Definition Is Prior To Words II
2005.08.07 3:37

Morosoph's argument is not backed on some solid fact but mere assumption because he thinks therefore he thinks. Let's keep on seeing entire arguments.

Pure democracy IS community power. I'm not sure what you consider liberalism to be- but I consider it to be using governmental power to help people. I think what you really mean is that it is opposed to libertarianism. -Marxist Hacker 42

No, pure democracy, or any other form of governance (including anarchic governance) regulates the community, just as it regulates every member. Community is emergent from the people, and has an identity of its own. Because that identity need not be a healthy one, sometimes the emergent form needs to be regulated, albeit indirectly via the community's members. Democracy might be an ideal of community power, but the community has many possible structures, of which democracy is only one.

His conviction on the terms he has held has been swaying, since he started thinking the term he held not the difinition the term might connotes, he couldn't help but try to change the stance he took on democracy and community. He had to start with thinking about what the difinitions of the terms first. It is too late to start thinking about the difinitions of the terms after he started argument with Marxist Hacker 42. So Morosoph had to try to change the argument itself, anyway, he has to continue.

Liberalism is about the fine balancing of freedoms

But again he resumed thinking about what the term liberalism means. Wrong. He has to think some notion relatded to liberalism, then he has to form/conceive what is and what is not liberalism. Too late. His back is on fire. He has to extinguish his fire first.

liberty, not self-defined interests. Both the left and right oversimplify society into a battle of power, with property as the standard of the right. Communitarianism doesn't get close to starting with liberty. It starts with community; if it happens to promote liberty, that is entirely accidental.

Since he had to take liberty into consideration on the notion of democracy, he hit upon a strange adaptation of word to word, what he has to do is collect as many informations possible to difine what democracy is and what liberty is then if he started thinking about their difinitions in the first place, it would be not too late.

The main one being that anarchy will always devolve into the authority of the man with the most firepower. That's the problem with Anarchist/libertarian concepts- they assume that human independance is possible. It was at one time, but ever since we passed about 2 billion human beings on this planet, your actions affect me and my actions affect you, even though we might physically be many thousands of miles apart. Due to that reality, we need some system of regulation and government. That system can either be progressive or regressive- it can either be designed to give maximum freedom and self rule to the most people possible, or it can be designed to deliver power to a small subset of representatives. -Marxist Hacker 42

What you're saying is that anarchy isn't sustainable. I agree. It is my ideal, but as it cannot be sustained, compromise is necessary.

Anarchy/libertarianism .. the mind of Morosoph has been swaying..

Witch hunts are actually good from time to time- if say the Islamic community had done a witch hunt back in the 1940s, we wouldn't have Islamic terrorism today. Diversity becomes a burden when large numbers of people have to live together. -Marxist Hacker 42

If you really believe that witch hunts are good, I doubt that we can reach agreement. A witch hunt is by definition

He has to know what a witch hunt is not by difinition given by dictionary. Dictionary tells wrong difinitons as always. He has to collect many notions that might form the definitions of the term then for the first time he can use the term with confidence. By the way his difinition is wrong in that context, totally beside the point.

one where imagined fears overwhelm real risk, and context is lost. The cost of a witch hunt is felt for generations to come. Besides, who exactly would have been eliminated in your Islamic witch-hunt? The real witch hunts were initiated by those who'd just learnt to read "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." [blueletterbible.org]; hardly reasonable moderates. Democracy is an important part of balancing people's interests, but the rare or unusual is an important part of the social dynamic. A healthy society would be one where the individual and society work symbiotically.

Unfortuneately human beings can't be trusted to work symbiotically. They will always try to gain an advantage over their neighbors if allowed. -Marxist Hacker 42

I was referring to society as the other party, rather than their immediate neighbours. And people do form symbiotic relationships with society; they seek work, do conventional things; generally don't rock the boat. This isn't through calculation of personal advantage, but rather the seeking of a healthy life through copying others, and meeting expectations. The biggest problem that we have now is that these expectations are getting seriously warped, but we need to ask ourselves how to put society on the right track, not how to give society, half-broken as it is, still more power.

Morosoph's problem here is he is talking about what the society he feels it's ideal ought to be, but it is not entirely based on the society he lives in htthis current harsh world. In shor he is taliking about never land.

The community is no longer an abstract with modern communication technology. It used to be, it's natural form is an abstract, but now that we're able to count votes for populations of more than 500 in a given day, the community itself has become a very concrete entity. It has become very easy to see what is in the general benefit and what is beneficial only to the individual; and while you're right that these are two different things, they are no longer unquantifiable. -Marxist hacker 42

Community is unequal to votes.

Same argument applied to as I already mentioned repeatedly above. It is his conviction but many people just think it ? not !.

Community is made up of a dense web of personal relationships of all kinds, and a kind of emergent consensus that emerges from that. If you believe that you can get the community's will by counting votes, you don't really know what community is.

We cannot regulate what they really think. Voting still remains to be the best way to decide the community's will.

The concreteness that you perceive is only won by measuring the wrong thing.This is quite apart from the question of whether democracy is a worthy ideal.

We can either use this technology for government or for business- but the technology WILL be used regardless. Wal*Mart, for instance, owes about 12% of their profit margin to knowing exactly how much of which product will be sold in a given store on a given day- based on a historical database recording the "dollar votes" of every customer in their now world wide network. They do it with sales- there's no reason why a small town or city couldn't do it with *nightly* elections. -Marxist Hacker 42

But would it be desireable? Democracy at this level would lead us to continuously oppress one another. So many laws seem like a good idea, but they accumulate,

Illogical leaping of three stages. In order to make us cofirm it needs to be backed by the facts.

so we will simply end up with too many. They will need to be enforced with much discretion, leading to something much worse than what you call anarchy: major arbitariness and inconsistency, and a massive grant of power to those who interpret such laws, with absolutely no flow of natural action.

Unless, of course, the group is kept small. The real question isn't between democratic regulation and democratic rule- it's between oligarchial rule and democratic rule, or between representative democracies and local small democracies. Certainly, just to use an example from my own state, a group of ranchers in Fossil, OR knows far more about their local economy and their local ecology than the state government in Salem, OR- over 300 miles away, or than the federal government in Washington, DC does 2700 miles away from Fossil. -Marxist Hacker 42

Maybe so, but by increadible coincidence, they also interact and trade almost exclusively with people within the group, so that the emergent form is optimised around those criteria without neglecting legitimate factors that come into play from 'abroad'.Isn't it better to limit property, as Locke originally envisaged [google.com], than create complex structures of governance, so that we can all be oppressed fairly?

You see, as if we were floating above the clouds in his arguments. He has been trying to make himself understood simply stating his conviction based on his mere assumptions one after another.

In many places in the United States, we already have this power- but it's done through representative government instead of direct democracy. And we grant rights to "minorities" that nobody wants- sex offenders, illegal immigrants, etc can't be discriminated against, so they multiply out of control. This is NOT a good thing, despite what the multiculturalists say. I say, give it back to the cities and towns to do this locally, and you'll still have diversity- in the places where diversity is valuable- while preserving the basic right of people to live in a homogenous community.-Marxist Hacker 42

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Liberalism(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.08.09 2:50 (#13271275) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.09.17 20:46)
By liberal, I do not mean the same as "libertarian", but rather the liberal tradition that includes the likes of John Stewart Mill, where he explicitly attempts to balance interests with an emphasis upon freedom in his "Utilitarianism", "On Liberty", and other essays.
I do not belive that I am misusing words.
I believe that democracy, like capitalism, needs to be kept in check. Is that such an extreme position? Pure democracy implies that we're all ruled by what the average mind can grasp, yet it is precisely the more subtle mind that can grasp indirect action, and emergent propreties of large systems.
I am not arguing for the rule of the "wise", but rather the freedom to be able to act beyond the current consensus, at least to a greater degree than a pure democracy would yield.
I'll link to my latest reply [slashdot.org] for good measure.--Why you Should use 'Viral' Licenses [slashdot.org]
Re:Liberalism(Score:1)
by mercedo (822671) * on 2005.08.11 1:06 (#13286748) (http://slashdot.org/~mercedo/journal/109855 Last Journal: 2005.10.01 16:45)
I felt favourable when I was able to feel you changed a little bit from your standpoint that you used to have, but overall impression on reading your comments particuraly in my JE -'perfect moderate' you are still too long way to go to reach the reality we usually face. Just let me remind you the most important thing - that is we argue based on what we can have our mutual understanding, therefore conversation can make. Whilst in your case, everytime you say is 'according to my difinition -elucidation whatever, xxx means yyy. Very childish and stupid. We have to take it for granted some of the basic words share the same difinition between those who participated in the debate, you insist on giving another meaning to each words you mention and try to justify what you 'think' according to your difinition.
Nobody does this in matured disccusion and that is what I advise you strongly as a friend of yours. -You need to have a common recognition on many words first then you can play a fair role on discussion.--Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters [ Parent ]
Liberalism(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.08.11 6:49 (#13289583) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.09.17 20:46)
Liberalism [wikipedia.org]
I don't know about you, but I think that there is a stong tendency towards balancing several interests and freedoms implicit here.--Why you Should use 'Viral' Licenses [slashdot.org]