Confusion Tuesday, January 01, 2008
I recently received an email soliciting some sort of affiliation with another political website. A few sentences:The website is a political themed website aimed towards fostering intelligent and informed discussion and debate on issues of public policy, leading to bipartisan solutions enacted for the public good. In short, we want to bring together people from all over with different backgrounds, beliefs, and political views, and have them all actively participating in forum debates. The goal is for each individual to express his or her own views while learning more about politics. The activeness of each individual can earn college credit, prizes, and ultimately shape legislation in congress someday through "collective intelligence."What I find notable is the presumption (or perhaps delusion) in the final sentence.
Look kids: There is a group of people with the power to take your property without paying for it, to take your pay from your employer before you even see it, to lock you in a cage for the rest of your life or even to kill you. They know very well that they can get away with this stuff all day every day. They regard the intelligence, collective or otherwise, of anyone outside their group as beneath contempt. Does it really seem likely that this same group of people will be influenced by the outcome of a discussion in an online forum?
Clearly, I've got nothing against websites where people offer their opinions on politics, and such sites can be useful in many ways, but actually influencing legislative outcomes is not one of them.
Labels: democracy, politics, statism
[ posted by James @ 3:59 PM | | Digg this! | del.icio.us | Permanent link | links to this post ]
1 Comments:
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At Tue Jan 01, 08:02:00 PM EST,
TAYLOR said...
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Doesn't someone surrender the argument from the get-go when they insist that people "from different backgrounds" can achieve a result that serves the "public good?"
Doesn't "different backgrounds" imply that there can not be one, common "public good" that will serve everyone, or even necessarily a majority of people?
File that e-mail under the "we just need the right people in control of the system" heading, where "the right people" in this case simply means people who have "[learned] more about politics."
"Collective intelligence," hmmmm... they wouldn't be speaking euphemistically of the price mechanism, now, would they?
But of course not! They mean everything BUT the price mechanism, the entire "collective unintelligence" or should I say collective unconsciousness.
