Siggon Kristov wrote:You're ignoring what I'm saying, missing my point, and applying your foreign/first-world understandings to the issue. Elections don't corrupt the government, but they cause the government to have misplaced priorities. Each party, when in power, is only interested in keeping itself popular to be re-elected again. In your nice first-world country, that can be a good thing. In Jamaica and some other places in the Caribbean, it is not. A popular policy may not be in the interest of the people, and a policy in the interest of the people may not be popular. I gave an example with road-building.
But I agree with you. In Quebec, we had our own scandal of corruption which some believe has to do with how the Transportation ministry was cut dry in privatisation tentatives (labeled Public Private Partnerships). Others think it is because our market is small and closed, in part because of the unions.
Also, and exactly as you say, in Quebec, the road system is awful (at least this is what every Quebecker say). Our metropolis has bridges and highways constructed in the 60-70s crumbling and applies only short term solutions. Quebec mayor lobbied for the construction of a Stadium in my city. It is popular, but the State had to finance it, which is perhaps not the best use possible for its money.
What I mean to say is that this is not only happening in Jamaica, altough it probably has worst impacts in Jamaica if the country is not that rich to begin with.
I do believe in elected representatives. However, under Liberal Democracy and how Liberal Democracy works, income disparity gives the wealthy more influence, and the wealthy have pushed this idea of trickle down economics
If you believe in a representative system, then we are closer that I tought on that point. What I need to know is if elections would be free in your Proletarian Dictatorship. Would a liberal, a conservative, whatever his opinion, be free to run for election? If the answer is yes, then we can speak of a democracy.
Political competition can sometimes ruin the effectiveness of the state. One party rolls out some long-term strategies, and then another party steps in and ruins everything.
Yes, and this is because, at the date of the elections, the party which made long term plans didn't have anymore the confidence of the people AND that the next government wasn't convinced that was a good thing.
About the LGBT, I understand that the situation is dire, and I don't see what could be done to improve their lives... Someone in your society will have to show courage, some national conversation will have to be done.
In my last posts, I was not saying that rich people are pro-LGBT; I was saying that many Jamaicans have the misconception that being LGBT is "a rich people thing" and they believe that rich people are spreading "the gay agenda" - Jamaicans would not be receptive to efforts to "increase awareness" even if the rich people here cared enough to try to do it.
I was simply stating that Canada legalized gay marriage, and maybe from Jamaica all canadians appear as "richs". I was not implying that you had to be rich to support the LGBT. However, it seems to me that for various reasons, the neediest of the society can be pushed into thinking that, as you shown before in this thread.
But your Liberalism sickens and disgusts me. I don't want to have to wait on wealthy people to like something before it can be promoted. This is what we have in Liberal Democracy; the ideas of rich people spreading easily. Rich people sponsoring campaigns and influencing policies.
This is true. It is indeed capitalism. But things eventually get done. Without this exchange system,
I didn't say that I support unchecked power. Avoid stretching what I say. As a Socialist, I have always admitted that a problem with state power being centralised is that the party can be infiltrated by non-Socialists who don't have the interests of the masses as a priority. We saw how Yeltsin was able to be in the Communist Party in the USSR, and how Russia and Mozambique eventually became neoliberal.
Sorry to have overstretched your saying. I hope what follow isn't totally out of touch :
So, for you, the problem is the eventual infiltration of the party, while for me it is exactly the contrary. I am worried by ideological purity and by what could happen to people who wouldn't share the official views, while you are worried that those people could make the party derivate from its true course.
But what would happen if your views weren't extreme enough for the current ideology? Or what would happen if your views were just
different than those of your colleages, and that for that they accused you of being some kind of treator? I believe that if a party is possessed by a desire to achieve ideological purity, it could very well exhausts all its vital forces and end up like the USSR, which was run in the late 80s by people who didn't seem to care anymore about the ideology.
Other, more serious Liberals who actually read Liberal theories instead of just reading some news articles and watching white people talk on TV, only believe in stuff like Welfare Liberalism to keep workers alive. They don't believe in achieving equality; they don't just don't want the working class to die off because it looks bad and the labour supply would be gone. Even if they don't consciously say it, their policies and actions result in the strengthening of a system which keeps the proletariat alive for their exploitation. I explain this in my essay, which you still haven't read. It's annoying to have to say it here when there's somewhere that I already said it.
About your essay, where can I find it? You shouldn't feel that you have to "repeat" yourself, since you could say it in a different way, adapt to your interlocutor. I don't understand how you can complain that I didn't read it since I never have access to it.
I didn't say yet that I read Hayek, Rawls and a couple of other authors or that I studied political philosophy because I don't judge an argument by its cover. The fact that you read them makes you more aware of what they say and allow us to have an interesting conversation, but I do not like that when you imply that I know nothing and that I am just another young naive guy from the North.
I admit that I don't confront myself to raging inequalities everyday, but I at least try to think about ways to make my political system better. I also try to go out of the box and to talk to people holding different ideas than mine (like you) instead of mocking them.
I don't think that it is
more serious for a liberal to
admit that he only wants to keep workers alive. I would like for the entire world to have minimal life conditions and renumerating people to live, yet I don't want for everyone to have the same salary whatever they do or to live under a Socialist party oppressing them and claiming that one day, true communism would be achieved while their very idea of the human nature precludes this to happening.
As I said before, if you think liberals are bad and want to oppress people, then why socialists should be any better? Because they have better intents? You claim that the liberals have bad intents*, and maybe it is true. Hayek irked me when I read that people of different origins must not be blended together. The oldest liberals talk more about burghers than about the common people. Still, if they divide humanity, even unconsciously, the socialists do the same by opposing them to the capitalist burghers which should be removed form the surface of the globe.
I believe one way for inequalities to diminish, for the world to become a better place, is for people to become more aware of problems and most of all recognizing themselves in all their fellow human beings. And I don't think wealth, if it is not accumulated in absurd proportions (I might be in favour of maximum salaries, if the world were united), is necessarely a break to that.
*You didn't say the liberals had bad intents. You just stated what seems like a fact. But it is clear that in your eyes, this is horrid and therefore, if it is their intent, it is bad.