I love it when anyone uses this in an argument. It's becoming the staple in so many discussions on TL, political or otherwise.

Person A: I hate Obama, he's ruining the economy.
Person B: You Sir require more American History!

American History, solving all the worlds arguments since 1776.

SirKibbleX

United States479 Posts

March 22 2010 15:03 GMT

#22

Well its kind of like watching a replay. If someone messed something up in the past and you're in a similar situation again, it's worth knowing the proper hard-counter for corporate greed and widespread public ignorance.

Piy

Scotland3152 Posts

March 22 2010 15:08 GMT

#23

This dates all the way back to the foundation of modern capitalism in the 1500's and the rise of the merchant economy. Of course it's not ideal, it results in social inequality at the expense of the lower classes due to the rich being able to manipulate the rules.

Sadistx

Zimbabwe5568 Posts

March 22 2010 15:10 GMT

#24

By looking at teamliquid: yes, the elites should rule the masses.

Manit0u

Poland17831 Posts

March 22 2010 15:12 GMT

#25

Yes, they should. Also, democracy sucks.
The problem with majority (masses) rule is that most of the society are just ordinary people who rarely look past their own concerns and are unable to grasp the big picture of things for the most part.

Aim Here

Scotland672 Posts

March 22 2010 15:15 GMT

#26

Sigh. A very mildly liberal black man gets elected president in the USA, and suddenly overt racism becomes fashionable again (not in this thread, btw), and Americans start seriously talking about abolishing democracy to stop this sort of thing happening again.

I feel old.

Djzapz

Canada10681 Posts

March 22 2010 15:19 GMT

#27

People get the idea that the powerful people are playing around with the masses but they don't get the right perspective.

Rich people and corporations don't 'SECRETLY' control the world, they indirectly 'control the world' by making decisions that affect us all.

The OP tends to personalize everything... In the topic of: 'It's the idea that one can use one's own
mind to invalidate itself.'

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but to be perfectly honest, the argument seems weak to me. You can't really compare talking to ONE PERSON with talking to a bunch of dogs who don't know what's good for them.

Then you go on to say there's only a minority that's irrational, which is ridiculous.... I don't really have anything to add. You sound like (significantly) more libertarian version of me, which is basically what happens when you don't understand the basics of the human mind. Hell, you even say something insane about how doctors need a license or something. When someone's going to shove chemicals in my body, I expect them to be qualified. I don't want a witch doctor stuffing me with dangerous or useless crap - if there's a quality standard for them, then I'm relatively safer.

Long story short, the OP is a well written piece of pseudo intellectual garbage which, if it were to convince many people, would certainly worsen the world we live in.

Certainly it leans toward hardcore libertarianism or probably anarchy, which sounds awesome and would be awesome if we were able to handle it.... But it can't happen for very obvious reasons.

Conclusion:
1- Having the short stick sucks and you're bound to hate it.
2- It can get better but it'll never get awesome, politically. You get to keep you 50 inches 1080p TV.

People will always hate the government but whatever 'democracy' we have is the best the humankind has to offer so far. It's easy to rant about it - it truly sucks. What's harder is to offer ways to fix it - something everyone continuously fails to do.

What would be the first step? Everyone can 'choose to be a doctor' overnight? Crush the FDA and abolish taxes or dramatically lower them despite the fact that the only reason why you're successful in life is because of the infrastructure (paid for through taxes) which gives you an opportunity to live a pretty wealthy life unless you were to be an extremely clever businessman in a third world country which has low taxes?

I'm sure there could be good suggestions... But I think it's harder to come up with a completely different system that would be better...

Reason

United Kingdom2770 Posts

March 22 2010 15:24 GMT

#28

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill

Sadistx

Zimbabwe5568 Posts

March 22 2010 15:40 GMT

#29

On March 23 2010 00:24 Reason wrote:
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.

Winston Churchill

Think about how dumb the average person is. Half of them are dumber than that. And they are all eligible to vote.

bludragen88

United States527 Posts

March 22 2010 15:52 GMT

#30

Well clearly the brutes shouldn't be in charge... stupid Prophet of Truth always gunking things up.

hifriend

China7935 Posts

March 22 2010 15:55 GMT

#31

The world isn't in black and white and we're neither completely rational nor irrational. Emotion always plays a part in our decision making. Also, what would seem like rational on an individual level might not always be as rational on a grand society level.

Asjo

Denmark664 Posts

March 22 2010 16:37 GMT

#32

I feel you are oversimplifying this issue when you turn it into a matter of whether or not people are rational. With the examples you give, it's not a matter of ruling people and knowing what's best for them, rather a building a conscience into the system. There are so many things that people don't know about or don't even consider, so therefore we need a system to take care of these things, making the process more automatic. It gives people a sense of safety because they know they have the system to rely on, and it aids people by making many of these processes easier by creating a sort of automatization, where society has people to take care of specific things, leaving less up to the individual.

Now, I'm an anarchist myself, so basically I believe that people should do what they want, but I can definately see the benefits of a system that takes care of people. It also helps to promote the norm in society that everyone is in it together, and thereby shows that it's not everyone for himself. Even though people care about things and could engage in different issues, they rarely get the chance to, which is why we have the system to pick up on these things. The way a society is built often helps shape the social norms, and a society where the system cares about the interests of the individual (health, services, etc.) and meddles with people seems to emphasise a care for the people much more than one where people are left on their separate paths to shape their separate realities.

Therefore, I think it confuses me a bit to talk about the elites ruling over the masses, so much that my post might be beside the point. "The elites", if we say that these are the experts, politicians and other beaurocrats, only rule on intellection matters, where they are the only ones directly involved, whereas "the masses" rule on value-based matters in countries with representative democracies (maybe less so in the states, where you only have two main political parties).

After reading a few comments from the thread, I also see an alternative example, where the country is deregulated, and we have a different elite. There the elite are rather those with money and influence. Ability to gain power becomes a main characteristic, not the ability to effectively serve public interest. Because the sphere if interest is a bit different here, there is a greater chance for the elite to rule autonomously, although this will depend on various factors.

Another aspect to this is the win-win-win mentality. The greater regulation in society is a result of a greater cooperation among everyone in it to make a better place in general. If everyone has the interests of each other at heart, anything we do will not only benefit ourselves and other parties involved, but will most likely also have an indirect benefit for others because we are all working with the same common goal: the mutual benefit of everyone. You might call it a social contract, as Jibba pointed out.

Archerofaiur

United States4101 Posts

March 22 2010 16:54 GMT

#33

On March 23 2010 00:52 bludragen88 wrote:
Well clearly the brutes shouldn't be in charge... stupid Prophet of Truth always gunking things up.

You need to read your covenant history. When the elites were in power they almost bankrupted the covenant with their Grunt-centered social programs. Sure the Prophets created a defict in resent years but it was nessisary to preemptively attack human colonies that were breeding grounds for terrorists like Master Chief.

Mohdoo

United States15743 Posts

March 22 2010 17:01 GMT

#34

I don't believe in the current way that the elite rule the masses, but I do support the structure outlined in Plato's Republic. For those unfamiliar, to oversimplify it, the government is made up of "Philosopher kings", who are chosen based on their knowledge and how well educated they are. Plato believed that knowledge and education were the key to formulating proper ideas an opinions, and as such, the most educated and knowledgeable scholars should function as the government. There is of course much more to it than that, but the general idea is that the Physicists, Biologists, Chemists, etc make decisions pertaining to their field because they know the most about it.