Whenever anyone points to an Economist study I always think of their quality of life study from 2007 (I think) which put Ireland at number one, indicating its great financial and banking system etc etc. A few months later everything collapsed and the whole rotten system was exposed, the total falsity and facade of the place. That's not to say the Economist doesn't do good studies but I can't help take them with a very big pinch of salt.

Democracy is a great idea and I'm all for it.
However people are fucking stupid and shouldn't be trusted

Democracy requires enough of the population to be engaged and informed for optimal decisions. It isn't the case.  

Kow wrote:

Whenever anyone points to an Economist study I always think of their quality of life study from 2007 (I think) which put Ireland at number one, indicating its great financial and banking system etc etc. A few months later everything collapsed and the whole rotten system was exposed, the total falsity and facade of the place. That's not to say the Economist doesn't do good studies but I can't help take them with a very big pinch of salt.

 

To be a little fair, Ireland in 2007 was an overall good place to live. Nothing is perfect but most people of my generation were either living the life up (albeit a bit too much) or buying homes. Heck some were looking at second homes or holiday homes. The economy was built on a lie but this was not known by the wider public at the time. I would well believe a survey would have been positive at this point. The Celtic Tiger doesnt really crash until 2008 and it was the abrupt slam that really fucks things.

davyK wrote:

Democracy requires enough of the population to be engaged and informed for optimal decisions. It isn't the case.  

I'm not sure this is correct. It makes sense but does it actually bear results? The more people engage with politics the more they seem to be pushed away (see reasons for low french turnout - Apathy caused by "well, it doesnt make a change") As for being informed to make an optimal decision... I dont think this works either. I'm sure we've all been at a manager meeting or similar and everyone has the same info but several people arrive at different conculsions. Spread that over a populatin and I dont think just being informed will create the best decision for all. It might create the best decisin for some (arguably thats what we have)  

I think more than engagement and information, Democracy has to be led by the concept of the greater good. That when a person votes they do so on what they think is the best option for everyone. Too much is now aimed at the "whats in it for me" which makes sense (regardless of how well or not well of you might be) but feels contary to what is best for a society overall.

Clear issue of people's political agency starting and stopping at 'turn up and vote'. You need more of a culture of engagement than that and getting pissy on Fuckbook. Union membership used to be pretty fucking decent at developing this but they largely got bummed in the gob since the '80s.

The Economist is about as well-written as any periodical. It also picks up quite interesting angles to look at things from. It falls apart during the midway point in an article though. Starts with the hand-waving away of alternative points of view, misrepresentations and ends with a "more neoliberalism needed to solve this issue."

The quality of life survey specifically looked at banking and finance. While the wider public may not have been aware, the financial experts certainly knew but nobody wanted to listen. Including The Economist as it turns out. The whole collapse was based on that denial. The quality of life at the time was good but it was based on an economic fabrication, which both the Economist and the IMF ignored.

I have no idea who that guy is apart from he was writing about 1930s fascism and I saw the quote floating around a while ago.

As you head east, democratic ideas have much more of an idea of social benefits, where life is more family, community based. The modern idea of individualism is primarily an American / European idea that logically leads to a form of democracy which is more 'what's in it for me'. In Ireland you can see in local politics that people vote for local politicians in return for that politician helping them in some way on a very individual level. In one way it could be seen as actually making politicians work for their votes but on the other it leads to a very selfish mish mash of voting that lets purely self-motivated politicians stay in power and isn't beneficial for the country as a whole. You end up with people in the parliament who have no interest at all in 99% of the country.

That's kind of thing that gets me about saying you need to educate people. Lots of educated people vote for the centre right as it's more in line with what they believe. I know a load of centre right voters who are educated and well informed and that's what lines up with their thinking better, they are not selfish. It's kind of like telling left wingers that they need to be educated better in economy and finance so they can understand why they should vote right and not left, for the good of the country. (Obviously I don't know about Britain, but I'm sure there isn't that much of a difference).

But again, you can hold a genuine belief that individuals having more control over their lives benefits those individuals and, by extension, society as a whole.

Yeah aside from education to build critical thinking skills, you also need to instill a culture of empathy/generosity/fairness/hope etc etc. Art and media can play a big part in that I think.

There's probably going to be a lot about a qualitatively 'good' society that isn't necessarily optimal in an objective sense. Like with ethics we have to make choices about what kind of world we want to live in, and put forward the case for that world in the hope of convincing others.

Lots of educated people (here: the in-laws) get 'entangled' in the tsunami of online rightwinger propaganda, misinformation and fake news. I'm talking university educated people with a degree here with right leaning tendencies; the new middle class so to speak. In my experience people people who've studied stuff like economy and law tend to lean more to the right and are far more open to 'believe' misinformation and fake news.

Not sure whether it's plain stupidity, willful selfish ignorance or the lacking of tools to parse the tsunami of online (dis)information. It might very well be a combination of all three.

So yeah, it's not just education that needs to change. It's the type and quality of the education as well. A general knowledge of history and politics in elementary school would be good starting point.

Like I said, it's not only the degree, it's also the type of degree and thus the personal path of education. But yeah, imhe etc.

I really feel like it should be the other way around, for all subjects, as much as is practical for younger brains.