What do we want from democracy?

[mandryka]

As no one else is biting I may as well. Countries define and separate top level jurisdictions and that is their one and only purpose. And that has always been their sole purpose right back to the days of gangster feudalism. Jurisdiction sounds very dry and boring but means only we don't elect or obey the government in Gabon or France or Peru but we do, if we're lucky, get to elect and obey our own. A government that has a duty to us and we can evict if they fail in that duty. If we elect the government jurisdiction becomes ours. Without countries our jurisdiction has no focus, it'll be hi-jacked, deleted, shrunk or diluted by others to the point where it rarely counts for much and arguments about electoral systems become moot.

Which all sounds like a Brexit related argument but isn't really because state federations are only one issue. Other things limit the value of our jurisdiction. Some are hard to avoid (competing countries), much is subverted by lobbyists, political donors and corruption, some has been sneakily given away (Investor State Dispute Resolution agreements) some more openly surrendered (international treaties) and some is deliberately pushed beyond our reach by those who don't want to de democratically accountable or taxed - big investors, big corporations and high net worth types, and some areas we are tricked into believing are beyond us by dumb theologies that depict markets or huge private properties or big companies or the super rich as god like things we interfere with at our peril. The last forty years has seen the range of things we can vote on shrunk a great deal.

So from that you'd think a country doesn't want to be too big and doesn't want to be too small. Things like the EU could help or hinder depending on who runs it and to what end. But without any effective jurisdiction democracy however it is organised will eventually shrink to deciding on the bin collection day. Only the weak or the ordinary need democracy, the wealthy and influential have many ways of getting what they want and for them democracy is a threat and so they are attacking it from all sides. They always have done but recently they're winning.

Have you seen this?

https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-38/introduction.aspx

 

[wulbert]

I reckon its not working well mostly because Thatcher announced there was no longer any such thing as society. Winner takes all. Of course I'm being a bit flippant there was obviously more to it than Thatcher but that was essentially the starting gun on the race that has taken us to this. Now everyone from corporations to chancellors wives to Piers Morgan and that bloke who ran BHS is on the take and on the make.

I think you make an important point. If a country/society is simply a set of rules that we all agree to, it is not going to work if the rules are scrapped and the powerful are given licence to do as they please. Thatcher began de-regulation on a grand scale and unfettered "The Market" which would become "self-regulating". It does not work. The Market always wants more profit for less input. More extraction, less equality. It needs to be heavily regulated or it will eat itself. And us.

Interestingly, Thatcher was heavily influenced by Friedrich Hayeck's book "The Road to Serfdom". It was written to offer an alternative to powerful state control which (he claimed) would always lead to situations like Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The market, being concerned chiefly with trade, would work against any political extremism which got in the way of trade, and thus provide more safety, freedom and security. Thatcher, reading Hayeck's book, turned to one of her colleagues and said "This is what we are going to do".

I heard a blog recently where the Nation State was described as a "fossilised relic", badly in need of a re-think. It is also, the speaker claimed, a fairly recent invention of a few hundred years. IIRC the alternative proposed was a kind of global confederation of small, independent, powerful, tax-raising, cantons or boroughs.

 

[ks.234]

Have you seen this?

https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-38/introduction.aspx

More people believe this government puts national interest above party interest now than did in 2019?

 

[ks.234]

I think you make an important point. If a country/society is simply a set of rules that we all agree to, it is not going to work if the rules are scrapped and the powerful are given licence to do as they please. Thatcher began de-regulation on a grand scale and unfettered "The Market" which would become "self-regulating". It does not work. The Market always wants more profit for less input. More extraction, less equality. It needs to be heavily regulated or it will eat itself. And us.

Interestingly, Thatcher was heavily influenced by Friedrich Hayeck's book "The Road to Serfdom". It was written to offer an alternative to powerful state control which (he claimed) would always lead to situations like Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The market, being concerned chiefly with trade, would work against any political extremism which got in the way of trade, and thus provide more safety, freedom and security. Thatcher, reading Hayeck's book, turned to one of her colleagues and said "This is what we are going to do".

I heard a blog recently where the Nation State was described as a "fossilised relic", badly in need of a re-think. It is also, the speaker claimed, a fairly recent invention of a few hundred years. IIRC the alternative proposed was a kind of global confederation of small, independent, powerful, tax-raising, cantons or boroughs.

It is worth noting that Hayek wrote The Road to Surfdom as a reaction against the Beveridge Report and should be read as an attack on the welfare state. That Thatcher was a big fan also underlines her key purpose and that of today’s Tory party, that is, to undo the Welfare State as quickly and as fas as possible. As the Welfare state is the backbone of everything that protects the many from exploitation of available resources by elites, an attack on the Welfare State is profoundly undemocratic

To get back to the question of what do we want from democracy, the answer is for it to take the next step and wrest control of the public purse from elites. We had a revolution in 1689 that took control of the public purse and gave it to Parliament, a Parliament run then and now by elite vested interests. The next step on the Road to Democracy, is to take the public purse and make it a public utility.

 

[messengerman]

I think you make an important point. If a country/society is simply a set of rules that we all agree to, it is not going to work if the rules are scrapped and the powerful are given licence to do as they please. Thatcher began de-regulation on a grand scale and unfettered "The Market" which would become "self-regulating". It does not work. The Market always wants more profit for less input. More extraction, less equality. It needs to be heavily regulated or it will eat itself. And us.

Interestingly, Thatcher was heavily influenced by Friedrich Hayeck's book "The Road to Serfdom". It was written to offer an alternative to powerful state control which (he claimed) would always lead to situations like Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The market, being concerned chiefly with trade, would work against any political extremism which got in the way of trade, and thus provide more safety, freedom and security. Thatcher, reading Hayeck's book, turned to one of her colleagues and said "This is what we are going to do".

I heard a blog recently where the Nation State was described as a "fossilised relic", badly in need of a re-think. It is also, the speaker claimed, a fairly recent invention of a few hundred years. IIRC the alternative proposed was a kind of global confederation of small, independent, powerful, tax-raising, cantons or boroughs.

Yup, fetishising "the market" is nuts. It's basically ebay. There is no magic. There is no invisible hand , there's only us.

I quite like ebay and free markets but the issues are obvious. Auctioning off the right to run NHS car parks is not suddenly going to make them super efficient. There is no fairy dust, there is no magic market price for parking which will set lights flashing and make happiness fall from the sky. There is only a power relationship between those who need to park and those who now control the only spaces.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Yup, fetishing "the market" is nuts. It's basically ebay. There is no magic. There is no invisible hand , there's only us.

I quite like ebay and free markets but the issues are obvious. Auctioning off the right to run HNS car parks is not suddenly going to make them super efficient. There is no fairy dust, there is no magic market price for parking which will set lights flashing and make happiness fall from the sky. There is only a power relationship between those who need to park and those who now control the only spaces.

There are parallels with the current fuss over Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. He's using 'free speech' in the same way that Thatcher/Hayek use 'free market' - ie, in the absence of restrictions, things sort themselves out.

We now have two very good examples (social media, banking) of where relaxed restrictions leads to a chain of events which doesn't end well for most people. And yet the idea persists. It can only be because those proposing the idea stand to gain from it, and are in positions of power and influence where they can promote it.

So, as ks.234 and messengerman suggest, what we need from democracy is the concept of the public good - the greatest benefit for the greatest number (and a move away from 'zero sum' thinking - you shouldn't expect that for every winner there is a loser). People should not be harmed, or disadvantaged by the outcomes of democratic processes to a point that would put them below the median, say.

 

[messengerman]

"Everyone should be paid more than the average" Harold Wilson.

 

[ks.234]

"Everyone should be paid more than the average" Harold Wilson.

Article 23
1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

 

[Seeker_UK]

"Everyone should be paid more than the average" Harold Wilson.

There's a man who doesn't understand how statistics work.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

"Everyone should be paid more than the average" Harold Wilson.

I'm not just talking about pay, but more about wider rights, freedoms and stuff.

There will always be people whose life experiences put them in the lower deciles of society, my point is that democracy, and democratic processes should not bring about that situation, particlarly as a point of policy, on the assumption that democracy and social or economic policy is a zero sum game.
So let's abandon the 'If I want to be a winner, somebody else has to be a loser' mentality or, at least, if somebody else does have to be a loser, let's limit the losses so that the don't fall below the median level. Being frank, we could all do with the billionaires and oligarchs, the media barons and the tech bosses, losing some proportion of their advantages so if we're looking at a need for losers, let's start there.

 

[messengerman]

There's a man who doesn't understand how statistics work.

I think he was having fun with the media. Wilson was smart.

 

[messengerman]

I'm not just talking about pay, but more about wider rights, freedoms and stuff.

There will always be people whose life experiences put them in the lower deciles of society, my point is that democracy, and democratic processes should not bring about that situation, particlarly as a point of policy, on the assumption that democracy and social or economic policy is a zero sum game.
So let's abandon the 'If I want to be a winner, somebody else has to be a loser' mentality or, at least, if somebody else does have to be a loser, let's limit the losses so that the don't fall below the median level. Being frank, we could all do with the billionaires and oligarchs, the media barons and the tech bosses, losing some proportion of their advantages so if we're looking at a need for losers, let's start there.

I don't disagree but some zero sum games are imposed on us by nature. Most obviously there's only finite amounts of oil, gas, water and (look away Tony) land. Some of those we can find alternatives to (oil and gas) some we might eventually find reasonable ways of making more of (fresh water) but others we never will. And foremost among those is land. We need it to live on, to work on, to grow food on and to get about on. We can't hover 10,000 ft in the air or float 10 miles offshore. Those who are allowed to have a lock on land ownership can (and so will) dictate terms to the rest of us. They already dictate economic policy and eventually (when tenants outnumber property owners) they will seek to limit democracy.

Broadly things that can be made or reproduced are suited to free markets, things that can't be made or replaced with alternatives* and are essential need either to be pre-dominately owned by the public or tightly regulated.

* obviously we needn't worry about artworks or classic cars or TD124s, or shares in Amazon because no one is forced to buy or rent such things.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

I don't disagree but some zero sum games are imposed on us by nature. Most obviously there's only finite amounts of oil, gas, water and (look away Tony) land. Some of those we can find alternatives to (oil and gas) some we might eventually find reasonable ways of making more of (fresh water) but others we never will. And foremost among those is land. We need it to live on, to work on, to grow food on and to get about on. We can't hover 10,000 ft in the air or float 10 miles offshore. Those who are allowed to have a lock on land ownership can (and so will) dictate terms to the rest of us. They already dictate economic policy and eventually (when tenants outnumber property owners) they will seek to limit democracy.

Broadly things that can be made or reproduced are suited to free markets, things that can't be made or replaced with alternatives* and are essential need either to be pre-dominately owned by the public or tightly regulated.

I don't disagree with this, either, but we do have some options still on the land point which mean we're not at the zero sum stage yet. You say we can't float 10 miles offshore, but there would seem no obvious reason why real estate currently taken up with, say, office space or small manufacturing, schools, universities or hospitals, couldn't relocate to vessels or structures moored just offshore, say. Which would free up urban land for dwelling space.

 

[Yank]

I don't disagree with this, either, but we do have some options still on the land point which mean we're not at the zero sum stage yet. You say we can't float 10 miles offshore, but there would seem no obvious reason why real estate currently taken up with, say, office space or small manufacturing, schools, universities or hospitals, couldn't relocate to vessels or structures moored just offshore, say. Which would free up urban land for dwelling space.

With sea level rise the quantity of habitable land will be shrinking.

 

[messengerman]

I don't disagree with this, either, but we do have some options still on the land point which mean we're not at the zero sum stage yet. You say we can't float 10 miles offshore, but there would seem no obvious reason why real estate currently taken up with, say, office space or small manufacturing, schools, universities or hospitals, couldn't relocate to vessels or structures moored just offshore, say. Which would free up urban land for dwelling space.

Temporary relief valve at best. Ultimately we don't have enough land just like we don't have enough road space. We can let price ration it but land is so fundamental allowing that ruins our productive economy and is undemocratic at heart. And it doesn't solve the problem either. I've never been a Communist or Marxist but recall how some people liked to bang on about bread queues in Moscow. They could've gotten rid of the queue simply by pricing the bread out reach of all but a handful. Hey presto no queue but the hungry people wouldn't vanish they'd only stay at home. Rationing by price doesn't work for essentials.

Anyway the longer its left the higher prices and values will climb and the harder it will be to solve. And the more damage will be done in the meantime. Do we want to grow more of our own food (for strategic or environmental reasons). Can we if we want to? Is there enough land? Can we rely on food imports? All other countries are on the same land trajectory as we are and they may very well stop exporting food as their available land is eaten up. Then what? We also risk having foreign land owners. Imagine half the UK landmass being owned by sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf extracting half our GDP in rent instead of in oil revenues? All expensive things end up in few hands. Land will inevitably go the same way if we do nothing to stop it.

And then there are countless small reasons too. Lovely owner occupier businesses that refurbish car parts for peanuts or fix watches or sell quirky stuff to a small market. We all like those. But they are dying out as they can only survive because they pay no rent. Once they've gone and landlords buy the shop premises only big brand chains or very expensive service providers can afford the rising rent. We all like PFM and are grateful to Tony but owning his affordable house is probably (sorry T if this is presumptuous) key to his being able to do it. If he rented he'd probably have to charge a subscription to cover it. All these valuable things are getting harder and harder to do and are becoming more and more scarce.

 

[DonQuixote99]

I think you make an important point. If a country/society is simply a set of rules that we all agree to, it is not going to work if the rules are scrapped and the powerful are given licence to do as they please. Thatcher began de-regulation on a grand scale and unfettered "The Market" which would become "self-regulating". It does not work. The Market always wants more profit for less input. More extraction, less equality. It needs to be heavily regulated or it will eat itself. And us.

Interestingly, Thatcher was heavily influenced by Friedrich Hayeck's book "The Road to Serfdom". It was written to offer an alternative to powerful state control which (he claimed) would always lead to situations like Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. The market, being concerned chiefly with trade, would work against any political extremism which got in the way of trade, and thus provide more safety, freedom and security. Thatcher, reading Hayeck's book, turned to one of her colleagues and said "This is what we are going to do".

I heard a blog recently where the Nation State was described as a "fossilised relic", badly in need of a re-think. It is also, the speaker claimed, a fairly recent invention of a few hundred years. IIRC the alternative proposed was a kind of global confederation of small, independent, powerful, tax-raising, cantons or boroughs.

Would the independent, powerful cantons be disarmed?

 

[DonQuixote99]

More people believe this government puts national interest above party interest now than did in 2019?

I think they are identifying 'national interest' with class and cultural issues.

 

[messengerman]

Would the independent, powerful cantons be disarmed?

I heard a blog recently where the Nation State was described as a "fossilised relic", badly in need of a re-think. It is also, the speaker claimed, a fairly recent invention of a few hundred years. IIRC the alternative proposed was a kind of global confederation of small, independent, powerful, tax-raising, cantons or boroughs.

It's a grim idea. A bit like various mad notions that London should be independent I think such things arise because the richer modern economies could run just as well without half the people. Most of us in effect could be made redundant and the very rich would quite like to get rid of us or dump us in a different jurisdiction that would have no voting power over their activities nor any claim on "their" GDP. Needless to say logic or good sense is not needed in such arguments as they float well enough on greed alone. They can be seen as cousins of tech bros libertarianism. We can expect to hear more about this kind of thing.

 

[wulbert]

It's a grim idea. A bit like various mad notions that London should be independent I think such things arise because the richer modern economies could run just as well without half the people. Most of us in effect could be made redundant and the very rich would quite like to get rid of us or dump us in a different jurisdiction that would have no voting power over their activities nor any claim on "their" GDP. Needless to say logic or good sense is not needed in such arguments as they float well enough on greed alone. They can be seen as cousins of tech bros libertarianism. We can expect to hear more about this kind of thing.

Jeez. They would definitely need to be unarmed. Otherwise, it's back to the wars of the roses. I've no idea how it could/would work. Personally, I find it difficult to imagine how the world/could work without nation states. Mind you, the USA is a federation. A giant USA type arrangement..."The United States of Pangea"? Not for me, ta.

 

[DonQuixote99]

It's a grim idea. A bit like various mad notions that London should be independent I think such things arise because the richer modern economies could run just as well without half the people. Most of us in effect could be made redundant and the very rich would quite like to get rid of us or dump us in a different jurisdiction that would have no voting power over their activities nor any claim on "their" GDP. Needless to say logic or good sense is not needed in such arguments as they float well enough on greed alone. They can be seen as cousins of tech bros libertarianism. We can expect to hear more about this kind of thing.

Always have to look for the real agenda....