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It's time to end 'Democracy' | 16 comments (16 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 1)
Well, the fly in the ointment that I see is you are basically handing government over to the corporate propaganda machines.

Yes, ordinary people are concerned with ordinary things, but if you tell them all the time that "neo-liberal economics works" in the newspapers and public discourse, then when they are chosen to make some decisions they will be vulnerable to the neatly formulated proposals from various lobbyists and think tanks. Let's face it, it already happens with the representatives we have now, how much more temptation will it be for representatives who have been chosen at random, are stressed and overwhelmed by the job before them and conscious of their own lack of law making experience. Templates are an exceedingly powerful thing.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Wed Mar 15th, 2006 at 05:58:55 PM EST
Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 1)
That was the other side of the argument - I left it out because there were too many words there already.

But IP TV is about to blow apart the old corporate media monopolies, just as blogging is - finally, after a ten year wait - starting to impact print publishing. (There's more to say about that for another time.)

And even then I'm not convinced that with corporate propaganda saturation the groundswell of disagreement isn't there. It's possible it's not visible because it's not given a legislative outlet, not because it's absent.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Mar 15th, 2006 at 06:26:21 PM EST
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Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 0)
The groundswell is there. It just has no exit, no outlet. So, unless an outlet is found, it builds up, builds up, builds up and one day it blows up and is picked by the first asshole smart and dishonest enough to catch it.

It's called a revolution and it sucks.
by Francois in Paris on Wed Mar 15th, 2006 at 09:51:21 PM EST
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Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 0)
How romantic.
I hate to tell you this, but IP TV will be just as corporate as all the other forms of TV. Media production may become more of an ecosystem, but it will remain dominated by those with the money to spend on cross promotion. This will actually increase the influence of right-wing think tanks (see the situation in the USA) as they will be able to create more media and have it put out.

It's easy to forget, because the left of the blogosphere is more interesting and vital, that the right of the blogosphere is large and thriving. Indeed a lot of the big names (e.g. Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds) are part of the RWNM. I pick him out because now the Guardian have given him space on commentisfree, which is an indication that he is pretty famous in blogging circles.

The fact is, like it or not, a lot of policy is complicated and a lot of the simplifications play into the hands of the Friedmanites.

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Mar 16th, 2006 at 03:13:37 AM EST
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Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 0)
I hate to tell you this, but IP TV will be just as corporate as all the other forms of TV. Media production may become more of an ecosystem, but it will remain dominated by those with the money to spend on cross promotion. This will actually increase the influence of right-wing think tanks (see the situation in the USA) as they will be able to create more media and have it put out.

Maybe. It depends on a lot of things, and I think the standard channels model won't survive the transition. I'd expect massive fragmentation of interest and message. And that will make Monolithic MediaTM harder to sustain.

So Fox and the other media machines go from having no competition to having plenty. This is bad for them, because instead of making money on ads and eyeballs they start having to spend money to promote the message. At some point this stops being cost effective even for the Murdochs of the world.  

And even if there is more media being produced that doesn't guarantee that people will continue to watch it. Rush and O 'Reilly and the rest aren't popular because they're popular, they're popular because they have a lockdown on the media distribution networks and more progressive voices don't currently get the air time. If that ends, it will turn into a free for all.

Of course this assumes there won't be a corporate lockdown of the internets first, and that corporate interests won't try to lock out the populists - which may yet happen. But it's not a sure thing, and it could easily go either way.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Mar 16th, 2006 at 07:42:10 AM EST
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Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 0)
I still think the effects of corporations dumping huge amounts of money into lobbyists to drop fully formed legislation into the laps of the chosen representatives (and another key objection is that the chosen in the Greek model are still representatives, especially when faced with events, rather than just choices) are a big problem with the model.

A nice example of just how this kind of legislation would work is in today's column by Simon Hoggart of the Guardian.

However, a bill of this length has one great advantage. It means that anyone can find in it whatever they want to find. This is vital, for the Tories, who decided to vote for it in order to embarrass the prime minister, and for education secretary Ruth Kelly, who can find enough shiny needles in this particular haystack to claim that it is a truly egalitarian, Labour bill.

...

Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, then picked out every leftwing element in the bill and flung to those behind her, "this is a progressive bill, a reforming bill", a peroration that would have been even more resonant if a Lib Dem had not shouted out "and a Tory bill!"

A point proved when Tories lined up to say how much they liked many of its multitudinous clauses.

(There's also the complexity issue, but that deserves a diary if I get time.)

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Mar 16th, 2006 at 08:47:22 AM EST
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Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 0)
It's hard to know because no one has tried.

Lobbying today only really works because power is very concentrated. If you get access to Tony and can sell him on your plans (possibly with the help of a loan or two) you're in. Similarly K Street in Washington. It's all in one place, and the players all know each other. That's what makes it so potent.

When you have a few hundred randomly aligned people to persuade, it becomes a more complicated thing to arrange.

It surely isn't possible to arrange a perfect system. But as someone else pointed out in a different thread, democracy is based on keeping economic, religious, legislative, presidential and popular power separate. Once they start amalgamating democracy is dead. So any approach that helps maintain the separation, which means maintaining checks and balances, is an improvement on what we have now.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Mar 17th, 2006 at 10:16:07 AM EST
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Re: It's time to end 'Democracy' (none / 0)
Let me put it this way, who do you think will propose policy in your system? A detailed new law on banking fraud, for instance?
by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Fri Mar 17th, 2006 at 10:31:17 AM EST
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It's time to end 'Democracy' | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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