable long term? This is to avoid a government game the system by borrowing a bunch to improve citizens happiness short term to stay in power longer.
• jimbob45 4y ago
  On the other hand, our progression has allowed us to overcome challenges that could have been extinction-level events otherwise. Who’s to say what happens if we stagnate and don’t get a COVID vaccine out in time to largely stunt the disease? What sort of knock-on effects might that have had on other areas of progress?
• shawn-butler 4y ago
  >> Yes, we took the wrong turn. As long as there is scarcity there will be competition and a "rat race" I would say we have two real scarcities left remaining: energy and the conjoined pair food/water. It can be argued that that the latter is entirely dependent on the former and the failure of modernity was our collective inability to adopt/secure nuclear power in the period between 1940-1970, the global adoption and security of which would have pushed us very close to a post-scarcity economy and the major cultural (re)evolution that would entail. Instead it was weaponized resulting in its demonization by reactionaries and the poisoning of it as "toxic" in the public discourse and we are now stuck in Adam Smith style economies of warfare that will eternally just create new scarcities in new cycles. I would imagine major warfare will soon begin towards the middle/end of this century over habitable space and water scarcities all problems of our own creation. Just my $0.02
  • imtringued 4y ago
    >As long as there is scarcity there will be competition and a "rat race" That makes no sense. Human wants are infinite only at zero marginal cost. The moment there is a positive marginal cost wants become finite. Even a gift that costs you nothing has a marginal cost to receive and store it in your house. So even if the entirety of humanity gave Jeff Bezos a gift he would refuse those gifts at some point. What western societies suffer from is not scarcity but abundance relative to our quite limited wants. We give up an unreasonable amount of resources to buy something that is already there, land in a popular location. One thing that is special about land is that humans didn't create the earth. Suddenly there is an infinite demand for land because you own anything that happens on it, even the labor of other people working the land. The marginal cost of land is negative because of income taxation. But here is the thing. One man's land abundance is another man's land scarcity. So if you really wanted to solve this problem you would have to divide the earth equally among all humans.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• randomdata 4y ago
  > human efforts should be directed to the pursuit of social and moral progress and the increase of leisure For better or worse we gave up on slavery a long time ago. We decided that humans shouldn't be directed but rather be left to choose their own direction. This means that they are likely to choose, literally and metaphorically, junk food over vegetables. While vegetables may be better for you, it turns out humans like to taste the competitive struggle for material wealth. If it wasn't obvious 200 years ago, we have learned that helping your neighbour live a good life doesn't spark the same desire as striving to have something to show that you are better than your neighbour. > It's unclear who this destructive machine is serving. Those who participate in it. This "machine" you speak of is nothing more than the aggregate of choices made by a population of people. They could change, but what's the incentive? Leisure isn't the top priority of the human. Mating is. And displays of "being better" help attract higher quality mates. We have yet to figure out how to provide decent mating options for all so competition is still required.