democracy is gamification

Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
luka said:
Yeah it's a load of bollocks I agree. I almost never vote but I love Corbyn he's like Jesus so I'm going to vote this time.
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Bearded revolutionary socialist, most at home on the campaign trail, not popular with the Jewish establishment. Plus the initials. It all checks out.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
What sort of people are selected by parties to be MPs and (in the UK) form the pool from which ministers are chosen? MPs are seldom selected for their ability to devise policy, prioritise, manage complex organisations, or admit and fix errors. Elected representatives are often chosen from a subset of people who have very high opinions of themselves and who really enjoy social networking. While some who seek election are motivated at least partly by genuine notions of public service, many representative bodies are full of people motivated mainly by ambition, vanity, and a strong desire that others watch them talking. The social aspect of being an elected representative inevitably repels some personality types and attracts others – some are energised by parties and public speaking, others are drained by it. Often watching MPs one sees a group of people looking at their phones listening only for a chance to interrupt, dreaming of the stage and applause. They are often persuasive in meetings (with combinations of verbal ability, psychological cunning, and ‘chimp politics’) and can form gangs. Parliaments seem to select for such people despite the obvious dangers. This basic aspect inevitably repels a large fraction of entrepreneurs and scientists who are externally oriented – that is, focused on building things, not social networking and approval.

Many political parties and governments reinforce the problem of publicity-seeking MPs by promoting people up the greasy pole on the basis of their success in self-publicity and on the basis of having helped their ‘in-group’ (i.e. their own party) and harmed their ‘out-group’ (other parties). If you watch junior ministers as they approach reshuffles, you will see what I mean. They select for those who pursue prestige and suppress honesty (a refusal to admit errors can be a perverse ‘asset’ in politics) and against those with high IQs, a rational approach to problem-solving, honesty and selflessness; they are not trying to recruit those most able to solve problems in the public interest. Politics therefore suffers from a surfeit of narcissists.
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The Hollow Men II: Some reflections on Westminster and Whitehall dysfunction Dominic Cummings
 
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catalog

Well-known member
he's got an interesting writing style, found myself reading a few of the other pieces. reminds me of that dugin post from a while back that was on here
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
"And so, now we turn to OUR PLANS..."

I don’t want confident public school bluffers. I want people who are much brighter than me who can work in an extreme environment. If you play office politics, you will be discovered and immediately binned.
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sufi

sufi

lala
From: https://www.medialens.org/2020/and-then-nothing-silence-the-deadly-facade-of-democracy/ who top and tail this with boring chomsky quotes
In 2013, the UK-based Corporate Watch, a non-profit group of researchers and publishers, released an important book titled, ‘Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent: Capitalism, Democracy and the Organisation of Consent’. The book was inevitably ignored by the ‘mainstream’ media, with zero reviews according to our searches.

In an online interview, Rebecca Fisher, the book’s editor, explained how supposed ‘democracy’ in advanced capitalist countries deviates starkly from genuine democracy:

‘Firstly, we only get to vote once every 4 to 5 years nationally.

‘Secondly, the choices put to us are severely limited – all the available political parties are pretty homogeneous – no political party is likely to get the funding or the establishment support if they presented a radically different alternative.

‘Thirdly, important decisions, structural decisions, are made by corporations, institutions and elites in the interests of capital, often tightly insulated from “political” interference. And since these businesses exert such power, they also tend to exert power over politicians, almost always with more success than the public can.’
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Fisher added one more essential feature of what passes for ‘democracy’:

‘Fourthly, the information about how the world operates, and what decisions are made, by whom and for whom, is strictly policed, via means of corporate and state manipulation and control of the media, and other knowledge producing systems. This means that certain myths and disinformations can exert remarkable power over public opinion; and opinions that run counter to the mainstream are portrayed as “illegitimate”’.
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The result is a ‘democracy’ in which:

‘the major decisions affecting the vast majority of the world’s populations are made by a very small elite of individuals and transnational corporations, who prioritise the demands of capital accumulation above any human or environmental concerns.’
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In short, genuine participatory democracy and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. As Fisher notes, a crucial mechanism for ensuring that capitalism maintains a stranglehold on real democracy is the state-corporate use of propaganda.
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luka

luka

Well-known member
I'll ignore the Chomsky quotes but is the assumption here that democracy is fake? I agree. It's obviously fake. It's ridiculous that we stand for this charade. But we do, so we deserve it.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
To quote from the McLuhan thread

"To give both sides tends to ignore the possibility that there may be many more sides than two."

I think, and this is far from an original or novel thought.p, that the number two is precisely what we need to get over.
 
william kent

william kent

Well-known member
“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”

-- Gore Vidal
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
pattycakes_ said:
Corporatocracy is the only ocracy. Politics is the entertainment department.
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Well, up to a point. Brexit suits some business interests but is likely to harm a far larger set of business interests. In the run-up to the last election some very major banks went as far as to say they would prefer a Labour victory - with Corbyn in charge! - to a Tory victory that would guarantee a hard-as-nails Brexit.
 
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