[reddeath26]

So, what ethnicity is libertarianism ethnocentric to?

I imagine it would apply to a fair amount of the 3rd and 4th worlds. Although depending on how you define State could change how applicable this is to the 4th world.

[canadiancapitalist]

I thought if something was ethnocentric it favoured that ethnicity. I also wasn't even aware there was a 4th world. How are we doing on that 2nd world anyway? Now that the Soviet Union is back under Putin can we put them back on 2nd world status? Because if we can't, I propose we move the 4th world to the 2nd world, thus cutting down on the total number of worlds by 25%. Can I get an amen?

[kuros_taken]

The thing is people who think highly of their own opinions begin to feel that theirs is the only truth, that their experiences and truths are applicable universally, which is why views of differing social, religious, political, and economic classes tend to clash so mightily. 'It works for me so it must work for everybody' attitudes. What is left out is that not everybody has, knows, and does what everyone else does. Once a personally held truth is contradicted, it ultimately becomes 'wrong', because, hell, 'I can't put into the context of my life'.

My favorite example is that poor people don't suddenly gain the knowledge of responsible money management upon gaining wealth, nor can rich people fathom the consuming and overwhelming difficulties of poverty. Neither side can comprehend what the other goes through, yet both ends of the spectrum loath the other.

Why? Because they feel that they just know the other side, from what they learn from the media or through the grape vine. They just know. Or at least they think they do. The poor think that all wealthy people are slimy capitalists who are out to steal their money and the wealthy think that the poor is just a filthy, writhing mass that is just too lazy to do better for themselves. I feel that misunderstanding is the greatest dividing wedge of society.

[Doctor State]

Is that the closing argument for democracy?

Democracy accomplishes one thing: it makes the inevitable wielding of power by the majority over the minority peaceful rather than bloody. It is the majority saying to the minority "We can do this this easy way or the hard way."

[NoRapture]

Democracy accomplishes one thing: it makes the inevitable wielding of power by the majority over the minority peaceful rather than bloody. It is the majority saying to the minority "We can do this this easy way or the hard way."

As Democracies grow and evolve they become more civilized and democratic. We no longer burn our children up in factories and endless labor. We no longer hide our ex-slaves under a blanket of total discrimination and denial. Women have become much more than the handmaiden of mankind. We now understand, and reflect with our votes and voices, that empire and even hegemony are no longer the ends toward which we need to pursue social achievement. Democracy and its perfection has been the true north of human evolution, born primatively with the Greek philosophical classicists. And carefully pursued by Voltaire and his American founding disciples.

This is not to say I believe we are presently living in any shining historical moment of the betterment of democracy.

[Doctor State]

As Democracies grow and evolve they become more civilized and democratic. We no longer burn our children up in factories and endless labor. We no longer hide our ex-slaves under a blanket of total discrimination and denial. Women have become much more than the handmaiden of mankind. We now understand, and reflect with our votes and voices, that empire and even hegemony are no longer the ends toward which we need to pursue social achievement. Democracy and its perfection has been the true north of human evolution, born primatively with the Greek philosophical classicists. And carefully pursued by Voltaire and his American founding disciples.

This is not to say I believe we are presently living in any shining historical moment of the betterment of democracy.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

[NoRapture]

If you find it appropriate to raise post hoc to a thousand years of social evolution based on the innate equality of men you obviously are beyond argument in your beliefs. You'd have to be more than a social scientist. You must be a cutting edge mathematician on a par with Einstein shaking contemporary physical theory to its centuries old foundations.

[Doctor State]

If you find it appropriate to raise post hoc to a thousand years of social evolution based on the innate equality of men you obviously are beyond argument in your beliefs. You'd have to be more than a social scientist. You must be a cutting edge mathematician on a par with Einstein shaking contemporary physical theory to its centuries old foundations.

It was an appropriate response to your paragraph. If you have something more to back it up then maybe it will cease to be appropriate. Civilization has progressed in those thousands of years you mention. And now there's more democracy than there used to be. Where's the evidence this was the cause?

[NoRapture]

Civilization has progressed in those thousands of years you mention. And now there's more democracy than there used to be. Where's the evidence this was the cause?

I have none. I only know mens' well-being seems to have improved greatly under the same democratic ideas that began to exist a couple thousand years ago.

[Dave]

Our lives are better because of economic progress, not any abstract ideals.

[Doctor State]

I have none. I only know mens' well-being seems to have improved greatly under the same democratic ideas that began to exist a couple thousand years ago.

Their improvement in well-being might have been the cause, and democracy the effect. Perhaps democracy is a luxury only more advanced civilizations can afford.

[Dave]

I think that's pretty much accurate. In advanced societies there exists a vast, industrial and commercial economy as well as vibrant civil society. This eliminates most extreme scarcity as well as cooling religious and ethnic passions. In the absence of this, larger social groupings require a Hobbesian leviathan to maintain order and peace, and development would be simply impossible in a poor country, given the idiotic political positions the mob tends to hold.

[NoRapture]

In the absence of this, larger social groupings require a Hobbesian leviathan to maintain order and peace, and development would be simply impossible in a poor country, given the idiotic political positions the mob tends to hold.

I'm not sure who, historically, you're talking about. But assuming superiority between mobs doesn't strike me as a good way of assessing the social value of any given one. Democratic republics can be humane, civilizing successes or bloody failures. America has been both.

[Dave]

Most early states were extremely authoritarian, although in other ways I suppose people were left alone in a way they are not today. The first states we might consider "liberal", republics and democracies in the classical world, were in fact slave-owning oligarchies and severely repressive of dissent. This then evolved into feudalism, and then brutal early capitalism. Most of human history has been marked by societies and tribal groupings with social practices we in our world would consider extremely brutal. And this was broadly necessary to maintain order. It used to be fairly common for famines to wipe out something like 3% of a country's population from time to time--how else do you maintain order in such conditions?

[Doctor State]

The conditions of ancient civilizations were probably a byproduct of a more brutal age in general. Life was cheap. If life expectancy is 20, and your options are to grow crops on a farm or have sex, death is not as big a deal as it is in a society where people live into their 80s and it's possible to not be bored for a single second of it. People are richer and healthier; I think this is the cause, and higher political expectations are the effect. With the standard of living we have, we don't have the patience for a tyrant. Too much at stake.

[QatzelOk]

If life expectancy is 20, and your options are to grow crops on a farm or have sex, death is not as big a deal as it is in a society where people live into their 80s and it's possible to not be bored for a single second of it.

When I think of all the seniors watching TV or playing video lottery machines, I think about how bored people must have been back when they farmed and had sex.

[Doctor State]

When I think of all the seniors watching TV or playing video lottery machines, I think about how bored people must have been back when they farmed and had sex.

Cute.

[NoRapture]

With the standard of living we have, we don't have the patience for a tyrant. Too much at stake.

with the standards of living and intelligence we now have, we don't recognize the tyrants when they're looking back at us on television. The tyrants are us. And worse for the rest of the world, our leaders.

[QatzelOk]

The tyrants are us.

The tyrants are among us and empowered by us.

But most working people don't have the power to dominate other people to such an inhuman scale as real tyrants.

Real tyrants RULE, and they RULE for the sole benefit of themselves (and the group they create/maintain as an extension/human shield of that fake "self")

[NoRapture]

Real tyrants RULE, and they RULE for the sole benefit of themselves (and the group they create/maintain as an extension/human shield of that fake "self")

There are a lot of willing shields. And shields in waiting. For shield scholarships, jobs, loans, positions, and candidacies.