At 07:41 PM 12/11/00 -0800, Max wrote:
>an important point about the differences between
>markets and democracies. In a democracy, pure or not, the majority gets
>what it wants and the rest are out of luck.
I don't wish to get into a Politics 101 argument (which I'd surely lose),
but that's certainly not how soi disant democratic politics works where I
live.
Leaving aside that the majority actually get what they've mostly been led
by the nose to agree to, from a stunningly limited menu of options, you
usually find that representations by parliamentarians from the non-ruling
party still have some effect; that there are all kinds of effective levels
of feedback and consultation; that the press, despite being muzzled by its
immensely rich owners, does play some kind of role in allowing a diversity
of voices to be heard, etc.
So let's say that the majority gets what it wants--but in times of
reasonable prosperity and comparative security, what the majority appears
to want (in Oz at least) is a `fair go' for everyone, according to their
lights, as long as their lights don't involve egregiously punching out the
lights of their neighbors.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:20 MDT