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Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Re: Corporate Morality


I believe there is more common ground here than meets the eye.    (01)

Socrates once lamented the deplorable lapse of democracy, where
in the early days, when they wanted to build a ship, they listened to
Simon the boatbuilder, in the latter days Demosthenes the orator and
sophist appealed to emotions and used elocutory eloquence to
persuade -- even when the position made no sense.    (02)

In other words, in the first example, people were adept at identifying
the experts. In the second, the class of professional politicians had
emerged.    (03)

In the present context, a shared-knowledge system produces the
result that a good democracy *should* produce -- the combined
considerations of everyone who *cares* about the issue.    (04)

Like capitalism in a free society, the issue is not that some people are    (05)

wealthy while most are not -- the issue is that anyone who *cares*
to be -- who has the ambition, talent, and work ethic to do so, *can*
be wealthy. In other words, the issue is equal opportunity. (Which is
why a near-confiscatory death tax is a requirement -- to *keep* a
reasonably level playing field, within limits.)    (06)

So the goal is to *allow* millions of people to participate, issue by
issue, in a way that lets the opinions of the most informed rule.
That translates to:
   1) Ranking systems -- so ideas can be evaluated
   2) Reputation systems -- so evaluators can be ranked    (07)

John Turnbull wrote:    (08)

> At the risk of joining this thread too late, I feel I have to take
> issue with Gary when he says,
>
> The idea, for example, that a million non-thinking people can arrive
> at better solutions than a few very intelligent, thinking people who
> study the issues seriously is simply silly.
>
> Who are these 'non-thinking' people, Gary? This is exactly the kind of
> attitude that has prevented real democracy from emerging, that has
> kept millions of people from playing a meaningful role in the conduct
> of their own societies' affairs.Somebody asked in an earlier posting
> "what is wrong with democracy?" The answer is that we don't have any -
> all we have is pseudo-democracy, which has evolved for the purpose
> that is implicit in Gary's thinking: to exclude the masses and let
> those who 'know best' make the decisions. If we are to have anything
> approaching a just society, ALL of the people affected by decisions
> MUST be have the opportunity to be involved in the decision making
> process. Democracy must be a learning process, with all of us learning
> from each other, not simply the 'non-thinking' people being lectured
> at by those who 'know' what's good for them.
>
> Cheers,
>
> John
>
>    (09)