At 10:17 PM -0400 24/8/09, Matthias Wasser wrote:
>"Terrible awful rationalist scheme to destroy human nature for a
>nebulous greater good" is probably the most common usage of
>"utopian" right now, so as a minimum "all senses of the word"
>already includes that.
"War is peace", that sort of thing? You'll have to forgive my use of old-fashioned literal definitions. I shall brush up on my Newspeak.
All the same, I can't really see anything in the proposed system that attempts to "destroy human nature". For instance:
>--the whole adult (14+) population enrolled in the lottery. those
>who would rather be represented by somebody else can assign their
>chances to such persons in the pre-electoral period. the moment
>anyone receives assignments amounting to 0.5% of the population, that
>person would automatically be chosen and all the assignors' ID #s
>suspended from the computer's eligibility roster for that year. a
>"political campaign" would consist of groups trying to persuade
>sufficient individuals to assign their chances to their candidates,
>but members of the "soviet" would not be allowed to form durable
>parties, factions, or caucuses.
Now forgive me, but doesn't "persuading" a quota of people to assign their votes to a particular candidate, translate as buying votes? In the context of a capitalist system, I think it surely must.
And what's this drivel about not being able to form political parties? It can only be intended to prevent any interference in or undermining of the system of vote-buying by the privileged. By proscribing any mass party from combining around a common manifesto.
After that it just gets worse. Essentially this "utopian" plan for government is a dream manifesto calling for a government that is regularly auctioned to the highest bidder, with all interference proscribed. A "free enterprise" utopia where the government is openly bought and sold on the market, with political parties, or any collective action, treated as unlawful interference in the market, cartels.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas