stormbringer_951 on 21/5/2009 at 17:00
Conspiracy theorists are nutters, but the Guardian guy who got there was supposed to do a humorous series of articles on the Bilderberg thing. I think it may just be the Greek police being really heavyhanded, but it makes you wonder...
Kolya on 22/5/2009 at 08:40
Quote Posted by demagogue
The idea that some group of people have some
natural right or legitimacy to make decisions for everybody just because the "public supports them" sort of passed along with male sock-garters as hopelessly old fashioned.
Democracy is oldfashioned, yes. About 2500 years old. And someone has still to come up with a better idea. It's not like it hadn't been tried.
demagogue on 22/5/2009 at 14:30
I'm a big fan of representative democracy and the system we have now. I was saying what I like about what we currently have, not what's wrong.
We don't have a pure democracy; expert opinion and scientific discourse carry more weight legitimizing things and capturing political capital than the diffuse opinions of the masses. That's how our system works now, and there are good things about it. But there's also a shady underside to it like anything that claims to "legitimize" power. Doesn't mean it's evil; just that you need to pay attention to it.
To be fair, the opinions of the masses does add some things that can't be gotten any other way, and is absolutely necessary, like helping to make sure any agenda is, not exactly valueless, but at least more independent among the big competing values than otherwise. And like dollars in the market, votes carries more information more efficiently than any other thing you could come up with.
Turtle on 22/5/2009 at 16:11
I still don't understand why everyone gets so worked up over the (
http://www.buildabear.com/) Build-a-Bear.
