Posts by Kong
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That's if you can call something a debate where one side thinks the other are too ignorant to rule and the other thinks the first side is too arrogant.
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lol, no thanks...I read Plato's Republic too, I know how long this debate is going to last.
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Yes, one of which is rule-by-referenda.
It's been tried? Cool! Where?
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Direct democracy requires such oversimplification of government that bad government becomes almost inevitable and yet applies no censure to those who fail to practice good government. It is a recipe for bad government.
I guess by 'Direct Democracy' you mean lots of referenda? I'm yet to see any kind of government that you could unilaterally call 'Good'. About the best thing we can say about representative democracy is that there have been much worse systems.
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Only if you focus on the particular representative model we use, rather than the broad idea itself.
I like the broad idea, but we're stuck with the representative model. Referenda are allowed, but apart from CIRs (which seem to be a joke), the questions in the referenda are set by the representatives. Back to square one. Of course one can agitate for a referendum, but you can agitate directly for your cause just as easily. You've probably got a better chance that way, so long as you time your agitation for when a sympathetic power bloc is has been 'chosen by the will of the people'.
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Remember, democracy isn't about making good decisions, its about making our decisions.
Isn't it about choosing people to make our decisions? Or perhaps a little more accurately, it's about infrequently voting between a few choices of people who might participate in making a decision, and a few others who certainly won't get to participate.
A problem I have with referendums (or a)is that the decisions have to be informed, and the source of information depends on who has the most money to spend on advertising. When it comes to flogging off our assets, including SOEs, the people who will benefit most are the people who have the most money.
Couldn't the same be said of elections?
It makes me sad that it's taken as read that the only sources of information for the population are advertisers. Letting advertisers inform you is about as bad as letting politicians make your choices.
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I'm also a toker from way back, started when I was pretty young, actually. I think I was 11 when I first got high. Not a particularly heavy user, usually socially, or if I'm bored of a weekend-night. I don't really feel particularly saddened by the failure to consider medical marijuana this week - it's failed to be considered my entire life.
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native, I imagine fluctuating supply is really the main concern there? Has anyone you know ever actually been busted who was using dope medicinally? But sure, it's stink that they even could be.
As for the cost, it's really not that dear. Inflated compared to what? What is the value of pain?
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nz native, don't get too bitter. On the bright side, anyone wanting to use existing marijuana for pain relief will also get to enjoy the fun of being baked, instead of having to put up with some lame medical marijuana, which by some kind of sick science will probably have the fun carefully extracted before it could ever pass wowser law. It would be like taking a shower with a raincoat on.
Seriously, it's not like there aren't any other options for pain relief. I don't get the big kerfuffle about medical marijuana, other than that, yes, banning it is lame. On the scale of lamest things done by parliament since 1900, it probably ranks about 600th. That's really the cleverness of the war on drugs, that it can be done in 10,000 steps, each lamer than the last, and you can't really put your finger on exactly when it got unbearably pathetic. The fact that it is a losing battle, that drug usage continues unabated, and that new ones are coming out all the time, doesn't stop some people thinking that a titanic wall of cretinous rules against everything isn't still a mighty thing to have.
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Indeed, it's hard to get particularly bitter about the poor illegal weed. As someone said, the illegality doesn't really stop people who like it from having it. What stops them is their own subjective evaluation of the harm/pleasure equation, which is pretty much how it should be for most things. The popularity of the 'free the weed' crusade, compared to any number of other substances banned on exactly the same fucked reasoning, is probably, as with piss, on account of how widespread the use of weed really is, particularly amongst the older and more powerful sections of the population. It's really easy to think of other people as weak criminals, but when you've done it yourself and no harm came of it, and you had a good time, then the cognitive dissonance involved in condemning it gets to you, even if you don't have the courage to say so in public.