[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I can see where you are coming from, and for each of us out there, there is often a well published individual who has expressed ideas who we agree with. The problem comes when these theories are attempted to be placed into reality. Karl Marx made some engaging arguments in his original work, however when it was filtered through humanity we wound up with the Soviet Union which was in many instances a direct contradiction to the ideas of socialism. For each political system that has emerged on this world, it has rapidly differed from the thoughts which gave birth to it.
'No plan survives first contact with the enemy' is a classic saying, oft quoted by those of us who enjoy strategy and tactics alike, however outside of strategy it is still valid in that no political theorem can survive the ravages of human behaviour that is placed upon it, even through the best of intentions, but more often through a sense of greed and lust for power.
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The gulf of the difference between the theory and the fact can be quite large, and there is no theory out there that would remain unblemished by an attempt to reproduce it in the real world. Even more so, the longer a theory is put into practice, the more it changes, the less it resembles the original theory. For at each turn it is changed, moulded and altered by those within it, either to suit the circumstances of the era or to suit an individuals desire. Does this mean that the theory is wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not, or perhaps it is another example of the gap between our brains and our hearts in that our brains can often come up with fantastic ideas, but our hearts can smash those ideas within minutes. Rational thinking is not the strongest point of humanity, after all, if it were then the world would be a much different place.

I can only repeat again that, as I see it, the conception of democracy is such, from beginning on, that it can only work in very small community sizes, smaller than most people maybe imagine, but that it's dysfunctional by inherent, inbuilt design beyond that scaling, like a plane from all beginning on is made for flying, not for diving into a deep sea abyss – it has not “lost” the ability to dive, but it just has never had it. If you think of it, today's “distortions” and “abuse” of democracy, all are nd have been forseeable AND INDEED HAVE BEEN PREDICTED OVER CENTURIES AND MILLENIA, if it were a random degeneration only, that prediction would have been a case of hitting a target by pure chance only – and for that I think the criticism of democracy and warning of where it necessarily leads, has been a little bit too uni-sono and has been agreed on by too many great names in history. That the idea nevertheless is welcomed by those majorities of people who would and do profit from “taking from the one and giving it to the others – which are said profiteers that today come in such majorities that they bring down the economic basis of modern Western states, cannot really be surprising. Socialism always is welcomed by the big crowds, although – to quote Konrad Adenauer – the only thing socialism knows about economics is how to spend the money of others.

So I do not follow you where you seem to think that today's dysfunctional appearance of democracy is due to imperfection of man, or is a process of qualitative erosion in democracy. Democracy today just is what it has always been, and it is man who today holds extremely transfigured ideas about it, lifting it to a status of shine and greatness that already in ancient Greece – which we love to refer to to defend our idealised image of it – was not shared. The problems with it are in its genes, and it appears to me that the ancient Greeks already knew that, and that many thinkers and noble spirits of the past until just one century ago also still kept that understanding alive.

One can also question the moral legitimacy of having the majority deciding an issue due to being the majority vote, with the minority more or less being plowed under. This indeed gets debated in political science, and apparently with hot emotions and since long time. I just want to make that note on it, and leave it to that remark, it would lead too far to follow that trail here, maybe. Some of the points Steve once made in a locked engagement with me, I would have understood better if he would have already back then erected the theoretical background that back then I did not had in reading and knowledge on these things, but gained just in the past two years or so. Steve, you had a correct point there, I nowadays understand you better.

I could only share grounds with you - Oberon now - on this detail currently talked on, if you mean that the idea of democracy failed in “getting designed” by man >>with a sufficiently realistic assessment of human nature.<< The reason that democracy may work in very small human communities, but does not in big ones, of course is due to social dynamics and cognitive and behavioral changes in humans due to growing communities as their social environment with which they interact, are exposed to, and adapt to. But even then the concept still would have stood as what it is from beginning on, even if not having taken that change in man sufficiently into account where man interacts with an altering social and cultural environment. Also, there still remain to be factors that apply to even state-altering communities that still are objective factors and have little to do with human nature. For example the need of nutrition and water in a growing population does not grow linear with the growth in population size, but non-linear, due to the growing complexity of the needed infrastructure that needs to transport these goods over greater and greater distances. Humans fail in overseeing these factors – that I would agree on. Humans fail on this, so that often they cast doom and fall over the empires and cultures they have formed up, due to this. The book by Jarred Diamond, Collapse, explains that in many examples and references.

Trade is a founding block of civilisation, I fully agree, and the foundation of money has definitely enabled more complex trading and complex civilisation, and money and trade has also fed that part of human nature that desires improvement by setting forward an easier manner in which a person can achieve his desires. What is being sold has varied over the years, from materials in the early eras, to manpower and ideas in the later years. This has enabled both physical and intellectual labour to flourish through a reward system. As much as I would love to see a world that did not require money to exist, I do not think that such a thing could occur.

I see it as an inconsistency in thought if really wishing for an end of money, since it is a tool that simply is required to allow complex production cycles and complex civilization forming. I also refer to Rothbard's remarks about the sculptor somewhere above, in a longer quote I gave, and libertarian understanding of property, both intellectually and materialistically. When we say “For him, the purpose justifies the means” – that is a commonplace usually being used to morally discredit somebody doing something we do not like, and so we paint his act as something immoral by implying that he just does anything as long as it fits his intentions. But the phrase is very stupid, if you think of it, because without a purpose we never implement or use any means at all. When I am hungry, I eat – the bread is the means that serves my purpose. If the purpose of ending my feeling of hunger do9es not exist, I would not use the means: the bread, that is. Money also is such a means that serves the purpose, to achieve our goal, to form complex production and civilization. Even more, it is an indispensable tool for serving these our purposes.

So why wishing for a world without money? That would be a very primitive and jungle-law-like world, believe me.

TBC