Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "Intelligence Squared"
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@masakichin6009
If you ever had freedom you would never want to give it up.
In the West you can criticize the government all day long and never suffer ill consequences.
It allows you to feel a type of dignity that's very reassuring and energizing. You may still be an undignified loser in the West and you may still feel dignity and be a winner in China.
But there's a difference: Under one-party rule you are living like a boy under your tough dad. He can beat your mother and the whole family and then brag about how smoothly the household runs. And you can't say anything.
Yes, I believe the countries (e.g. South Korea, Indonesia, Chile) that have gotten a lot richer in the last 40 years owe a lot their gains to democracy. It builds trust, and a lot of things can happen with a little money and lots of trust.
Democracy breeds kleptocrats, yes, but compared with other forms of government, much, much less---and they are rarely bureaucrats or party officials but rather business people who at least produce something.
The best system is a multi-party democracy with high taxes that finance excellent education, health care, and infrastructure. Its free citizens can sort the rest out from there.
Yes, I believe the social credit stuff. You mean the CPC publicly disputes it? Not to my knowledge.
Cheers.
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@masakichin6009
Thanks for your interesting reply. It's true, one can criticize democracy all day long. People in the West certainly do that all the time, whether they realize it or not. It's a major pastime.
Among its many demerits, democracy has never been long-lasting. It goes on for a few or several generations and then tips over into the mud. Ordinarily the cause is its tendency towards oligarchy.
Oligarchies are implicit in human nature. As Freud pointed out "nature introduces inequalities against which there is no remedy." Clever and useful people, especially if pleasing everybody isn't their goal, soon come out on top. They then marry the children of others like them.
A sense of guilt, perhaps, in the end overcomes a corrupt oligo-democratic elite which does not answer to the people. Children, not least the children of the rich, never believe all the justifications told them their parents. It might also be fake guilt, but either way countless family-level abdications take place across the classes.
In any case, a major weakness of liberal democracy seems to be its feebleness at producing the kind of people who can sustain it.
And democracy certainly does not do an ideal job of promoting good society generally, because it opens up to people the possibility of improving their rank by the accumulation of money. Where there are different arrangements, as in an aristocracy, urges to rise in social rank are curtailed, being as a rule so far-fetched. But in a liberal democracy, the fact of plausibly having a shot at social distinction distorts individual personalities on a large scale and thus goes a long way towards harming the chances of good society.
However, sensibly high taxes and the best possible public education (and health care and infrastructure) go a very long way towards moderating these problems. Of course in any democracy the best-off ten percent will be decently-behaved and will promote stability; the trick is to continually show to the rest that they can succeed with just average merit.
In light of this, democracy is thus a juggling act with many balls, dinner plates, axes, and smoking chain saws in the air.
But then, what is the alternative to it? If you live under a king, you can only hope he and his son and grandson will not abuse and rob you. That is not likely And whether under a king or a repressive bureaucratic state, how pleasant is it to be utterly without a say in what the laws are? And not just for oneself, but for everybody outside a ruling elite numbering just several thousand or even only a few hundred. I recall you mentioning that public protest in China can affect government policy, but such an outcome is at the pleasure of the government, for they cannot be thrown out.
Protest in such a case is not a right protected by the constitution, courts, and police. It is specifically opposed by the constitution, courts, and police, never mind the party, a restricted press, and an intimidated society at large.
No, such a ruling party merely have to appear flexible enough to prevent a serious attempt at revolution. That is a standard low enough to guarantee that the people will be abused, as long as the the government's power is great enough.
If that is so, large numbers of people can be imprisoned or starved to death, without its rule facing danger of overthrow. Unrestricted power is not safely put in the hands of a small number. To disagree with this is to forget about the role of instinct in human behaviour, to forget that human lives are run on hormones, appetite, and fantasy more than anything else, to forget how our cousins the chimpanzees live and the fact that they make war on one another. It also ignores millennia of history.
In my view, if an unelected government not only has a monopoly on force, but also omnipotence in counteracting opposition (as when it has 400m surveillance cameras plugged into facial recognition software) great abuses of the people are absolutely guaranteed.
What the absolute monarchy, dictatorship, or one-party state can offer is a sort of stability. But then, the government is something like a strict dad, and one lives under his roof. In a way you can never really leave your teens.
And that is only if you are lucky. If you are unlucky, you live under cruel gangsters and spend your life not like a teenager but like a dog.
I enjoyed your reply. We might have different opinions, but I can see you have observed life carefully for a long time.
Forgive the length of my reply. All the best. DP
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@Oners82 No one, I think, would fail to grant that the panelist has attained to the status of adulthood, as opposed to childhood. But would you not grant that such a bipartite scheme is a rather crude and insufficient one in this context, which requires the most fully-developed qualities of mind and judgment, backed up by considerable if not thoroughgoing learning and experience? Not to grant this, in my view, is tantamount to accusing the other panelists of wasting their additional decades by omitting to gain anything from their reading, thinking, and experience.
I do not say that only a panel of eighty-year-olds could do the subject justice, only that the young woman, in her fourth or first year of adulthood depending on one's definition, simply hasn't had enough time yet. She's of course fully entitled to her opinions; so is any 34-year-old in the US entitled to vote, but that person is not permitted to stand for election to the presidency.
There's something disagreeable about weighing things of this nature like groceries, yet it's impossible to avoid completely.
Finally, I wonder what sort of objections might have been raised had she been middle-aged, facing in the debate a lad of just 21 summers.
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@Oners82 It was you, not me, who asked about her age. You chose the topic. I addressed the matter of her age because you raised it. I addressed other matters elsewhere. Are you ok?
Yes, a 21-year-old hasn't had the opportunity to give consideration to these things. Would you want one as your president or prime minister? I bet you'd be open to the idea, as you sound quite daft.
If you're looking for a way to improve the world, never mind others for now and start with yourself. The world will appreciate it and you'll be glad, too! Consult a professional, maybe.
Lastly, thanks for sharing the term genetic fallacy. Though I knew of the thing since boyhood, I didn't know of the term for it. It's misleading, though, to one unfamiliar with it, having the word 'genetic' in it. It's likely older than the science of genetics, I suppose.
Do have a nice life, my dear little pompous one. You'll be fine.
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I decided to find out about the guy sitting next to Rosamund Pike who, in the course of a 90-second question-speech 59:28, pointedly called Eagleton an elitist, then alluded about half a dozen times to "controlling" elites. As might be guessed from her spectacular eye-roll at 1:00:06, he was, and is reputed to still be, her boyfriend and partner, one Robie Uniacke. From his tendentious question one would think he is as far as can be from privileged, controlling elitism, surely?
Not quite.
Details are few and perhaps unreliable, but he is called a businessman and "mathematical researcher".
An Old Etonian, at 22 he married the daughter of an earl. While married to her, he reportedly gave up a job in the City to scuba dive for sunken Spanish treasure for several months. The marriage ended after about five years, multiple sources claiming both he and his wife were treated for serious heroin addiction not long afterward.
In 2004, when he was 43, the 19-year-old daughter of former Tory minister Lord Hesketh (once the owner of a £50m mansion) had to publicly deny that she was his girlfriend. The two had been seen out together at London cinemas and restaurants. "Just good friends," she said of Uniacke, who was more than twice her age. He was at the time "a City speculator."
A company of his went insolvent and folded a few years ago. It was reported he failed to pay £179k in taxes and was overdrawn by £133k, although he had withdrawn £144k for personal use.
He has six children with his two wives and Pike. His current partner's net worth is variously estimated at $6 million and $9 million.
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