Discussions about 'democracy' often founder on the reefs of abstraction. Modern governments are too complex for simple abstractions like 'democracy'.
Take the United States where aspects of governance are 'democratic', others not so much.
One of the aspects of governance that Americans are most proud of include the preeminence of the first ten amendments to the Constitution that take certain activities outside of democratic action.
Moreover, those amendments, like the rest of the Constitution, are interpreted by Supreme Court that is totally outside the realm of democratic governance.
A more mundane example involves our regulatory agencies (executive branch or independent). They develop policies with only general direction from the democratically elected Congress. None of the leaders or staff of these agencies are democratically selected.
And we continue to elect our presidents through an archaic institution that values States over the actual popular vote.
I get it. It is so confusing it becomes unpopular, elitist and thus non-democratic. But still, it's better than having one man to rule for more than 2 decades the country and all opposition leaders to either fall from their balconies or and get poisoned with plutonium. I mean, democracy - or republicanism - has its flaws, but it can always be corrected, unlike dictatorship. That was the point of the article and that's the reason the Athenians preferred a chaotic early democracy from tyranny.
I wish you could meet Paul C. Have you read his Democracy book yet ? Aristotle’s definition is key too - he saw democracy as rule by the people who needed to work for money basically. There’s a bit in my interview with him about this too. Gary Stevenson on economics is good - not much history but a lot of economic and political theory. He thinks government is a meaningless word because they can’t govern without kowtowing to the mega rich any more. They are ham strung.
Loads of stuff on AI and how it subverts democracy from a philosophy point of view which would interest you. The course I did in April was run by a Harvard AI Ethics PhD tutor - she was great.
If you haven’t read it you might like my David and Goliath article which I posted in the spring. There’s a bit there about the challenges.
But I see AI’s bubble bursting within the next few months. However the big companies who don’t just do AI will remain - Meta Google etc. They’ll then have a monopoly in the AI market. Be even more powerful. Be even more of a risk to democracy.
Discussions about 'democracy' often founder on the reefs of abstraction. Modern governments are too complex for simple abstractions like 'democracy'.
Take the United States where aspects of governance are 'democratic', others not so much.
One of the aspects of governance that Americans are most proud of include the preeminence of the first ten amendments to the Constitution that take certain activities outside of democratic action.
Moreover, those amendments, like the rest of the Constitution, are interpreted by Supreme Court that is totally outside the realm of democratic governance.
A more mundane example involves our regulatory agencies (executive branch or independent). They develop policies with only general direction from the democratically elected Congress. None of the leaders or staff of these agencies are democratically selected.
And we continue to elect our presidents through an archaic institution that values States over the actual popular vote.
I get it. It is so confusing it becomes unpopular, elitist and thus non-democratic. But still, it's better than having one man to rule for more than 2 decades the country and all opposition leaders to either fall from their balconies or and get poisoned with plutonium. I mean, democracy - or republicanism - has its flaws, but it can always be corrected, unlike dictatorship. That was the point of the article and that's the reason the Athenians preferred a chaotic early democracy from tyranny.
I wish you could meet Paul C. Have you read his Democracy book yet ? Aristotle’s definition is key too - he saw democracy as rule by the people who needed to work for money basically. There’s a bit in my interview with him about this too. Gary Stevenson on economics is good - not much history but a lot of economic and political theory. He thinks government is a meaningless word because they can’t govern without kowtowing to the mega rich any more. They are ham strung.
Loads of stuff on AI and how it subverts democracy from a philosophy point of view which would interest you. The course I did in April was run by a Harvard AI Ethics PhD tutor - she was great.
If you haven’t read it you might like my David and Goliath article which I posted in the spring. There’s a bit there about the challenges.
But I see AI’s bubble bursting within the next few months. However the big companies who don’t just do AI will remain - Meta Google etc. They’ll then have a monopoly in the AI market. Be even more powerful. Be even more of a risk to democracy.
Interesting times ahead.
Interesting indeed... Hit me with your old article!
https://open.substack.com/pub/joannamilne/p/if-the-ai-goliath-is-here-to-stay?r=3j9y88&utm_medium=ios
Interesting post Konstantinos, allow me a minor suggestion, for future reference, i think that the English translation of Nεότουρκοι is young-Turks
Noted, thank you!