7 ms·

I always thought legitimacy in democracy came through the support of the people which is gained through serving them and their interests I mean, yes,

I always thought legitimacy in democracy came through the support of the people which is gained through serving them and their interests I mean, yes, but.... This new form of "democracy" where the elites have all the answers and knows what is best for everyone is the newest form of authoritarianism, IMO. Even a highly educated citizen has about, what, 0.0001% of the specialized domain knowledge required to make the tactical and strategic decisions that go into running a large city, let alone a country. Do you want things like dams, roads, a functional air traffic control system, etc? Do you, personally, know how to do all of those things? Do you think the majority of your fellow citizens do? If you feel that your particular government does a bad job of listening to citizens and empowering experts to actually do the things then hey: that is a 100% valid complaint. But we take it a step too far when we decide that the problem is the very concept of listening to and empowering people who actually know what they are doing.

PaulHoule 3y ago
One could make the case that the problem of the day (Habermas does) is that we don't know how to make a political system which is democratic enough to be successful as well as competent enough to be successful. Habermas was starting to write this at the time the club of Rome was writing Limits to Growth. As much as people thought Limits to Growth was about the 1970s in the 1970s, Limits to Growth predicted things were likely to go to hell between 2020-2050, maybe 2070 if we maximized our coping strategies.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I'm going to check that out. It certainly seems like he identified the heck out of our problem. Possibly our biggest problem in a sense, since it affects so many other things (our response to climate change, etc) As much as people thought Limits to Growth was about the 1970s in the 1970s, Limits to Growth predicted things were likely to go to hell between 2020-2050, maybe 2070 if we maximized our coping strategies. I'll be interested to why he feels this is the particular half century where it all goes to hell. It's not as if the problem of "technocrats vs. the will of the people" is exactly a new tension. When is the last time that a single common person could really understand everything required for society-level decision making? Back in days when we lived in small packs of hunter-gatherers, and pretty much everybody in the cave could use a spear and knew which berries were okay to eat? That's not to say I doubt his conclusion.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    The Limits to Growth is this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth which is not by Habermas but came out around a year before Legitimation Crisis and you’d better believe the “Club of Rome” that signed off on that book was circled by all sorts of allegations. Those guys ran a computer model of coupled differential calculations the simulated a race between technology and population being able to make problems vs solve problems and in various scenarios resource depletion, pollution and insufficient food production eventually result in a system crash. Insofar as something is predicted to occur in a certain time that is an outcome of the model which is: (a) very sample, but (b) run many different times with different parameters (e.g. if you double the supply of natural resources the crisis breaks later but the fundamental picture doesn’t change.) The thing was people were really inclined to think the world was going to hell in the 1970s, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Gold_Rush_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Gold_Rush_(song) and many people who heard about Limits to Growth probably thought it was predicting an imminent crash and not something their great grandchildren would be living through.
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      Thank you so much.

PaulHoule 3y ago

One could make the case that the problem of the day (Habermas does) is that we don't know how to make a political system which is democratic enough to be successful as well as competent enough to be successful. Habermas was starting to write this at the time the club of Rome was writing Limits to Growth. As much as people thought Limits to Growth was about the 1970s in the 1970s, Limits to Growth predicted things were likely to go to hell between 2020-2050, maybe 2070 if we maximized our coping strategies.

JohnBooty 3y ago
I'm going to check that out. It certainly seems like he identified the heck out of our problem. Possibly our biggest problem in a sense, since it affects so many other things (our response to climate change, etc) As much as people thought Limits to Growth was about the 1970s in the 1970s, Limits to Growth predicted things were likely to go to hell between 2020-2050, maybe 2070 if we maximized our coping strategies. I'll be interested to why he feels this is the particular half century where it all goes to hell. It's not as if the problem of "technocrats vs. the will of the people" is exactly a new tension. When is the last time that a single common person could really understand everything required for society-level decision making? Back in days when we lived in small packs of hunter-gatherers, and pretty much everybody in the cave could use a spear and knew which berries were okay to eat? That's not to say I doubt his conclusion.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  The Limits to Growth is this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth which is not by Habermas but came out around a year before Legitimation Crisis and you’d better believe the “Club of Rome” that signed off on that book was circled by all sorts of allegations. Those guys ran a computer model of coupled differential calculations the simulated a race between technology and population being able to make problems vs solve problems and in various scenarios resource depletion, pollution and insufficient food production eventually result in a system crash. Insofar as something is predicted to occur in a certain time that is an outcome of the model which is: (a) very sample, but (b) run many different times with different parameters (e.g. if you double the supply of natural resources the crisis breaks later but the fundamental picture doesn’t change.) The thing was people were really inclined to think the world was going to hell in the 1970s, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Gold_Rush_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_the_Gold_Rush_(song) and many people who heard about Limits to Growth probably thought it was predicting an imminent crash and not something their great grandchildren would be living through.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    Thank you so much.