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This seems to me as a "standard" intelectual-elitist paper which tries to insinuate that democracy, where people really decide the issues, cannot work. I haven'
by asgard1024 12y ago
This seems to me as a "standard" intelectual-elitist paper which tries to insinuate that democracy, where people really decide the issues, cannot work. I haven't read it very deeply but the fact that he quotes Walter Lippmann says that lot.
Also, I think he misrepresents Arrow's theorem. First of all, it applies only to ordering of preferences; if you allow preferences to be number from interval, such as range voting does, there is no problem. Second, the non-dictatorship criterion is a bit disingenuous, because who is dictator depends on their own preferences - just like majority vote is not "dictatorship of the majority".
- jarin 12y agoI gotta say, I'm impressed by how you've turned "intelectual" into a pejorative.
- asgard1024 12y agoI really didn't - I wrote "intelectual-elitist". It's their choice to have disgusting opinions. Perhaps I am too cynical, I have been reading too much Chomsky lately. :-) Edit: Let me give you a Chomsky quote: "Actually, I should say, the term "manufacturing consent" is not mine, I took it from Walter Lippmann, the leading public intellectual and leading media figure of the twentieth century, who thought it was a great idea. He said we should manufacture consent, that's the way democracies should work. There should be a small group of powerful people, and the rest of the population should be spectators, and you should force them to consent by controlling, regimenting their minds. That's the leading idea of democratic theorists, and the public relations industry and so on, so I'm not making it up. In fact, I'm just borrowing their conception, and telling other people what they think." This is what the paper appears to be advocating, as well.