Senate What's more important: democracy, or secularism/liberalism?

Well, I hold a 4.0GPA master's in international relations, I worked in a diplomatic/policy arm of a government agency, representing the Commonwealth to a number of counterpart governments and in international fora. I also retrained and work in regulatory compliance, meaning my background is also in economics, finance and law.

Is this ok?

 

Spoiler: Gupta's Law of Convenient Anomalies

"If it looks too good to be true, it probably is." - Henry Gupta, Dead Bond Villain

Sure, aside from me not believing half of it. You'll have to excuse me for being skeptical, because I've corrected you on some very basic concepts* that someone with your background and skillset should be able to ace. And I'm just a poor, uneducated country boy. Frankly, someone of your expertise should be mopping the floor with little old me. Are you sandbagging me, pal?

It's interesting that you're now in regulatory compliance, something I've dabbled in from time to time. If you were to briefly sum up the most critical element of regulatory compliance for the average citizen, what would you say it would be?

*Mob rule vs. representative democracy, the nature of (not the typo) Tyranny of the Majority

 

Sure thing.

Communism is a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

Ha! And I didn't even use Google!




I used Bing

Sent from Hell--depending on whether or not it exists.

 

Except we weren't talking about the same thing on mob rule v representative democracy. We were talking about the dangers of mob rule to representative democracy, a distinction which you fell over.

But here's the thing. I've been posting in this forum since 2001. So, through most of those life events. I'm not sure there's anything I need to prove to you since I don't actually care what your view of me is. I'm not hidden on linkedin, I have at least 2 JC'ers I can think of who are connections there.

So your believing it is somewhat immaterial to me, mostly because I'm not really sure there's any benefit to me earning your respect.

As for the "dabbling" and asking me define, you want me to explain 3LOD or you want me to say "regulatory compliance is the process of making sure an organisation's controls* align with relevant regulatory and legislative instruments; that its responsible managers are aware of the operational, reputational, regulatory and other risks facing the business; that those are documented in a risk appetite statement that is reviewed periodically and approved at board level, and that any material breaches of the law are reported to regulators"?

* Should I define controls too?

Is that ok for you? If not, let me know, and I'll hand back my salary and "head of" title.

 

I wish we were talking about that. That might be an interesting conversation. Instead you've been going on about people's qualifications or distain for listening to their betters. The danger that mob rule represents is not that the majority will sometimes make bad decisions, but rather that the majority will try to usurp the embedded rights or protections afforded to everyone--especially the minority. That's what de Tocqueville's primary point was in his footnote about the journalists in Baltimore. That danger is present in all majorities, whether they are educated or uneducated.

Probably not. It's hard to grant respect when you've attempted to elevate yourself above your fellow common man. It's also hard to take you seriously when one of your qualifications is: "I've been posting on the internet for a long time." But congratulations on being on LinkedIn, I hear that's a pretty select group of humanity. How long were you on the waiting list to get in?

They say that if you stay on LinkedIn long enough, you'll probably get connected to God himself.(Herself? Itself?)

Okay, feel free to hand it back. I'll wait. And since you offered, sure, please define controls. In traditional haiku form.

The reality is that nothing that you've gone on about, whether it be your fancy title, fat paycheck, or elite LinkedIn status indicates you actually have the true expertise to assess the competency of others with any degree of validity or reliability, unless you also have a background in psychometrics that you've yet to disclose. All you have is another "sacred view" that you feel ought to be listened to. How does that make your opinion any different than the uneducated tradesman you criticized earlier? Remember: we're all just dogs in the park.

Also, "Head of" titles, don't mean much to me these days:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/head-of-ninja-development-salary-SRCH_KO0,25.htm

Heck, I'm in the wrong job. I need to develop Ninjas for a living.

 

Think I'll move this over here.

So, should people not have a say in how they're governed? How do you hold leaders accountable if not through democracy? Yeah, we've all seen how some leaders can manipulate their publics to keep themselves in power, and that's bad. But to go completely the other way and throw out democracy, I don't think is the solution.

 

You're running under an illusion that democracy is the sole way of holding governments accountable. You're also running under an illusion voting for people into certain positions is "having a say in how you're governed." It's not. You have a say in who is your president, your senator and representatives, and a few other positions. You do not have a say in a hell of a lot of other things. And that's okay. Because you have to ask yourself what is your goal here. Is your goal here to always let people get to decide who gets what job? Or is your goal here to create a just society. You can have a just society regardless of whether your country has voting. The onus is on you to prove to me that you need to have voting.

 

So what's the alternative? No, democracy doesn't guarantee a just society...but it looks to have a better chance at it than a non-democracy.

 

That makes no sense.
If two people hold different views, then both have to offer proof for their ideas. It's not the responsibility of one of the two to prove their point while the other just gets to proclaim his opinion and then is automatically considered to be right.

This "just society" bit is rather meaningless anyway. You can have a just society under any rule, even a dictatorship or absolute monarchy, provided it is in the leaders best interest to have it that way. The question is how stable is this system in regard to upholding the just society for the longterm. The more the power is just held among a secluded circle of people, the more likely it is that someone will eventually come to power who is only looking after his own interests. And it is very hard to get rid of powerful people who have entrenched their might. Thus, on average, democracy offers the best likelyhood to reach or maintain a just society of all the systems or ideas that people have thought of so far. That doesn't make it the perfect solution, especially when not guarded properly against attempts to destroy it, but it remains the least worst option.

 

1) your commentary on where the onus lies is wrong. I am not the one holding an opinion here. I'm not the one making any kind of declaration. He is. He has to back his declaration that democracy is necessary to hold the government accountable.

2) democracy is actually the least stable here in both achieving justice and in protecting it. You've seen just how bad this is by the rollback Trump's administration is doing for the rights of various minorities.

 

So, what...this looks like it's just the old "democracy vs. benevolent dictatorship" debate. And the argument the pro-democracy side always brings up is that benevolent dictatorships don't stay benevolent for long.

 

See, you're still looking at it as "Vivec is the pro dictatorship side" when I'm open minded to both while you're the one demanding that only democracy is viable while downplaying all negative aspects to it.

You're closed minded.

 

Okay, so I'm not a political science major...I haven't studied all the political systems throughout history. How do you keep leaders accountable without democracy then?

 

A question I didn't ask in my original post: how democratic does a government need to be in order to truly qualify as a "democracy"? Just the alleged universal right of all adults to vote, given a minimum age plus legal citizenship plus a clean criminal record? Or is it not a democracy unless some of those left-out in that definition can also vote? What if the age of adulthood, and to vote, moves up to 21, or 25?
What if a simple majority win a referendum that strips anyone who isn't a man from being able to vote in subsequent elections? What is there's a property or wealth qualification? Or a religious test? Or a qualification of race, or color, or ethnicity, or national ancestry, or genetic ancestry?
Is it democratic if it puts up various barriers to voting, in the guide of voter ID hurdles or voter registration hurdles or voter roll purges or voting day obstacles?
Is it democratic if it has a broken criminal justice system in need of serious police, trial, sentencing, and prison reforms?
Is it still a democracy if corporations can give unlimited funds to political campaigns, as long as it's in a shadowy indirect way?
Is it democratic if the "winner" wins with less than 50% of the vote, because the rest is too divided?
Is it democratic enough of a government with the Electoral College for the Presidency, or gerrymandering in the House, or the life-term appointments of Supreme Court justices, or the Senate's mere existence, to be considered a true democracy?

And if the government has a number of those problems above,
is it "democratic enough" to prefer that system over a government that prizes rights (to life, liberty, against unreasonable search & seizure, due process, fair trial & fair sentencing, humane prison, equal protection under the law, nondiscrimination of race/gender/religion/sexuality/etc., separation of church & state, free speech, privacy, healthcare/medicine, food/water, housing/utilities, education, childcare/eldercare/disability, a good environment, good & sustainable infrastructure, economic/social security, etc.)
?

If a government was lacking in many of those aspects of democracy, and many of those rights, which would come first?

Is democracy is a means to an end, or an end in itself?

If democracy threatens to erode existing rights, which do you side with?

Ideally both should come together, but that's not always the case. Can you have these rights ensured in a system that's neither a democracy, nor a dictatorship (described as "benovolent" or not)? While "benevolent dictatorship" is under threat of either the dictator becoming corrupted, or the successor being self-interested or malicious... is there another way? To have a system that might not be that democratic, but neither is a dictatorship, yet secures those rights and keeps the best interests for the people at its core?

 

Isn't that what happened in Egypt? People were worried about the Muslim Brotherhood trashing people's rights, so they supported Sisi's coup...and, well...things haven't been pretty.

 

I'm not sure how that's a response to my post?

 

Okay I guess Egypt is actually a bad example, since the regime that took over ended up not being liberal at all. Maybe more like Reconstruction South, where I think 3/5ths of whites were barred from voting to prevent them from using their power to oppress newly liberated slaves.

 

I’m not sure what you’re arguing now, since there’s a broad consensus that Reconstruction should have lasted a lot longer and been more radical.

 

Wondering what people might think now…

 

Well first of all we need a reasonable definition of what is a fundamental inalienable right...and what isn't. It used to be that slaveowners said that emancipation violated their fundamental property rights. Today we have billionaires saying that progressive taxes violate their property rights, or that campaign finance laws violate their free speech rights. We have pro-gun extremists who claim they have an absolute fundamental right to own assault weapons. We have anti-vaxxers who claim they the right to forgo vaccines, even when this risks spreading a deadly disease to others. None of these are reasonable.

It's not that the majority should always get its way. But sometimes, it should. The reason we're voting Democratic is because we think that on these specific issues, they're reasonable, and that Republicans are not.

 

I support neither democracy nor liberalism...

 

I mean, didn't you say in another thread that we need to respect the wishes of the Palestinian people? Doesn't that mean democracy is important?

And if you support LGBTQ+ rights, doesn't that mean liberalism is important?

 

No, it doesn't mean that.

It's possible for liberalism to give rise to protecting the rights of minorities, but it also gives rise to other things which I do not support.