[geeks] 4th Amendment Gone

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 @ 12:26 -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke said:

> Well, since the US was never a democracy to begin with, how about we
> just get rid of that recently-acquired name?  Democracy means "majority
> wins" ie: "mob rule".  We have representative government and codified law
> to mitigate that.  We're technically a republic.  

Some of the ancient democracies were not mob rule though.  More like
elite rule.  In other words, it was democracy if you happened to be a
member of the elite.

Neither is very good.  Elite democracies (wasn't that what Athens had?)
are much like kings: great when you have good leaders, terrible when
your leaders are bad.

> A democracy, due to human nature, rewards bad decisions.  

For a good look at democray gone out of control, read John Brunner's
excellent novel: A Shockwave Rider.

It's about a future America ruled by elite, who base their decisions on
delphi.  What is a delphi?

>From the book:


    HOW TO GROW DELPHINIUMS

    It works, approximately, like this.

    First you corner a large- if possible, a very large - number of
    people who, while they've never formally studied the subject you're
    going to ask them about and hence are unlikely to recall the correct
    answer, are nonetheless plugged into the culture to which the
    question relates.

    Then you ask them, as it might be, to estimate how many people died
    in the great influenza epidemic which followed World War I, or how
    many loaves were condemned by EEC food inspectors as unfit for human
    consumption during June 1970.

    Curiously, when you consolidate their replies they tend to cluster
    around the actual figure as recorded in almanacs' yearbooks and
    statistical returns.

    It's rather as though this paradox has proved true: that while
    nobody knows what's going on around here, everybody knows what's
    going on around here.

    Well, if it works for the past, why can't it work for the
    future? Three hundred million people with access to the integrated
    data-net is a nice big number of potential consultees.

    Unfortunately most of them are running scared from the awful specter
    of tomorrow. How best to corner people who just do not want to know?

    Greed works for some, and for others hope. And most of the remainder
    will never have any impact on the world to speak of.

    Good enough, as they say, for folk music . . .

The reason Brunner's work is so important to this discussion, is that
basically, democracy as a form of government, is an attempt to predict
and shape the future based on the desires, wishes, knowledge, and faults
of the mob.  In short: its a disaster.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [governorrhea: a contagious disease that
spreads from the governor of a state downward through other offices and his
corporate sponsors]