> Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered "normal" rather than corrupt
Indeed. As a non-American, I find it quite absurd that corporations can "donate money" to change a Congressman's opinion on a law, and then support them in Congress when passing new bills. As far as I know that's what bribing is pretty much anywhere else. So US has in effect legalized bribing, and almost everyone in US seems to think that's "normal" and okay, and that there's "little corruption" in US, when in fact the whole government wreaks of "legalized" corruption.
Does that happen in other countries, too? Sure. Bribing is everywhere. But at least we see it for what it is, and even if we don't catch them in the act, there can be investigations later, and have them arrested. Good luck doing that in US - ever.
> As a non-American, I find it quite absurd that corporations can "donate money" to change a Congressman's opinion on a law, and then support them in Congress when passing new bills.
Let's be clear: Under US law, a corporation cannot donate money to a candidate under any circumstance. They can, however, spend money independently of a candidate, for example, to produce newspaper or documentary, write and publish a book, hire a billboard, produce and air an ad, etc.
On the other hand, in Australia, Germany, the UK, corporations can make unlimited donations directly to politicians.
My, that does sound absurd.
(Really, I'm not sure what's worse: Your lack of understanding of how US law works, or your lack of understand of how non-US law works. You may understand how your local election laws work, but the world is a big place. Sweeping statements just make you look silly.)
I used to work for BigCorp which had a PAC. Each year they had a campaign to drum up contributions to the PAC. Officers of the company would send emails and make calls, letting everyone know how important it was to contribute to the PAC. The tactics were both carrot and stick. On one phone call I was told that it was important to donate because electing candidates favorable to the company "helped support all of our jobs". On the other hand, the company also would donate money to a charity of our choice for every dollar we gave to the PAC. So not only did they get the PAC funded, they also took a charitable contribution deduction.
The PAC donated certain sums of money to various candidates at the state and federal level each election cycle. Curious, I called the person who ran the PAC and asked how they chose the candidates. He replied simply, "We'll support anyone who will vote consistent with the interests of BigCorp."
And effectively, that's how corporations donate money to political candidates.
> And effectively, that's how corporations donate money to political candidates.
Actually....no. Rules on PACs are different but still quite strict. They can donate a maximum of $5,000 to a candidate. In American politics, $5,000 is fucking nothing. In a contested senate election, that's a rounding error.
The way corporations influence elections is the same way rich individuals influence elections: Not by donating money to politicians (which are heavily capped), but through independent expenditures, which have no caps.
If it was "fucking nothing," I doubt they would bother. Rather, they look at it as a good investment that pays off. I know this to be true because of the intense earnestness with which they encouraged me and so many others to donate. Of course, maybe all they wanted was the charitable contribution deduction, that could be true. But I listened to many talks by officers of BigCorp in which they talked about the importance of these contributions to swerve legislation at the local, state, and federal level to their favor, most often to reduce the cost of doing business in the many states in which this particular BigCorp did business.
You misunderstand. Political financing in the US is very complex; all I'm saying is that the direct donations by corporate PACs to individual candidates is utterly trivial.
"This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2012 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate , rather the money came from the organizations' PACs, their individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families."
So if we look at Microsoft, $800k went from Microsoft and related entities to Obama's campaign. That's a lot of money, and I have no doubt it bought real influence with Obama. But out of that $800k, at most $5k was the money that went directly from Microsoft's PAC to the Obama campaign. And that's well...nothing. It is 0.625% of the total amount given by Microsoft, 0.0007% of the total amount given to candidate Obama.
I have no doubt that BigCorp was very insistent about your contributing to the PAC; but they had no intention of using more than the barest fraction of that money to donate to the campaign of individual politicians. They couldn't, even if they wanted to. They would have been intending to spend it on much more effective (and unregulated) channels.
Being wrong on uninformed about a particular subject is not a personal failing. Being wrong publicly is the first step to becoming right, and as a byproduct helps those who are wrong in the same way (often many) but not brave enough to speak. Criticizing and silencing people is only going to result in less informed people.
What about Citizens United? The US Supreme Court Jesters declared corporations ARE people expressly so they could make unlimited political contributions, saying it is "free speech". We live in a super fucking corrupt nation.
No. Citizen's United merely allowed corporations to air "electioneering communications" independently of the candidate close to the election. It did not do anything regarding direct financial contributions [1].
The idea of corporate personhood was not new in Citizens United.
The question is not whether a corporation has rights similar to a natural person's -- in order to work at all, a corporation must have some of those rights. For example, it must have the right to own property, the right to enter into contracts, the right to bring cases in court, and so on.
The question is which set of rights corporations should have, and to what extent they can be regulated. Which is far from easy to sort out or solve with simple black-and-white rules.
To expand: SCOTUS has consistently ruled that corporations have some of the rights of a natural person _because_ "corporations are merely associations of individuals united for a special purpose" [0]. If I get together with like-minded individuals in order to do something we each have the right to do individually, in most cases, we retain the right to do it as a group (key word "most" -- as you say, which specific rights corporations should have is far from easy to sort out.)
In particular, free speech is a right of "every ... association representing a segment of American life and taking an active part in our political campaigns and discussions" [1] -- unions, guilds, consumer groups, religious groups, newspapers, political parties, and so forth. Those groups are made up of individuals united for a purpose, and their choosing to unite should not penalize them by restricting their ability to speak. Justice Kennedy made a great comment to this effect: "wealthy individuals and unincorporated associations can spend unlimited amounts .... Yet [under the Austin decision] certain disfavored associations of citizens — those that have taken on the corporate form — are penalized for engaging in the same political speech .... When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful." [2]
Uh, no. Citizens United was about actual speech (a political movie), not money. It doesn't allow corporations to make political contributions, it says that they can't be prevented from spending money to present particular points of view.
For example, take the Google, Microsoft, etc, NYT full page ad opposing NSA spying. That's precisely what Citizens United protects.
The majority decision did not declare that corporations are people. (Rather, they noted that treating corporations as people protects the real rights of actual people in some situations. If BP was not a legal person, they could not be sued after the Deepwater oil spill. If the New York Times was not a legal person, they would have no free speach rights. If Apple was not a legal person, it would not be illegal to take their cash reserves. We want a world where BP can be sued, the New York Times can publish what they want, and Apple cannot have their assets confiscated at a whim.)
They did not allow corporations to make unlimited political contributions. (Corporations still cannot make unlimited political contributions, and the case wasn't even about that. It was about independent expenditures, such as publishing a book about a candidate, or making a documentary about a political issue.)
They did not say that money is speech. (They said that money facilitates speech, and thus a sufficiently strict restriction on money would be a restriction on speech. Just because money is not speech doesn't mean it would be constitutional to say that politicians from one party can only spend $5 per election cycle on ads. Eqaully, money is not abortion, but under Roe v. Wade a restriction on spending any cash to obtain or perform an abortion would still be an unconstitutional restriction on abortion rights.)
Every specific claim in your comment is factually wrong.
True, but at least lobbying is transparent and there are rules to it. Those that donate money for an electoral campaign are required to make those donations without strings attached. Of course, there are always strings attached, that's implicit, but if somebody tries to coerce a politician into doing something, that's as illegal as bribery in other countries.
In functional democracies, making bribing illegal works, in theory at least, but in semi-functional democracies like the countries from Eastern Europe where oligarchies happen, dirty politicians are untouchable and mass media is owned by the rich that are part of the ruling parties. Basically, if a politician is bribed, at most you'll only hear rumours and nothing else will happen. And if some big-profile case does indeed happen, those involved will just keep a low profile until the public forgets about it and then you'll see them back in the next elections. There is no real opposition either. They fight against each other only on TV. Note that I was born and still living in Romania. It's not so bad here as I describe it, but not that far either.
The real underlying problem in every country is of course that the public is so freaking stupid, lacking long-term memory and being easily swayed by electoral alms.
Yes. Donations from corporations are legal in nearly every country, in mine, in the USA, most likely also in yours. That's really nothing to bash america over.
It is interesting that "make it legal or else we'll break the law and do it illegally at a greater cost to society" works for politicians and not for drug users.
There are plenty of interesting things to be said about the United States and its similarities (and differences) to totalitarian regimes of the past. I don't think we should point to Wikipedia as the authority on this matter, but it is perfectly okay to go to the primary sources for insight in this. These are recent historical developments, and the questions are covered in so much controversy that it is difficult to find unbiased commentary.
As I have said before, there are plenty of really worrying developments in the theory and execution of power in the United States. When I say worrying, I mean worrying in the sense that they remind closely of things that totalitarian regimes have done in the past. We shouldn't be distracted too much by history when analyzing contemporary events - "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
The list, which you can compile by simply reading the news, is quite long: Warrantless dragnet surveillance, world record incarceration rate, selective enforcement and prosecution of unclear and conflicting criminal law, lifetime incarceration for non-violent crimes, utilization of paramilitary forces (SWAT teams) against non-violent offenders, plea bargains as a tool for simplifying prosecution under the threat of lifetime sentencing, indefinite detainment and incarceration with no judicial oversight (Guantanamo), extrajudicial execution of citizens (drone strikes), limitations on free speech during peaceful protests, systematic prosecution of whistleblowers.
These are just some issues which are interesting to discuss. I am an outsider, and I believe the things I have quoted are facts which have very small political bias in the interpretation. The United States' deadlocked political system and prosecutors' role in the execution of power is also worthy of discussion, although it is harder to discuss this without taking a particular political view.
>There are plenty of interesting things to be said about the United States and its similarities (and differences) to totalitarian regimes of the past.
While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans, the word has no meaning if it encompasses the current state of affairs in America. Could that change? Sure. Pretending it is already the case is fine as long as you realize you are just pretending.
I think you are pretending that previous regimes were comically totalitarian, rather than meeting any realistic definition of the word. Even state sponsored Soviet art projects ended up funding pieces that had anti-Stalin and anti-state parodies in them. Even the Nazi party had internal tensions.
Speaking as an America, it's exactly this kind of pithy dismissal from the psuedo-intellectual class that gives our regime a pass. The vast swath of American political discussion is limited to the purview of cable news, and in these few bastions of informed discussion when real political problems of our country are discussed there's always this contingent of people who aggressively don't care and find offense in others caring.
Your post is somewhat amazing in that respect, especially the emphasis on "pretending" as the separation from reality that makes you comfortable with this conversation. There's nothing so uniquely unrighteous about America that it can't fall into the same power struggles that all empires throughout history have. If the citizenry is going to prevent that we need to be able to discuss it without resorting to pretending.
>While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans, the word has no meaning if it encompasses the current state of affairs in America.
It would be convenient to keep the word "totalitarianism" forever connected with the very specific practices of Nazi Germany or, say, Stalin's USSR, and only those. Unfortunately the word and the practice existed way before and will continue to exist in the future. And there's not just a single form of it.
One can spend all his life between home, office, some cosy restaurant or cafe, friends house, and never understand anything that's going on in society at large, if he's so inclined. Especialy if he's on the upper echelon, e.g not a black, latino, native american, or "white trash", so he doesn't get to transparently see the structures of totalitarianism in a day by day basis.
Add mass surveillance, three-strike laws that resemble 19th century ethics, the concentrated control of mass media, constant external war, etc etc and you have quite a potent mix.
It is also convenient to redefine "totalitarianism" to simply mean aspects of government/society that you don't like. Only defining it in terms of Nazi Germany might be too narrow, but the word still has specific meaning (total state control over most/all aspects of society). And while it's easy to see how that meaning applies to Nazi Germany, it's much less obvious how the United States fits that definition...especially compared to most of the rest of the world. I agree that your examples are generally bad things, but it's hard to see how some of them are even instances of totalitarian behavior much less representative of the overall political state of the US. It's hard for me to see much argument for the idea that the US is really totalitarian at all, much less especially totalitarian by global standards or increasingly totalitarian (the implied part of most of these arguments).
>Only defining it in terms of Nazi Germany might be too narrow, but the word still has specific meaning (total state control over most/all aspects of society). And while it's easy to see how that meaning applies to Nazi Germany, it's much less obvious how the United States fits that definition...
Well, not that hard. For one, there's a humongous legal framework, criminalizing and turning almost all aspects of everyday life, from speech to nutrition, into a legally mediated issue.
Second, a way over the top (compared to regular liberal western democracies) use of police force (and incarceration).
Third, devising of new ways of tranfering powers to the state (from extended no-rights zones around airports to the Patriot Act).
Fourth, total surveillance over society.
Political scientists and philosophers have read totalitarianism in these (and other aspects) for ages. Putting them in constast to the relative freedoms of 1960 or 1880 paints a bleak picture.
It's like slowly boiling the frog while it watches Miley Cyrus twerk.
Whatever is being suffered now by any minorities, etc. pales in comparison to what they would have been put through in the past. I don't see too many blacks being hosed down by a fire truck nowadays, do you?
So let's keep things in perspective. We have a lot of work on ours hands. But it's a hell of a lot less work than we had in the past.
That's the gist of the article... that the state achieves control over society not via forceful means, but more subtle psychological action, political apathy and instilling materialism.
> While implying that the US is a totalitaian state will get you lots of up votes from insecure europeans
You are putting words in my mouth - I said no such thing. But getting caught up in this kind of debate is exactly what I was trying to avoid by wording my comment carefully.
Let's discuss it from a different angle, and ignore the world "totalitarianism" for a moment. Looking at my (incomplete) list of recent developments in the execution of power in the United States, consider the following questions: Are these things good for American society and the world at large? What is their implication for the potential oppression and persecution of political opponents? How about other abuses of power, perhaps less systematic, e.g. the oppression of certain demogratic groups? Are they to any degree at all used for such purposes already?
I think these questions are interesting from a purely intellectual point of view, and very worthy of being discussed. Although personally I do believe that the current situation in the United States is worrying in the light of previous world history.
> Pretending it is already the case is fine as long as you realize you are just pretending.
I'm forced to wonder if Germans in the late 30s/early 40s considered themselves living in a totalitarian state. If not, their response to the suggestion would probably be along the lines of your comment.
The perspective of the article is perfectly legitimate, and accusing europeans is only a pretext.
Don't forget that due to the, let's say, unparalleled "power and efficiency" of the States as a country, also the "dark side" of its government is assuming very scary power and efficiency.
The three main points raised by the article are perfectly reasonable, and worst of all, they're happening, for real, now.
I agree with you but due to the state of (teachings, or lack there of) our primary and secondary public school systems many probably think: "But if a majority think they should be locked up forever without trial then that's democracy and the goal we're striving for right?! We win!"
EDIT: It seems the emphasis is a bit heavy on democracy and too little on liberty. The minority that needs the most protection is the individual.
The emphasis is heavy on democracy because that's the basis of our society. Rule by the majority. Rights are narrow exceptions to that general rule. That's why the bulk of the constitution talks about implementing the democracy, not rights.
Your comment is actually a rather good example of the grandparent's complaint.
The 9th Amendment (which is essentially redundant in that it would be true even if it didn't exist), states that 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'
The point is, Rights are not exceptions. It is the removal of a right that is the exception. In other words, you have the right to do anything unless it is made illegal, not the other way around.
That's not at all what the 9th amendment means. The 9th amendment says that the enumeration of rights in the constitution is not exhaustive. That is to say, it acknowledges that there are sources of rights besides the Constitution. These rights are those that exist from long standing practice in the English tradition. It does not mean that all rights exist unless specifically limited. You have to trace the right to some other source--you cannot simply assume the fact of its existence.
Moreover, while it's true you can do what you want unless it's made illegal, the interesting question is instead: what can the majority make illegal? That's is the situation where majority consensus is the rule, and rights are the exception. In a democracy, the majority can legislate however it wants, limited only by certain acknowledged individual rights.
In our democracy, we have two layers of legislatures, state and federal. The state legislatures inherited the sovereignty of the English King, and the constitution did not disturb that arrangement except in that the states delegated certain of that sovereignty to the federal government. But at the time of the founding, the power of the state legislatures was almost unbounded. They were not even limited by the rights in the Bill of Rights, which weren't applied to the states consistently until the 20th century (incorporated via the civil war amendments). Even now, the state governments are emphatically not ones of enumerated powers. The majority can do whatever it wants, limited only by federal law, or state or federal rights.
At the federal level, within the broad enumerated powers of the government, the majority can do what it wants, limited only by federal rights. Again, the rule is majoritarian control. Rights are a limited backstop to that general rule.
If anything, American education focuses too much on rights and not enough on democracy. K-12 curriculums tend not to cover any state constitutional law. They focus on enumerated powers and the Bill of Rights. But in doing so they paint a misleading picture of the Constitutional scheme. A scheme in which, as originally conceived, nothing would've prevented states from making it illegal to have sex with the lights on or outside of marriage or to use birth control or any of the other "moral" legislation that was very widespread at the time of the founding. I don't think expansion of rights of individuals has been a bad trend away from the original constitutional scheme, but it's misleading to paint the trend as pointing in the other direction. That characterization is simply a libertarian rewriting of history.
> Totalitarianism" loses all meaning if you apply it to states that imprison foreigners captured in war.
Many of the detainees weren't "captured in war" in any meaningful sense, they were civilian noncombatants sold to US forces by various local militias during the occupation of Afghanistan; but its correct that that's more a symptom of the US being a global empire and than of the metropolitan system of government within that empire being totalitarian.
The Taliban side didn't follow any kind of war laws. What legal protection does the POWs of Guantanamo really have?
For instance, afaik POWs from lawful sides in conflicts can be kept until the conflicts are over. The Afghan war is still raging, arguably. And the Guantanamo conditions are hardly much worse than the horrid US prison system.
I have seen this subject discussed, but never in a serious way. E.g. please don't write that they should be treated as civilians or something, the point of the Geneva conventions etc was to give POWs some protection, it is just stupid to then argue that to ignore those laws would give better protection.
(And I have no idea how many of the people at Guantanamo are innocent, as dragonwriter claims to know. The people making claims on that subject aren't exactly to be trusted if they really would know!)
Sigh, I guess I deserve downvotes for the stupidity of asking a tricky legal question on newsYC which doesn't have to do with startups. :-)
Two wrongs does not make one right ... arguments like "they started" may be heard in a kindergartens playground but I think it's reasonable to hold USA to higher standards than that.
And as for the conditions at Guantanamo, I hope that "enhanced interrogation techniques", water boarding and similar, isn't used all that frequently in the US penal system.
Your point is that democratic countries should behave better than the international treaties they sign, even if it will result in dead citizens of those countries.
And you compare with children, to give "weight" to your argument? Sigh...
Feel free to call me an idealist, but I do think that the base foundation for a democracy such as a fair trail before imprisonment and non-use of torture should extend not only to citizens but to all people.
The point with democracies is that they take input from their citizens, or the leadership will get kicked out. The point with terrorism is to scare people, mainly in democracies.
If the terrorists succeed in scaring voters enough, then the politicians will throw out the law book and all other concerns (see Germany, UK, Spain, Israel, USA, etc) because they want to get reelected above anything else... What you ask for go against the central interests of the involved parties.
I might also note that your moral world view is based on living inside a society with a state violence monopoly, in a democracy. If you go outside that, the attitude is ... well, read up on clan societies yourself. A typical example is when Israel did one sided peace gestures -- it was taken as signs of weakness and attacks increased (leaving south Libanon and Gaza).
tl;dr: You're not naive, you just don't think. This is HackerNews, please start.
It's easy to be cynical about the way the US government is heading, but I believe that Americans care too much about their rights to let this type of thing continue. I mean, sure we have our fair share of threats to our democracy, but we also have a lot of rights in terms of fighting those threats. For example, I feel we have stronger protections for freedom of speech than most industrialized countries.
As I understand it, in the UK you have nothing to prevent prior restraint on the part of the government. That is, the government can censor you before you publish something. In the US, this is illegal (Of course, the government can still punish you for publishing something illegal. They can only do it after it's been published.)
Also, we've gone to great lengths to protect the rights of even the worst groups (the KKK, Fred Phelps and company), while some countries have provisions against this sort of thing.
Long story short, I'm disappointed with the state of American democracy, but I'm hopeful. I think when more people learn about what's going on behind the scenes, things will change for the better.
The UK is maybe the worst example for freedom (just because they have a tradition of security being more important - it's the country of 1984 and "Brave New World" after all). Comparing America with France and Germany you get a different picture of freedom of speech imho. I did not hear about people in those countries being held at airports for indefinite time because they were suspected of being in contact with journalists who published the wrong thing.
> Comparing America with France and Germany you get a different picture of freedom of speech imho.
Germany is a terrible example of free speech. So is France. The parent is right, US is still way ahead on this specific point.
Remember, free speech is the ability to voice extremely unpopular views without persecution by the state. Saying something everybody agrees with is not representative.
> The US system of government is engineered to assure, more than anything else that a single actor cannot unilaterally effect major change.
The executive branch tells us this out of one side of it's mouth, and out of the other side it says it must have broad latitude to act on matters of national security (a term it defines for it's own convenience) without review from the judicial branch and minimal oversight by legislators, who have no idea what questions to ask, never mind any recourse if they get undesirable answers.
It's not wrong to label that a totalitarian tendency.
"""
Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a term used by some political scientists to describe a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible.
"""
Sure, there are some really threatening things happening in the name of national security, but labeling these things "totalitarian" is hyperbole.
If you replaced "total authority" with "effective management and control," and "all aspects of public and private life" with "most politically and culturally potent trends," would that be more accurate?
By the definition you quote, perhaps only North Korea qualifies in terms of pursuing control "wherever possible." It is a definition of comic book villainy. It doesn't even encompass Soviet occupied Eastern Europe.
That may be the main ingredient, but that's not what it says on the tin.
EDIT: More to your point, of course, if BHO (or GWB, or WJC, or c.) were the sort of person who could conceive of major changes, he wouldn't have been allowed within a mile of the presidency.
In the same vein, there's also anarcho-tyranny[1] coined by Samuel Francis
What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.
Sensitivity training as a totalitarian tool. I love it!
A lot of the people who complain about "totalitarianism" are simply ideological minorities who don't like the majoritarian consensus and seek to delegitimize it.
There's a difference between disagreeing with the majoritarian consensus, and trying to paint it to be the result of illegitimate process just because you disagree with it.
The system should be viewed as illegitimate (read: as a system to be peacefully turned to dust or forever changed) by those who find deep ethical fault with it. You're alluding to conscientious objectors negatively. They are one of the few groups of people who have ever pushed progress through the ages on this planet. Of course, you're entitled to love the status quo to the point of making it legitimate in your mind every step it takes. Those who ethically disagree with the current oligarchical model for issuing laws that govern the fate of the world do, indeed, disagree.
I view "majoritarian consensus," which the US doesn't actually have, as only a small step above monarchy. It's a very low bar to set for laws of any serious consequence. To be so presumptuous and selfish as to give one small body the right to govern over vast regions of territory would have to, on an ethical level, require approaching systems models that use near full consensus.
Disagreement is the only necessary factor for a person wanting to delegitimize something mentally. In the mind of an objector, there is no more legitimacy in a dictator's brutality, or in an oligarchical republic's brutality (e.g. imprisonment for nonviolent crimes), other than the reality of the sword that backs the decree. Lest the world become lemmings, may people continue to find illegitimacy as they search their minds and hearts.
You're misunderstanding my use of "legitimate" in this context. I don't mean "legitimate" in some broad moral sense. I mean "legitimate" as in being consistent with the accepted rules of the system. Many people who decry the U.S. government don't express fundamental disagreement with the principles of the system. They instead claim that the consensus is inconsistent with those principles.
Fair enough. It'd be more explicit in context with the words "consistent" or "inconsistent." Legitimacy is generally a duality between claims and personal consent. I immediately associate legitimacy by legal frameworks as a whole rather than the laws produced.
No doubt, many people who object to certain laws believe the system is "broken" without appreciation that the system is fixed and 'well-oiled.'
There may be some hypothetical situation in which there could be such a difference, but in USA politics right now, your suggestion amounts to a vapid, lame attempt to curtail discussion. There are very few controversial policies that haven't arisen through all manner of illegal, unethical, and otherwise corrupt (what is your word, "consensus"?) processes, on all sides. If something exists in the current environment, then of course it arose at least partially through "illegitimate process", and it's certainly apropos to acknowledge the specific factual circumstances of that.
Elsewhere on this page reference is made to the "democratic" way we elect legislators and certain law enforcement officials in the USA. Polls repeatedly show clear majorities for the legalization of marijuana use, possession, and distribution. Yet somehow we still have (poor) people going to prison, and (not poor) LEOs and attorneys paying off their mortgages, due entirely to marijuana enforcement despite this wonderful process of consensus?
I guess you should just hope you always find yourself on the "majoritarian" side, if in fact you don't continuously censor and mold your own thoughts to ensure that.
> suggestion amounts to a vapid, lame attempt to curtail discussion.
No, claiming that any popular policy you disagree with must be the product of illegitimate factors or influences is an attempt to sidestep the essential process of establishing majoritarian consensus.
> Polls repeatedly show clear majorities for the legalization of marijuana use, possession, and distribution.
Marijuana is a bad example for your position, because:
1) The consensus reached the point of favoring marijuana legalization just in the last few years (http://www.gallup.com/poll/165539/first-time-americans-favor...). As recently as 2005, the Gallup poll showed that Americans were against marijuana legalization almost 2:1. And unsurprisingly, now that the consensus has shifted, you're seeing real movements all across the country to legalize marijuana.
2) The polls are still based on a random sampling of people, instead of a sampling of likely voters. People under 30 favor legalization more than 2:1, but people over 65 still somewhat oppose legalization. Guess which demographic is more likely to vote? It's not really a fault of the process if younger people don't care to participate.
Look, I get it, you're very committed to this amorphous concept of "majoritarian consensus", but you shouldn't expect everyone else to be on board. Right here, we've learned majoritarian consensus implies acts that were legal for the first 150 years of the USA and will also be legal tomorrow, just happen to mean long prison terms today. Oh well, sucks to be us! That is indefensible, yet it is what your theory commits you to defend.
Indeed, the essence of "majoritarian" thought seems to be caprice. Why did the prohibition of substances other than alcohol not require an analogue to the 18th Amendment? Again, sucks to be us! Oh well!
> implies acts that were legal for the first 150 years of the USA and will also be legal tomorrow, just happen to mean long prison terms today.
It was legal for a long time for private parties to discriminate against racial minorities as well, but majoritarian consensus eventually made that illegal. Adulterating food products wasn't illegal but now is legs, most financial crimes didn't exist, etc. Society's views evolve over time and the structure of the law should keep pace.
> That is indefensible, yet it is what your theory commits you to defend.
What's indefensible about it? Why shouldn't people be allowed to structure their society the way they want? What makes you think that the structure people want won't change over time?
The alternative is to bind people to fixed rules that they can't change, as if they're handed down from God.
What's the alternative process? You, me, and Rayiner probably don't have a lot of macro-level public policy differences, but we differ from the current state of consensus in the US. Should the US instead impanel us as Philosopher-Kings?
Of course any society has made and will make mistakes; that is the human condition. The USA seems to have a particular myth associated with its mistakes: that we're always getting better, that our system ensures problems get solved. Yet, there are more black men incarcerated right now than had been enslaved at any moment in our history. (Drug prohibition is a pillar of that edifice of injustice.) We stage elaborate, deadly pantomimes of "war" for no other purpose than the transfer of funds to defense contractors and thence to PACs. We give foolish, short-sighted bureaucrats carte blanche to search innocent citizens, their records, and their communications. What's the reason? Young people don't vote??!? Can we be serious? "Inverted totalitarianism" may be inaccurate or even silly, but at least someone is actually trying to figure out what the problem is.
A Panglossian defender of the status quo has ample opportunity to poke fun at us nuts who complain about it, especially if our complaints don't display due deference to the way things are. I don't actually have a "concrete" proposal, other than "all this bullshit? let's have less". I guess what I'd appreciate would be if the defenders were to take a slightly more nuanced, dare I hope critical, look at these institutions and processes that apparently require so much defense.
Drug prohibition is less a factor in American incarceration than domestic violence is.
And, yes: "young people don't vote" is in fact the reason that drug prohibition is the factor that it is. Sorry. How do you rationalize your way past that? Young people are overwhelmingly outcompeted in the US by old people.
That first sentence is difficult for me to parse. Do you mean we should ignore unjust drug incarceration because women and children? Do you mean that the scandalous racial disparity in incarceration is due to a similar disparity in domestic violence rates? Do you mean that the historically- and globally-exceptional incarceration rate in the USA is due to similarly exceptional rates of incidence or punishment of domestic violence? Actually it's not easy to check the "domestic violence" category against the "drug crime" category, since BJS is committed to keeping drug crime statistics separate from other crime statistics.
The fact that young people don't vote is not a contingent circumstance, it is part of the system. However it's pretty far down the list of embarrassing injustices in the USA.
Summary: lots of arrests for pot possession and LEAP says: "more people were arrested for marijuana offenses alone last year than for all violent crimes combined."
"This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources."
We may as well find some better-quality writing about the one author's idea, rather than using an article from the Encyclopedia That Any Point-of-View-Pusher Can Edit™ as a coatrack to open up a discussion on Hacker News. Hacker News can be a community in which people use much better sources than most Wikipedia articles (I am a Wikipedian, so I have seen the sausage made) if we let it be.
I hate it when some people misuse Wikipedia like this. This reads like an opinion piece, and belongs to a blog.
edit: from the talk and history, the term was invented by Wolin, but has found little acceptance elsewhere. I am all for adding this to Wikipedia once it becomes generally accepted. But not as a means to get there.
It's not misuse - it's a political concept, described by Wolin, a well known and respected academic in the field most thoroughly in his book "Democracy Incorporated - Managed Inverted Totalitarianism": http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverte...
I mean, if this is misuse, you'd better nix nihilism, liberalism, socialism, and all the rest, as those are also just "opinions".
There's nothing wrong with Wikipedia pages covering political concepts, this article is just a very bad example of how to do that well. The article is about something that is not a widely accepted concept, only cites the primary source that defined the concept, is at least as focused on arguing that the US (and only the US) is an example of the concept as it is on defining the concept, and reads like a political OP-ED written in the third person.
It would be like if the article about socialism only sourced books by Bill O'Reilly and was all about how President Obama is definitely a socialist. Even accepting that Wolin is more academic and respected than O'Reilly (I really have no idea), I don't think this meets the bar of encyclopedia entry.
While all "isms" are ideas, the interesting ones are shared by enough people to enhance communication. Inventing new "isms" to market fringe ideas should be discouraged on this basis; it makes things harder to understand.
If I say Marxism, I can skip the explanation. People know what Marxism is. It enhances communication.
If I say Inverted Totalitarianism, I have to explain what I mean by that.
Based on that, Wikipedia should not be the second step after an author invents a word. Marxism didn't end up in the Encyclopaedia as soon as Marx published. Useful -isms are not established by authors, but by people who discuss them.
>If I say Marxism, I can skip the explanation. People know what Marxism is. It enhances communication.
You missed my whole point, which is that by your own standards, "marxism" shouldn't have entered the language in the first place, since in 1880 you couldn't "skip the explanation" and people didn't know what marxism was.
In short: that some terms are established and widespread is no argument against creating and using newer terms. The establised terms also began as fringe and unknown themselves. That's how language is enriched.
>Based on that, Wikipedia should not be the second step after an author invents a word. Marxism didn't end up in the Encyclopaedia as soon as Marx published.
Well the 11th edition of Britannica (1910) has an entry, a mere 23 years before the first use of the term. We are 10 year from Wolin's work (2003), which makes it quite comparable, if not sluggish compated to Britannica, given that they didn't have as fast tranfer of information as we have today, nor as easy a process of making new edition as online publishing offers.
>Useful -isms are not established by authors, but by people who discuss them.
Nope, that's a populist argument. Usually nobody discusses most -isms and philosophical terms but a small percentage of scholars, authors and intellectuals. Still they appear in dictionaries, encyclopaedias, wikipedia, and elsewhere.
I'm not actually stupid/suggesting a ban on new words.
I argue the new word should be accepted once it's proven useful. That doesn't start with the dictionary.
I don't think it's a matter of time or bandwidth; you can surely find authors who published at the same time as Marx and we're not in the dictionary 23 years later.
I don't know much about Marxism. Here, it's just a token -ism, as an example. Context matters of course; even so many -isms are ambiguous and should be avoided.
So you would rather a Wikipedia that vets ideas for quality rather than simply recording them? That would make it difficult to research ideas that are both important and wrong, like the ones of 19th century messianic cults and Theosophy.
The problem isn't that the idea is "wrong", but that its not a notable enough idea to warrant a wikipedia page. Anyone can coin any term in a blog post.
Once I was disagreeing on the "fallacy" article in wikipedia (fr) with someone (I used to contribute), I created an article so that I could coined the "argumentum ad wikipediam" that says if somehting is on wikipedia it was true.
The other contributor made his point by pointing it is just an argumentum ad autoritatem.
Then I discovered that wikipedia was turning with NPOV (I had some fights) into an authority : the validation of a NPOV is made by a team of recurrent contributors who have bias (like believing that when someone claim to be a researcher in their page like them it must be true even if we cannot check the real identity of the person).
Every system of knowledge and cooperation tends to be plagued by the emergence of an "aristocracy" of self declared experts.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts (Feynman).
On the other hand, for now WP is still sane you can still open a claim that this article is violating NPOV. Because that is the case.
Redactors will study your case you might even be winning because you are stating the obvious : it seems (in my opinion) it has nothing to do with an universal non biased knowledge.
Even if I had a grudge with WP that may back your claim, I won't actually agree with until you signal this article as NPOV.
The US is also hardly a democracy, even if the politicians were perfect. The voting system of the US (and the UK too), is just horrendous.
The simple fact that in some cases less than 40 or 30% of the population can choose an election (if you don't believe me, look it up on youtube, CGP Grey made a video about it), show it's hard to take seriously the claim that the US is a democracy.
Then Andrew Jackson used the term democracy as political marketing (probably had the same impact as calling yourself "anarchist"), and the US system co-opted it and rebranded itself as a democracy. Because people naturally would like to govern their lives, rather than political and wealthy elites.
I recommend Graeber's _The Democracy Project_ for more on this; he's an anthropologist who helped found Occupy, and popularized the 99% slogan.
You are assuming that English and international use of the term democracy was developed by American and for America. That's not the case.
The evolution of the use of the word happened in England and France. Frenchman Marquis d’Argenson (1694-1757) was first to define representative democracy in the way it's used today.
'if the country were run by its population, the vast majority of whom aren't wealthy, they'd abolish debts, redistribute land'. A crass assumption if I may say so.
When the vast majority of farmers who work the land are generally held in debt they consider unfair, yeah, they're going to do that.
You're forgetting that the Free Silver movement was about exactly this - farmers trapped in debt due to a deflationary gold-backed dollar were agitating for the silver dollar which would be inflationary and thus allow them to escape it. Deny them that, and they're going to switch to something else - like taking a long hard look at what's considered "fair".
You might also note that the modern US has exactly this concept - bankruptcy. It has consequences, but debt can in fact just disappear.
Well in my western european country I can not even directly choose a president, major, sheriff, or local representative. I'd say the us is 't so bad...
Sheriff, as in head of police? Why should he or she be chosen by the public? That seems like a big, red flag to me. In my "western european country" they are selected as you would hire a boss to a company, and they hold no "political power", they should do what the government has chosen (as a boss would follow the order of the board/owners).
Some areas of the US have experimented with electing some surprising things, including police chiefs and even judges. The system is flawed, and it doesn't work very well.
However! It's only very slightly flawed, and it works about as well as all the other systems. The key is this:
> they hold no "political power", they should do what the government has chosen (as a boss would follow the order of the board/owners).
Right. But the government is chosen by the electorate, who are the ultimate "owners" in your analogy. The difference between electing a governor (or state congress, or whatever) and having him appoint a judge, or just electing the judge directly turns out to be really, really minimal. If an electorate would have elected a far-right (or far-left) whackjob to be a police chief, then they'll elect the kind of governor who will appoint a far-right (or far-left) whackjob as police chief. I happen to strongly dislike Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County Arizona, but I don't see why Governor Jan Brewer could be counted upon to appoint someone better (google those names and you'll see why). The people there support policies I dislike, and they will find ways to implement them unless forceably stopped. That's democracy.
(Conversely, at one time Senators were appointed by state governments; they are now directly elected. Doesn't seem to have had a ton of impact. Conservative states went from electing conservative state governments which appointed conservative senators to just electing conservative senators. I think the earlier system might have been better, but I'll be damned if I can point to any concrete evidence either way.)
People seem to get the government they deserve. :)
I've always had the understanding that electing judges and police chiefs is an issue because they have more important things to worry about than elections. If they had to think about "whether this is an election year" and how their actions might impact their public image, that could interfere with them acting as impartial agents of the state.
The legislative branch is to be elected to make and change laws, which represent the will of the people. The executive and judicial branches are appointed by the legislative branch and not de-appointed.
This keeps houses of power (writing of law, execution of law, interpretation of law) at arm's length, and makes change slow and difficult. That's actually theoretically a good thing, under some assumptions: that the will of the people is fickle and ill-informed; that we have a pretty good system already; and that forces which last a long time are likelier to be for good than bad in our society.
Any of those assumptions could be off-base, but if you're fine with them, then a slow government where each branch is at arm's length and has minimal effect on each other's composition at any given moment is effective.
Elections for all branches of government would make them all fluid and reactive to public will. That may be fine, but it would mean a much higher capacity for fast change in our lives, both for the positive and the negative.
Sorry if I'm not clearly making a point -- I don't really disagree with you, but I feel that there are well-defined reasons in our political system for not electing members of the other branches of government.
I think this is a big part of the different views of democracy between the US and Europe. Should the laws themselves be the reflection of the will of the people, or should the way those laws are enforced be a reflection of the will of the people?
Personally I believe enforcement should be neutral and unbiased, whereas the creation of those laws are the realm of politics and where the will of the people should count. The US clearly has the opposite opinion.
Personally I think that leads to arbitrary and unreliable enforcement, justice only for the majority (or even the rich).
Dutch too, here. And we can elect local representatives. Multiple layers of "local" even. We elect the city council, we elect a province council and we elect a national parliaments. All three have actual power and make actual, practical differences.
What we cannot elect, is the mayor, or the head of the province. Both are placed by the King.
The problem in the Netherlands is not that we cannot elect local representatives, as that is simply false: we can.
The problem is that we are not a pure democracy like a republic would be, but that the head of the state, with actual political power, is Elected By God. Not the people.
> The problem is that we are not a pure democracy like a republic would be, but that the head of the state, with actual political power, is Elected By God. Not the people.
Is it really a problem though? In practice, they (European rulers) have little actual power, so it's not unlike the president of Portugal, except it's a bit fancier during state visits...
I am not saying it is a problem; merely stating that a monarchy undermines the concept of a democracy like the parent comment wanted to illustrate.
But, now that you ask: I personally feel a monarchy is a problem, in a purely academical way: the idea that some person, instated by God, rules me, and not the democratically elected government, goes against my principles.
Academic, yes, because in practice, a King will hardly ever use the given power; and even if so, he'll do exactly once. "But she is such a nice person" is what people often said about our Queen. And "Willem is really a very likable person" about our current. As a person, and maybe even as a ruler, I trust Willem, our king, a lot more to make the right choices then our current MP will do. In practice, there is little wrong with a monarchy, in our day-to-day lives. But in theory, there is a lot wrong with the concept. And one needs not look very far in history to see how kings and emperors, or others placed outside a democracy have misbehaved.
The USA military-industrial complex may be soulless and evil, but it isn't dumb. The problem with the governments installed post-WWII in West Germany, France, Italy, and Japan was that they never evolved into belligerents. Iran, Iraq, Israel, China, Korea, etc. demonstrate a more sophisticated model. Repeat business FTW!
(While USA invasion has turned out well for some nations, that hasn't happened recently. If you care for your nation and its inhabitants, you really ought to do your damnedest to stay off the list.)
The US is indeed a superpower. The only superpower left after the Soviets collapsed. It's not a big leap to predict how it's going to turn out in the long term without checks and balanced imposed. This is the first step:
the Bush Doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars
Unless the American citizenry, along with the western allies, oppose this militant attitude, it's not going to end well - whatever new term you call it.
> the Bush Doctrine that the United States has the right to launch preemptive wars
Strictly speaking, preemptive war is a universally understood prerogative of every nation -- "preemptive war" is proximate self-defense against a specific, real, imminent threat before the attacking blow lands.
What Bush did is redefine preemption to include preventive war -- "self-defense" against a vague, general, nonspecific, distant potential threat that an enemy might, someday in the future, decide to attack (using capacities that do not even yet exist and which are themselves nonspecific, speculative, and distant potentials).
Preemptive war is problematic in practice, but generally regarded as an essential corollary of the right to wage war defensively; the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, OTOH, is equivalent to allowing the "self-defense" as a defense to murder charges because the killer had a belief that the victim might, someday in the future, get a gun and kill them and so they needed to kill them before that occurred.
The George W. Bush administration was hardly the first to act according to that point of view. Just about every country that has held significant power has at some point fought wars of aggression.
What I meant was that the death rate for soldiers was higher.
Total civilian deaths are higher because there are more civilians.
Israel-Palestine is a special case because it is so one sided. I'm not very sympathetic to Israel (did Nelson Mandela recognize the right of the Afrikaner people to exist, and affirm the existence of South Africa as an Afrikaner state? This is what the Israelis are always going on about right?) but that's not really relevant to whether being a soldier is in general more dangerous than being a civilian.
Maybe I am addressing a different point to everyone else, but I think it's important given that deaths of soldiers are sometimes considered on a completely different moral plane to deaths of civilians, even though from a utilitarian perspective they are equally important.
That's a way too-emotionally charged question for someone pretending to be "utilitarian".
But the answer is: No, I wish there weren't any soldiers to begin with. Dead being just the most common way they disappear, plus is always a political assertion the prime causative, so to avoid refilling wars with youngsters it's more effective to stop that.
Bush was just insensitive enough to say what everyone else believes. I can't think of any country that would willingly take preemptive strike off the table.
Wolin essentially mistakes hegemony for totalitarianism. The U.S. is a global hegemon in the same vein as the Great Britain used to be. An open society internally that maintains global superiority using military power. Sometimes global or regional hegemons, like the Soviet Union, are totalitarian, but it's not necessarily the case. Great Britain clearly wasn't a totalitarian state.
Also problematic is Wolin's implied assumption that hegemony can only exist if democracy is compromised. But that's utterly absurd. Why would anyone expect that voters, given the free choice, wouldn't want the benefits that accrue from their country having global supremacy? Does anyone think that, deep down, Americans really want to be like Europe, just another player on the world stage who must modulate their foreign policy based on the consideration that they can't impose it unilaterally? Even people who believe the U.S. should act multilaterally when possible don't necessarily believe the U.S. should concede the option to act unilaterally when necessary.
> Why would anyone expect that voters, given the free choice, wouldn't want the benefits that accrue from their country having global supremacy?
That has an easy answer if you look at treaties like TPP: The hegemon uses power over trading "partners" to work around the will of the people. Hegemony is no benefit to the majority of the people. It is a tool used against them.
"Nothing to hide" is an apathetic "Yes, Sir" to losing self control, letting the results machine analyze and respond to your life actions with all power of an authority you've amplified for yourself.
Apathy toward drone "signature strikes" is a "Yes, Sir" to striking and killing exactly where the results machine wishes.
The results machine does not have human well-being programmed as a core, infallible rule. That means that mistakes like collateral human damage are not seen as mistakes at all, they are part of getting results.
Trusting any machine we've built to probe and manipulate the earth to meet any end other than human growth and good is very scary and selfish.
Apathy is the new allegiance toward our scary and selfish state.
So if you compare the U.S. and Nazis they are therefore foils of each other? While I agree that the U.S. falls short of being a true democracy for all of those three bullet points, I'm a little confused about Wolin's reasoning. His argument seems to be:
* In Nazi Germany, the state dominated economic factors, in the U.S. corporations do
* Nazis advocated political action, U.S. does not and does not advocate voting
* Nazis mocked democracy, U.S. made it its ideology
* Therefore Nazis and the U.S. are very similar
Doesn't anyone see why this is problematic reasoning? He just made three points that showed how the U.S. and Nazi Germany have flawed political models, but the connections seem to be few and far between. I get that he's saying that they are both nondemocratic systems under the guise of democracy, but it seems a little farfetched using this argument.
USA today is like Athena after the 2nd medic war: a Republic that claims to be a democracy. During Peloponese war, Athena the "democracy" had turned into a violent colonial power, and Sparta the totalitarian state turned oddly into the creation of an alliance for protecting the weakest.
Needless to say at the end, of these war neither Athena nor Sparta won, because they both lost.
Plato's Republic is a simple HOWTO turn a democracy ruled by citizens into a system claiming to be ruled in the best interest of the citizen by a minority of "Wise men" with an elite of watchmen that enforce the power.
Read Alan Moore's "Watchmen" for a criticize of the republic (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
Pericles(or Solon (don't remember) before Athena became a Republic said the same thing as Eisenower: beware of the richs that want to get a grip on a state and extend their power through their influence and will use military power for expension.
Nothing new under the sun. The guy is reinventing the wheel
Interesting. I'd question the "totalizing dynamics" part. In my view Wolin couples two arguments unnecessarily tightly:
* Today's govt. marketing makes it seem more legitimate than it is. Democracy is vulnerable to a panem-et-circenses strategy.
* If citizens' needs are not satisfied by a welfare state, they are rendered helpless enough to be managed by a veiled totalitarian regime.
The former is an interesting problem, expressed well. The latter is more concerning. Are opinions (votes) really worthless just because voters are exposed to economic realities?
I don't think democracy rests on voters being "secure" (in the welfare state sense) when they make their decision.
Classically the line is drawn at secret/anonymous voting. OP suggests voters also need to have their economy guaranteed, if their votes are to give the government any legitimacy. That's very different.
> I don't think democracy rests on voters being "secure" (in the welfare state sense) when they make their decision.
This is a really interesting question/assertion. I lean toward security being necessary for good decision making. For example, people whose time is spent primarily on "getting by" will have far less time and psychological wherewithal to propose new ideas that meet their needs and the group; creative problem solving is less likely[1]. They may be able to voice their opinion on a multiple-choice proposal, however, which could pass as democracy I suppose.
A smaller number of people may have a creative ability that is inversely related to stress--necessity is the mother of invention and all that. But I don't think that is a majority, and perhaps unfortunately, democracy depends on the psychological traits of the majority.
The second point does mesh quite well with my observations regarding the system. If you question a fairly randomly sampled member of the populace as to why they would choose to vote for one of the established political parties rather than a new or minor party that may represent their position on most issues much more closely, the answer you will get will invariably be some sort of invocation of a fear of economical downturn or collapse, as only "experienced" or, in a somewhat Kafkaesque turn, outright industry-coddling politicians are trusted to know what is good for the economy. The net effect is that anything that the established parties have a consensus on is effectively impossible to challenge in the political system (and no member of either established party has much of an incentive to break the consensus); it is hard to imagine that this would be the case to the same extent if the majority of voters did not consider their economical situation to be in some sense precarious or unsatisfactory.
This is a uniquely American view on the situation. In America, unless your favored major party holds overwhelming dominance, then voting for any third party is actively voting against your own interests.
Its easier to lobby within a party to change things then try and form a new one, given the way the first past the post voting system in the US works. In countries without one, new parties can form and gain some influence all the time.
Perhaps; it seems obvious. I'm not debating that point.
The premise of democracy is that the will of the governed gives legitimacy to power.
This (I argue) doesn't presuppose that the governed have security of income, a positive view of the future of the nation, perfect information, or anything like that. What matters is they choose, not their reasons for choosing.
The second argument is also nonsensical. The welfare state is larger today than it ever has been. The key difference is that old people have taken over as the primary beneficiaries. And they're more politically active then any other group. Ironically, they also support many of the "external" policies Wolin rejects.
Likewise, deciding to buy lunch is not somehow invalidated by being really hungry. In a sense, we consider the pressure of our appetite to validate the purchase of lunch. Decisions in response to circumstances and prevailing conditions are completely valid.
>Right. Pressure, though, doesn't invalidate their decision. Cfr. how a purchase is valid even if you saw an ad for the product.
It might not invalidate it legally or procedurally, but it invalidates it in the spirit of democracy (each deciding what he deems best, not what he was pressured to vote in order to get something unrelated to the issue under voting).
The idea is that secret voting rules out anyone being individually held liable for how they choose to vote.
The sort of pressure OP is talking about is more vague: the pressure of having some skin in the game. I can't imagine what elections would be without that pressure.
The democratic spirit of "what he/she deems best" doesn't rule out the influence of reality over voters' decisions.
Scored below these, bumped from the front page, does not even have NSA in the name for NSA penalty. Is it because the submitter is green, or some other valid reason?
27.
DataStickies: USB drives as sticky notes (datastickies.com) 120 points by JeanSebTr 18 hours ago | 89 comments
28.
Best Firefox Add-ons of 2013 (mozilla.org)
106 points by yeukhon 21 hours ago | 50 comments
34.
Inverted totalitarianism (wikipedia.org)
211 points by pikachu_is_cool 10 hours ago | 124 comments
On the surface this appears to be true. But, like all things in a constant flux, it's a lot more complicated than it seems. One observation though, I've always wondered if Orwell's novel would act as a warning to those who seek power. In other words, 1984 acted as a inventory of obvious psycho-social obstacles to avoid while attempting to control the masses.
What's scary about reading articles like this is that if they are true, those "in power" don't care enough what people think to try and suppress these thoughts.
If the frog is boiling, where are we at on the scale of "didn't make tenure" to "jack booted swat team renditions you"?
"Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies,..."
" in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered "normal" rather than corrupt.[6]"
Indeed. As a non-American, I find it quite absurd that corporations can "donate money" to change a Congressman's opinion on a law, and then support them in Congress when passing new bills. As far as I know that's what bribing is pretty much anywhere else. So US has in effect legalized bribing, and almost everyone in US seems to think that's "normal" and okay, and that there's "little corruption" in US, when in fact the whole government wreaks of "legalized" corruption.
Does that happen in other countries, too? Sure. Bribing is everywhere. But at least we see it for what it is, and even if we don't catch them in the act, there can be investigations later, and have them arrested. Good luck doing that in US - ever.