Obama V. Romney

[luka]

i think i sort of followed that. at least the bit that said 'it means give or take'

 

[droid]

I know we've had this exact conversation before, but my searches for 'vimothy sodomy', though turning up some interesting results, is leading nowhere.

 

[luka]

anyway i hope i have resolved your differences satisfactorily.

 

[vimothy]

I wouldn't say that you resolved them, but I think that you described them pretty accurately.

what droid is saying, i think is, powerful people are still in power, not only still in power but more powerful than ever before.

what you are saying, i think, is that those powerful people are much nicer to us than ever before.

 

[luka]

well, thats something i suppose.

 

[vimothy]

Putting questions of the concentration of wealth to one side for a moment, my view is firstly that it is impossible for powerful people not to be in power. Power is conserved, like energy. Someone always has power. The question is how they behave and what they do with it.

Secondly, the goal of liberalism or leftism requires the concentration of power. How do you ensure that society is transformed in the proper direction? Progress is not something that happens naturally. If you want to redistribute wealth, this requires power. If you want children to be taught the correct understanding of the world, this requires power. If you want to prevent discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, this requires power. If you want to ensure that women are paid the same as men for the same job, this requires power. If you want to prevent people from refusing to let gay couples share a room in their hotel, this requires power.

 

[luka]

is there a differnece between powerful people and powerful institutions?

 

[luka]

is the idea to create powerful institutions to save us from powerful people?

 

[vimothy]

Who controls the powerful institutions?

 

[baboon2004]

Putting questions of the concentration of wealth to one side for a moment, my view is firstly that it is impossible for powerful people not to be in power. Power is conserved, like energy. Someone always has power. The question is how they behave and what they do with it.

Secondly, the goal of liberalism or leftism requires the concentration of power. How do you ensure that society is transformed in the proper direction? Progress is not something that happens naturally. If you want to redistribute wealth, this requires power. If you want children to be taught the correct understanding of the world, this requires power. If you want to prevent discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, this requires power. If you want to ensure that women are paid the same as men for the same job, this requires power. If you want to prevent people from refusing to let gay couples share a room in their hotel, this requires power.

This is true, but such goals would then, when pursued, lead to a downward resdistribution of power - all of them, in effect, ensuring that no person finds themselves in a completely powerless position where they can't defend their basic rights (as there is no legal basis that allows them to do so). But yep, to make that transition, you'd need to initially hold enough power to make this redistribution possible.

And it's obviously a question of how to rank basic rights, which is where the left and right divide dramatically.

 

[luka]

no one they are machines

 

[luka]

im not suggesting these institutions exist. im describing a dream. the american constitution is supposed to be a kind of machine?

 

[luka]

its the whole point of the game. its the rule of law. its everything.

 

[luka]

that it doesnt allow for intervention of individuals or groups of indiviuals

 

[luka]

that it has rules of operation that play themselves out objectively consistantly and dispassionately

 

[IdleRich]

"Putting questions of the concentration of wealth to one side for a moment, my view is firstly that it is impossible for powerful people not to be in power. Power is conserved, like energy. Someone always has power. The question is how they behave and what they do with it."

But energy can concentrated in a few things or distributed across many - theoretically so can power although I agree that it's unlikely to happen because the only people who can cause that distribution are exactly the people who don't want to. You might argue that various competing powers may each seek to limit each other's powers by putting in some kind of system of checks and balances but my guess is that is only going to go so far and probably won't really transfer too much agency downwards.

 

[vimothy]

Imagine, for a moment, that we lived in a society where the highest good--in fact, the only good--was personal autonomy and the equal satisfaction of desire for all.

The sole purpose of society, then, would be to facilitate this process and allow individual autonomy to be realised and expressed.

If the individual were to be born into duties to the collective in such a society, this would constitute a bad, because his or her autonomy would be restricted. Personal autonomy and many goods (or many things that were traditionally thought of as goods) would be antagonistic. Think of, for example, predetermined roles, like gender roles, that people are expected to fall into. Whatever custom dictates, it is generally going to be in conflict with our one true good.

This is a problem, right? The solution is that something is going to have to prevent these traditional institutions from materially influencing the lives of the autonomous inhabitants of alterna-world. Who could do such a thing? It could only be a person or institution powerful enough to override the inherited structures, institutions, mores, and so on, and so enable individuals to live as individuals and not parts of some larger whole.

 

[luka]

this is one of problems with this thread tho... that is your definition of liberalism which you are eliding with 'left' (or at least allowing others to) when the two are not synonomous

 

[vimothy]

You're probably right about that. I guess I'm talking about a general principle and I'm not so worried about what it's called.

 

[luka]

we cant have a conversation with socialists saying the world is less socialist than it was for a few decades post wwII therefore less left and you saying it more liberal therefore more left. thats a bit dopey. thats why we need to be clear about definitions.