NationStates Jolt Archive

I came across this question in another thread the other day.

Suppose we're utilitarian types, and think that the interests of society should come before those of the individual.

Assume society to mean the collection of individuals within the given area of interest.

Let's also assume government to mean an organisation of people which uses force to administer laws.

In this case, government can infringe upon the happiness of the individual if what it does benefits society.

While there are a bunch of possible actions which would pretty uncontroversially benefit society, there are others in which the distinction is not so clear. In that case, we have to trust in government's interests and society's interest being the same.

The claim from the other thread was that if the government is democratically elected and not tyrannical, then this is the case and for example government expropriating property is justified because in reality it represents society doing it (leaving aside the whole property rights issue and sticking to property rights physically existing due to a consensus within society).

The problem with democratically elected governments is of course that they are only elected by a majority, while there is a minority that it doesn't have that claim at representativeness to. Furthermore, the majority of government never gets elected but is appointed or employed. And even once a politician is elected there is no need for him or her to actually do what people would want him or her to do - see George Bush or John Howard.

So my question is: Can a government ever actually represent society, or is it always a seperate body with its own interests that can potentially clash with those of society? And therefore: can government infringement on the individual be justified by appealing to the needs of society?

So my question is: Can a government ever actually represent society, or is it always a seperate body with its own interests that can potentially clash with those of society?


Yes. Obviously.

I came across this question in another thread the other day.

Suppose we're utilitarian types, and think that the interests of society should come before those of the individual.

Assume society to mean the collection of individuals within the given area of interest.

Let's also assume government to mean an organisation of people which uses force to administer laws.

In this case, government can infringe upon the happiness of the individual if what it does benefits society.

While there are a bunch of possible actions which would pretty uncontroversially benefit society, there are others in which the distinction is not so clear. In that case, we have to trust in government's interests and society's interest being the same.

The claim from the other thread was that if the government is democratically elected and not tyrannical, then this is the case and for example government expropriating property is justified because in reality it represents society doing it (leaving aside the whole property rights issue and sticking to property rights physically existing due to a consensus within society).

The problem with democratically elected governments is of course that they are only elected by a majority, while there is a minority that it doesn't have that claim at representativeness to. Furthermore, the majority of government never gets elected but is appointed or employed. And even once a politician is elected there is no need for him or her to actually do what people would want him or her to do - see George Bush or John Howard.

So my question is: Can a government ever actually represent society, or is it always a seperate body with its own interests that can potentially clash with those of society? And therefore: can government infringement on the individual be justified by appealing to the needs of society?

Well, to begin with, assuming we're utilitarians for the purposes of the question is a big assumption to make. :) But anyway...

There are of course many forms of democracy within that broad label. I'm personally a big fan of proportional representation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation), which maximises the number of people represented in the House, and as it generally becomes necessary to form coalitions among different parties to create a government, a broader consensus is more likely (with a slight penalty in having a larger House).

There are of course many forms of democracy within that broad label. I'm personally a big fan of proportional representation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation)...
Though the problem doesn't go away. Society and government are still not the same thing and a democratic government will always have a portion of the populace that didn't choose it. Therefore it only ever represents the interests of a fraction of society, and even that is not a given.

So how is the claim that the government's interests are those of society any more valid than if it were a military dictatorship? The opposition may be somewhat larger, but in principle there is no difference, is there?

So how is the claim that the government's interests are those of society any more valid than if it were a military dictatorship? The opposition may be somewhat larger, but in principle there is no difference, is there?

Well, clearly it is a matter of degree; you could still place government by despotism on a completely different level to highly representative goverment, if only because more heads are generally better than one.

What you seem to be saying, if you break it down to the atomic level of decision making, is that there will always be people who disagree with a given course of action. Well, that is trivially true, and I think the only way to avoid that would be to either have a government and nation of one (and even then you could say ambivalence was a form of disenfranchisement :p), or somehow become a hive-mind.

...a democratic government will always have a portion of the populace that didn't choose it. Therefore it only ever represents the interests of a fraction of society...


Presumably a majority fraction, a not insignificant detail.

Concerning a polity the size of the contemporary state, democracy can not and will never represent the interests of 100% of the people 100% of the time. But that doesn't really matter, because representing every possible interest simultaneously is an impossible goal to begin with. Some of those interests will be naturally and directly opposed to each other making simultaneous perfect representation of all of said interests impossible. Impossible for democracy or any other system, ideology, method, or process.

To conclude that democracy is thus "in principle" no better than a military dictatorship is, however, silly. The political process constitutes a competition of interests. For reasons explained, some interests will enjoy power and some will not, for a given period of time. Democracy has nothing to do with that. This is simply a cold harsh fact of reality.

The trick, then, is to decide when who has what power for how long.

Ideally, what democracy accomplishes is the opportunity for providing each interest with equal opportunity to have or lose power in a given period of time, as well as the methods and processes of affecting transitions of power in a peaceful manner according to the rule of law. Ballots instead of bullets.

A military dictatorship, of course, destroys equality of opportunity and affects transitions and exercises of power in an entirely arbitrary and most likely violent manner, contrary to the rule of law. Bullets instead of ballots.

Of all the imperfect choices, which do you prefer? That's the difference, in principle.

What you seem to be saying, if you break it down to the atomic level of decision making, is that there will always be people who disagree with a given course of action.


Welcome to Earth.


Well, that is trivially true, and I think the only way to avoid that would be to either have a government and nation of one


The ultra-individualist war of all against all. Which will last for the whole two seconds it takes for a rational person to realize he can accomplish more with greater odds of success in a group than alone. Thus the family, nation-state, and business corporation are all reborn.

An inevitability the ultra-individualist doesn't seem to grok.


...or somehow become a hive-mind.


Seeing as how freedom includes (that is, requires) the ability to lose, freedom is clearly bad. ;)

Thus, Stalin purges the counter-revolutionary and United Fruit calls in the Marines when the workers start to agitate.

I came across this question in another thread the other day.

Suppose we're utilitarian types, and think that the interests of society should come before those of the individual.

Assume society to mean the collection of individuals within the given area of interest.

Let's also assume government to mean an organisation of people which uses force to administer laws.

In this case, government can infringe upon the happiness of the individual if what it does benefits society.

While there are a bunch of possible actions which would pretty uncontroversially benefit society, there are others in which the distinction is not so clear. In that case, we have to trust in government's interests and society's interest being the same.

The claim from the other thread was that if the government is democratically elected and not tyrannical, then this is the case and for example government expropriating property is justified because in reality it represents society doing it (leaving aside the whole property rights issue and sticking to property rights physically existing due to a consensus within society).

The problem with democratically elected governments is of course that they are only elected by a majority, while there is a minority that it doesn't have that claim at representativeness to. Furthermore, the majority of government never gets elected but is appointed or employed. And even once a politician is elected there is no need for him or her to actually do what people would want him or her to do - see George Bush or John Howard.

So my question is: Can a government ever actually represent society, or is it always a seperate body with its own interests that can potentially clash with those of society? And therefore: can government infringement on the individual be justified by appealing to the needs of society?
To put it simply, representative governments are representative on in so far as their representation is guaranteed. That is, representative democracies are representative of the will of the society on in so far as how said representation impacts upon their electability. Unfortunately, whilst democracy seems to be the best system of representation, it by far from desirable. The rub is that getting re-elected can, and frequently does clash with doing what is best for society (see: pork barreling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel)). This is not to mention the cases where doing the wrong thing for society has no or minimal impact upon re-election.

The smaller the population represented, the more representative of differing belief structures the government becomes, whilst larger populations will have increasingly less representation of differing belief sets, rather, the government will attempt to maintain a something of a "centrist" position, which is more of a compromise.

So my question is: Can a government ever actually represent society, or is it always a seperate body with its own interests that can potentially clash with those of society?Government can represent society, but only when there is literally no distinction between the two. Otherwise, government will have its own interests.

And therefore: can government infringement on the individual be justified by appealing to the needs of society?Yes, but only if the needs of society are actually met, and only up until a certain point (though that certain point is fairly extreme in and of itself).

A truly representative democracy is dependent on the idea that the participating populace are sufficiently educated as to be able to return a reasoned solution to any given problem.
I don't believe that there currently truly exists such a democracy.

Instead we have a juvenile system wherein supreme executive power is handed to the victor of an electoral process in which the wealthiest buy sufficient media control as to eliminate any true debate whatsoever.

'Democracy' as winner-takes-all for the next three-four-five years, with no genuine means for the subjects of a government to scrutinise said governments activities, is a pathetic and shallow farce.

When the governments currently posing as a 'democracy' actually start acting as one, I'll start taking the idea of 'democracy' seriously.
As long as we have institutionalised dictatorships, in which the 'alternative' is simply a slightly softer version of the industry-bought incumbent fascist, I reject your 'utilitarian' model.

The more the people participate in the democratic process that gives power to the leaders of the government, the more representative it will be.

However, the people we elect are, at the end of the day, just the leaders, the figureheads of the myriad departments, agencies, and offices that make up "government".

Technically, to be the most representational, EVERYONE would have to vote on every bill and law.

Unfortunately, it'd eat up too much time. It'd also have too many abstensions in the baby section.

Depends on the government in question, I suppose.

Having thought about this more, I have come to the conclusion that no government is representative.

I may choose to expand on this in the future. It needs work.

PARLIAMENTS

Parliaments are the backbone of that conventional democracy prevailing in the world today. Parliament is a misrepresentation of the people, and parliamentary systems are a false solution to the problem of democracy. A parliament is originally founded to represent the people, but this in itself is undemocratic as democracy means the authority of the people and not an authority acting on their behalf. The mere existence of a parliament means the absence of the people. True democracy exists only through the direct participation of the people, and not through the activity of their representatives. Parliaments have been a legal barrier between the people and the exercise of authority, excluding the masses from meaningful politics and monopolizing sovereignty in their place. People are left with only a facade of democracy, manifested in long queues to cast their election ballots.

To lay bare the character of parliaments, one has to examine their origin. They are either elected from constituencies, a party, or a coalition of parties, or are appointed. But all of these procedures are undemocratic, for dividing the population into constituencies means that one member of parliament represents thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, depending on the size of the population. It also means that a member keeps few popular organizational links with the electors since he, like other members, is considered a representative of the whole people. This is what the prevailing traditional democracy requires. The masses are completely isolated from the representative and he, in turn, is totally removed from them. Immediately after winning the electors' votes the representative takes over the people's sovereignty and acts on their behalf. The prevailing traditional democracy endows the member of parliament with a sacredness and immunity which are denied to the rest of the people. Parliaments, therefore, have become a means of plundering and usurping the authority of the people. It has thus become the right of the people to struggle, through popular revolution, to destroy such instruments - the so-called parliamentary assemblies which usurp democracy and sovereignty, and which stifle the will of the people. The masses have the right to proclaim reverberantly the new principle: no representation in lieu of the people.

If parliament is formed from one party as a result of its winning an election, it becomes a parliament of the winning party and not of the people. It represents the party and not the people, and the executive power of the parliament becomes that of the victorious party and not of the people. The same is true of the parliament of proportional representation in which each party holds a number of seats proportional to their success in the popular vote. The members of the parliament represent their respective parties and not the people, and the power established by such a coalition is the power of the combined parties and not that of the people. Under such systems, the people are the victims whose votes are vied for by exploitative competing factions who dupe the people into political circuses that are outwardly noisy and frantic, but inwardly powerless and irrelevant. Alternatively, the people are seduced into standing in long, apathetic, silent queues to cast their ballots in the same way that they throw waste paper into dustbins. This is the traditional democracy prevalent in the whole world, whether it is represented by a one-party, two-party, multiparty or non-party system. Thus it is clear that representation is a fraud.

Moreover, since the system of elected parliaments is based on propaganda to win votes, it is a demagogic system in the real sense of the word. Votes can be bought and falsified. Poor people are unable to compete in the election campaigns, and the result is that only the rich get elected. Assemblies constituted by appointment or hereditary succession do not fall under any form of democracy.

Philosophers, thinkers, and writers advocated the theory of representative parliaments at a time when peoples were unconsciously herded like sheep by kings, sultans and conquerors. The ultimate aspiration of the people of those times was to have someone to represent them before such rulers. When even this aspiration was rejected, people waged bitter and protracted struggle to attain this goal.

After the successful establishment of the age of the republics and the beginning of the era of the masses, it is unthinkable that democracy should mean the electing of only a few representatives to act on behalf of great masses. This is an obsolete structure. Authority must be in the hands of all of the people.

The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the aegis of parliaments.
Anarchism ftw

Anarchism ftw

Well, congratulations. You've managed to quote a passage about parliaments.

Got anything about governments?