display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 20085 | Democracy is the best compromise between legitimacy and efficiency [Reybrouck] |
| Full Idea: Democracy is the least bad form of all governments precisely because it attempts to find a healthy balance between legitimacy and efficiency. | |
| From: David van Reybrouck (Against Elections [2013], 1 'Crisis') | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a widespread feeling that democracy is declining in efficiency, and that may be because our remoteness from government decreases legitimacy, so we have less commitment to getting things done. |
| 20095 | A referendum result arises largely from ignorance [Reybrouck] |
| Full Idea: In a referendum you ask everyone to vote on a subject that usually only a few know anything about. | |
| From: David van Reybrouck (Against Elections [2013], 4 'remedies') | |
| A reaction: Tell me about it! I was forced to vote in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and felt thoroughly out of my depth on such a complex economic question. |
| 20094 | You don't really govern people if you don't involve them [Reybrouck] |
| Full Idea: Even with the best of intentions, those who govern the people without involving them, govern them only in a limited sense. | |
| From: David van Reybrouck (Against Elections [2013], 4 intro) | |
| A reaction: But if they are highly involved, who is governing who? Do we want the people to become happier about being governed, or do we want them more involved in doing the governing? |
| 20093 | In the 18th century democratic lots lost out to elections, that gave us a non-hereditary aristocracy [Reybrouck] |
| Full Idea: The drawing of lots, the most democratic of all political instruments, lost out in the eighteenth century to elections, a procedure that was not invented as a democratic instrument, but as a means of bringing a new non-hereditary aristocracy to power. | |
| From: David van Reybrouck (Against Elections [2013], 3 'democratisation') | |
| A reaction: This is the basic thesis of Van Reybrouck's book. He argues for the extensive use of lots ('sortition') for getting people involved in modern democracies. I love the idea that in a good democracy you get an occasional chance to rule. |
| 20091 | Representative elections were developed in order to avoid democracy [Reybrouck] |
| Full Idea: Bernard Manin (1995) revealed how, immediately after the American and French revolutions, the electoral-representative system was chosen with the intention of keeping at bay the tumult of democracy. | |
| From: David van Reybrouck (Against Elections [2013], 3 'procedure') | |
| A reaction: At the time America and France were two of the largest countries in the world, and communication and transport were slow. That has changed. |
| 22252 | Capitalism may actually be the best way to foster community [Conway,D] |
| Full Idea: Not only is there no good reason for supposing capitalism inimical to community, but there is reason to think it more conducive to community than the feasible alternatives to it. | |
| From: David Conway (Capitalism and Community [1996], I) | |
| A reaction: Conway is defending an obviously unorthodox view, while attacking the hopes of communitarians. |
| 22253 | Capitalism is just the market, with optional limited government, and perhaps democracy [Conway,D] |
| Full Idea: There are three types of capitalism: 1) the market - private ownership, labor contracts and profit, 2) limited government - the state provides goods the market cannot do, 3) limited government with democracy - with political freedom and elections. | |
| From: David Conway (Capitalism and Community [1996], II) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I would have thought that capitalism is compatible with a fair degree of workplace democracy, which would make a fourth type. |
| 22256 | Capitalism prefers representative democracy, which avoids community decision-making [Conway,D] |
| Full Idea: By opting for representative rather than direct democracy, capitalism is said to preclude political community, for which the citizens of a state must possess a common will, which needs their direct participation in decisions. | |
| From: David Conway (Capitalism and Community [1996], V) | |
| A reaction: Conway does not accept this claim. I'm beginning to wonder whether the famous British electoral system is actually a capitalist conspiracy against the people. |
| 22255 | Capitalism breaks up extended families, and must then provide welfare for the lonely people [Conway,D] |
| Full Idea: It is said that capitalism encourages the breakup of extended families, which creates the need for extensive state welfare for those indigent members of society who can no longer rely on their own family to take care of them. | |
| From: David Conway (Capitalism and Community [1996], V) | |
| A reaction: Conway does not accept this claim. It seems to simplistic to say that capitalism is the sole culprit. Any rise of mechanisation in agriculture would break up rural extended families. |
| 22257 | Capitalism is anti-community, by only valuing individuals, and breaking up families [Conway,D] |
| Full Idea: Communitarns say capitalism is inimical to family community, because it encourages an individualistic mentality which only values self-fulfilment, and because it demands labour mobility which is disruptive of families. | |
| From: David Conway (Capitalism and Community [1996], VI) | |
| A reaction: Chicken-and-egg with the first one. Small entrepreneurs are individualists who seek their own gain. It is big capitalism that sucks in the others. Traditional community is based on labour-intensive agriculture. |