There is a great article of german philosopher Leonard Nelson that discusses this (and other) weaknesses of democracy. He was thrown out of the SPD for it in s.th. like the 1920s
> What if the choice of the majority of the people is anti-democratic?
Isn't the majority choice a priori democratic?
Unless you're saying the majority is saying "let's throw away voting and go back to monarchy"... which they aren't, systemic change on that level is usually a highly niche opinion
"which they aren't" ... OK, you seem oddly confused about what's actually being discussed.
Let me help: here's a passage from the paper itself "On one hand, some scholars argue that populism is inherently illiberal [...]. Populist movements embrace majoritarian politics and seek to suppress opposition, often through a charismatic strongman who pledges to dismantle institutional constraints in the name of executing the people’s will. Under this interpretation, populism becomes synonymous with authoritarianism."
So while you clearly don't perceive populism as anti-democratic ... because you're immune to "doublethink", or something — others, including some of the people actually cited in the paper clearly do. Also, famously: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/think/article/abs/po...
And oh BTW, no. The majority choice is not automatically a priori democratic, unless by "democratic" you mean the literal Greek etymology of the word and not its actual meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy
> unless by "democratic" you mean the literal Greek etymology of the word
So like, what it says in the dictionary? As in, I'm using the word as it's actually defined?
Is conveniently redefining words to fit your argument supposed to not confuse people?
Here's what it sounds like to an idiot off the street like me:
> "democracy good"
> "letting voters actually get what they want bad"
>"democracy = letting voters actually get what they want"
> a bunch of cognitive dissonance and mental gymnastics... let's wave a magic wand here, "democracy = <something completely different that you need to read a couple hundred pages of Karl Popper to understand. The public need not have an opinion here, they just need to smile and nod>"
If you mean to say that democracy (i.e. the public getting what they want via electoral process) is a flawed idea, just say it. It just sounds like you're going through a bunch of bs and vague gesturing to Karl Popper to avoid saying that
> Here's what it sounds like to an idiot off the street like me
Idiots on the streets are usually one of the main weaknesses of democracy.
The idiots under a democratic society should be seen as what they are: a threat which the only way to counteract is through education, including civics. The problem with our current modern democracies is we haven't found a way to treat the threat as what it is, and focus on solving the core issue: idiocy.
We try, education of societies in general is better than any point before in history but still lacking a lot, ergo your comment.
Are we now going to disregard anything that can't be properly defined in 10 words or less because otherwise it just sounds funny to "idiots off the streets"? I guess the two paragraphs on wikipedia are too elitist for the idiocracy yall seem to yearn for.
Imagine those idiot doctors going through all those years of medical school instead of just buying a dictionary. LMAO what a bunch of losers.
Nice try building ttat straw man, but if your choice is an anti-democratic one—as is often the case with populists (read the fxcking paper)—then by definition you’re dismantling democracy, not practicing it. Deal with it.
So given the "consensus" that "genes have a significant influence on differences in human behaviour, interests, capabilities etc.", you're basically saying that a significant and spontaneous, yet undetected, mutation appeared in the human female population, during the '80s [1] ?
"[...] the Marxist intellectuals transitioned from class warfare to gender and race politics. The core oppressor-oppressed dynamics remained, but now the oppressor is the “white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy."
This is a dubious claim to say the least. There was little to no pro gay rights or gender equality activism in the traditionally very conservative little corner of the Earth where I live (ex communist, eastern European country). However, coinciding with the recent rise of the alt-right, we've had a sudden surge of anti-gay rhetoric packaged along with strong anti-establishment speech - this seems conspicuously similar to the ultra-conservative speech (both Russian and American) attacking liberals. To the point where the governing, majority, LEFT party initiated a referendum for changing the constitution to define the "Family" as the result of the marriage between a man and a woman. Interestingly, the referendum is supported by most (I think all) political parties and a vast majority of people. The "Marxist warfare against the white, straight, cis-gendered patriarchy" doesn't and didn't exist here, yet we have the same alt-right crap being used by the governing party to "feed" the masses, distract from their image of a deeply corrupt party and thus grab more power. Similar things are probably going on in other places, the "Marxist threat" is mostly a boogie man used for a plain old power grab.
Genuine question: I've never understood the non zero sum game idea in the context of economic inequality. If I win more than you lose, overall it's a non zero sum game, as in, our combined gaines are greater than before (the pie is larger), but you still lose(you get a smaller piece). Would someone be interested in highlighting some counter arguments to this?
The idea of non-zero-sum games is that a regulator interested in public welfare would still let the two people you described play that "game," and then would be able to tax and redistribute in such a way that both "players" are still better off for having played.
With zero-sum games the habitual loser would eventually wise up and wish to stop playing
I haven't read the paper you link to, but the comment:
"A new working paper by Simcha Barkai, of the University of Chicago, concludes that, although the share of income flowing to workers has declined in recent decades, the share flowing to capital (ie, including robots) has shrunk faster. What has grown is the markup firms can charge over their production costs, ie, their profits. Similarly, an NBER working paper published in January argues that the decline in the labour share is linked to the rise of “superstar firms”. A growing number of markets are “winner takes most”, in which the dominant firm earns hefty profits."
...is about the third one I have seen lately that the current financial system is not good at doing what it is supposed to do: allocate capital investment.
I'm having a real hard time parsing that paragraph. Putting aside taxation, only two classes of people receive some share of income from production: workers & owners of capital. I don't understand how the income share could be declining for both classes simultaneously. Where is the 'missing' income going?
And bringing in the idea of winner takes all market structures just seems like a non-sequitur. I'm struggling to understand the causal relationship between market structure and the relative shares of income that go to labour and capital owners.
My original take on the statement was that corporate revenue wasn't going to either wages or capital investment. The other options are
1. The corporation's treasury, which is not economically useful past a certain point, or
2. Shareholders. In this case, since I don't see much evidence of major dividends, that would mean stock buy backs, which are not a great way of paying shareholders.
Returning money to shareholders is a great idea, if there is nothing better the corporation can do with it. If.
Haven't read the full paper but is seems to suggest that returns on capital investments are declining because of consolidations.
Companies in dominant positions make huge profits(compared to the rest of the players), while those that are not in dominant positions make far less profit - but on average the returns on investment are on the decline. Furthermore the huge profits deincentivise risk taking for the dominants, hence they invest less.
But not being an economist, I may be way off.
Owners of brands. A company with a large market share and a strong brand can force its suppliers (including, for example, owners of the shops they rent), who are the ones making the investments in capital to accept tiny margins, and productivity increases mean that they can force their personnel to accept lower wages.
What about those who don't have funds to begin with, hence can't pay for adequate legal representation and have to take a plea bargain. Would you say those don't have basic human rights to begin with?
You're assuming "outside influence" is the same thing as "different views". For example, in information ops you only have to use sensemaking on a target (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking) to feed little bits of info or ideas that favor your goal. The end result is that the target feels protected from outside influence but it's anything but.
I didn't assume that. News bubbles give people a way to not be subjected to some external influence, which is not to say they are not subjected to any influence, it just makes a choice of which influence they are subjected to more random and different. Traditional media, on the other hand, being less bubbly and exposing everyone to their ideas favors money and gives unfair advantage to elites and not outsiders.
Which shouldn't be surprising, because unless carefully expressed, skepticism towards the stereotype threat effect can be interpreted as a justification for stereotyping, especially when the skepticism is expressed in the context of political tenets.
Stereotypes are accurate, though. People are good pattern-recognizers, and the characteristics that we use to form stereotype do convey useful information.
Pretending that stereotypes are factually bogus is wrong. It creates resentment. It's much better to accept that stereotypes exist for a reason, but emphasize that it's a grave injustice to let stereotypes hurt our evaluation of people who defy these stereotypes.
> skepticism towards the stereotype threat effect can be interpreted as a justification for stereotyping
Current HR policies go beyond requiring fair treatment of individuals as individuals. Every sane person supports doing that. HR demands that we silence truths about the natural world go unstated. HR demands that we make untrue statements about the world. That's anathema to anyone technically-minded.
I like to think of myself as technically minded. However, your stereotype of technically minded people seems to sugest that either I accept the "natural truth" of stereotype accuracy or forfeit my technically minded view of myself. I will do neither.
The claim that one can engage in stereotyping people while exibiting fair threatment of the same people as individuals is dubious to say the least given the definition of stereotyping.
Once engaged in stereotyping no amount of post factum fair threatment of the individual will make up for the unfairness.
Later edit:
People are imperfect pattern recognisers, in fact our pattern recognition generates a significant amount of false positives. From an evolutionary perspective this was acceptable at a time when tigers could be lurking in the bush. The penalty for running from an imaginary tiger in the bush is insignifiant compared to the penalty of not running from an undetected tiger.
It would seem that that would make you anti-democratic while trying to be pro democracy.