tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post1291292857941256864..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Democracy Is Not AnarchyDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-4830937847764840952010-07-07T06:33:57.588-07:002010-07-07T06:33:57.588-07:00People should have a say in the public decisions t...People should have a say in the public decisions that affect them. Institutions of global governance already exist, they simply are not democratic. They make decisions concerning the international regulation of trade, arms, immigration, environmental conditions, labor conditions, human rights, health, education, welfare, any number of things, and presently in corporate-militarist terms in ways incomparably more beholden to the interests of incumbent/moneyed elites in than to the vast majority of stakeholders to their decisions. You are of course free to disagree that you are among the earthly stakeholders so disenfranchised under such a system, you are free to pretend to Olympian detachment or nationalist parochialism, but unless you are very rich or Australia exists in some unearthly realm you are, I am afraid, quite catastrophically mistaken in your views.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-41194941327973426212010-07-07T00:38:46.349-07:002010-07-07T00:38:46.349-07:00I'm not an anarchist. I'm not even against...I'm not an anarchist. I'm not even against a UNPA. I'm sure I could live with it. I just severely doubt that there is anything efficient, practical, or necessary about such an institution. <br /><br />I live in Australia. I don't see that any Australian problem is going to be assisted by campaigning for this globalized democracy, or that anyone else is crying out for their problems to be solved by giving Australians an institutional voice in their affairs.Mitchellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10768655514143252049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-88163138337589590612010-07-06T19:15:03.726-07:002010-07-06T19:15:03.726-07:00The permanent possibility of violent dispute doesn...The permanent possibility of violent dispute doesn't cease to exist depending on whether you "accept" it or not -- the best one can do is canalize dispute into the amelioration rather than the exacerbation of that permanent possibility: Hence, no taxation without representation, regular elections, extension of the franchise, open up the field to office seeking, bills of rights with freedoms of press and association, equal recourse to the law, separation of powers, subsidiarity, federalist layering of governance, ideally through the provision of basic guaranteed income, universal healthcare, lifelong education, retraining and therapy and access to reliable knowledge, and so on, in many different configurations. <br /><br />The problem of democratic governance is to secure a legible scene of consent and to provide for institutional alternatives for the nonviolent adjudication of disputes, as well as to institute checks on the vulnerability to violence and corruption obviously inhering in its monopoly (which is a precondition for its claim to legitimacy and in turn a precondition to its circumvention rather than expression of that violence). <br /><br />Disapproving, wishing away, or defining coercions out of existence by fiat (all contracts are voluntary by definition, eg, whatever conditions of duress and misinformnation duress aticulate them) are altogether unserious compared with the efforts of democratic experimentalism and social struggle to actual address violence rather than merely making a self-aggrandizing spectacles of decrying it. There are no spontaneous orders, only articulated ones, the possibilities for instituting violences in the very act of making testimony and redress of other violences socially legible are not to be wished away but must be faced squarely by those who would advocate for nonviolence in earnest.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-24203127587063893052010-07-06T18:09:40.319-07:002010-07-06T18:09:40.319-07:00I'm missing your logical progression here. How...I'm missing your logical progression here. How does acknowledgment of plurality and interdependence lead to acceptance of the coercion fundamental (definitional) to government? <br /><br />As you suggest, it's probably a waste of time to argue at this point. Anarchists and liberals hold enough shared values for useful cooperation. For example, and related to global government, consider the police brutality at the recent G20 protests in Canada. If a reformist movement could get the cops to stop their threats and acts of sexual violence, I would be all for it.Summerspeakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07870660699983182559noreply@blogger.com