The Scandinavian countries have moved to pay all payrolls to keep people paid during all this madness, instead of just bailing out large debt holders.
(That said, I think Sweden of all places in the west, have had the best, most sane reaction to the pandemic.)
Any of them.
Some of them, I'm in. Some of them, I'll never be in. The principle is universal: A just society protects the minority. Any of them.
Of course. Rights have to be universal, even for people with such desires. Otherwise, whomever has the power to adjudge what others are "actually" thinking have the power to remove people's human rights.
The dynamics where accusation is enough, guilt is assumed, and no proof is needed are often abused to have power over others. If there was ever a time when this should be obvious, it is 2020, present day.
In fact, all of the above is the whole point of the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta.
That's the whole point of protecting the minority. Otherwise, if the majority always wins, and the minority has to be satisfied with the crumbs left by the majority, the minority has effectively zero power. It's like writing an API. You know you're doing it right, when things mostly work, but there's someone, somewhere sorely dissatisfied with not getting their way.
In the words of one fictional British gentleman, "You don't have it. I don't have it. That's detente, comrade!"
They have more of a voice, because they don't have a two party system. If you are American, please check out some European political systems. You'll find that politics in Europe are a lot more nuanced and minorities in general are much, much better represented.
I don't know if you intended it that way, but the above feels like you're trying to put words in my mouth to that effect. No, I don't think I said that minorities are voiceless in Sweden.
They have more of a voice, because they don't have a two party system.
Right. Again, as Matt Easton says, "Context!" If the US were to go fully democratic, with our two parties, no electoral college, and everything done proportionally, things in the US would suck for constituencies smaller than 50%. Particularly with discourse being what it is in 2020.
However, if you know of a way to do away with the US two party system, I'm all ears.
Also, when I read your comment above, I tend to read it in my head as sounding angry and patronizing. Hopefully, you didn't mean it the way of, "What, you ignorant fool, do you not know...etc...?"
This is why being gay before 1950 was so great: because the majority of society got its way. That's why there was segregation in many places in the US back then: because the majority of society got its way. It took the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's to get the in-built principles and mechanisms which are there in the US system to protect the minority to really apply. And yes, it was in part the action of the national majority which got that to happen.
The usual reason why people say the majority should get its absolute way, is generally because they are in the group who would come out on top. That's a shortsighted view. Even the majority is human and gets it dead wrong sometimes. This is why certain human rights need to be inviolate. This is why every government needs some sort of mechanism which gives the minority out-sized power. The US just does it in this particular way.
EC and Senate are a very different arrangement - they don't protect any rights as such, they simply give some people more votes than others. Which means that not only those people can then veto majority decisions (even when they don't actually infringe on their rights) - but they can impose legislation that curtails rights of the majority.
As for it being a short-sighted view that majority should generally have its way, well, here's Federalist #22, for one:
"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the National deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican Government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the People of America; and two thirds of the People of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on Union, ought readily to renounce a pretension, which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."
Was Hamilton short-sighted when he wrote this criticism? You can argue that it was originally aimed at the Articles of Confederation, not EC and Senate. But it's clear that this is a rather generic criticism, and it's applicable whenever "larger States ... receiving the law from the smaller" becomes commonplace - which depends on how many states there are, and their relative sizes, which have changed a lot since the original 13 colonies. Looking at the outcomes of the presidential and parliamentary elections in the past 20 years, I'd say that this condition is already fully in force, and so is the warning.
This is very good on the surface, however, there is a large chunk of wealth going to the rentier class. The rentseekers were encouraged under successive Tory and New Labour governments with schemes such as 'buy to let'. Now they are the only truly protected sector of society. The rich get richer.
There's some truth to this, but I wouldn't say rentseekers are the only truly protected sector of society. My parents put their life savings into buying a block of flats in the 90s. They borrowed from every single person they knew and took out a mortgage against their own home and put most of their subsequent savings into paying off the mortgage sooner.
The last mortage payment is due end of this year and they were looking forward to leaving their full time jobs whilst maintaining their little property 'empire'.
So far this month they've had 3 tenants call asking for rent reductions, 1 totally unable to pay rent and another insisting on a 20% discount because their friend's landlords are offering the same.
Maintaining that block of 10 flats is no picnic. It means you're on call to unblock toilets on bank holidays or clean, paint, draft tenancy agreements and file paperwork on your evenings and weekends.
Of course - owning an appreciating asset means you're better off than someone who doesn't but you're not quite sitting pretty.
Yes rent seeking activities are a serious problem and I think there's a consensus forming on this, at least in the UK.
For the latter, you can get pretty close with this algorithm:
WillHelpRichBuddies() {
return true
}Tone deafness in the media and the social and governmental leadership of any country is a key reason why demagogues and sociopaths get into power. This has been the case across time and cultures.
The Scandinavian countries have moved to pay all payrolls to keep people paid during all this madness, instead of just bailing out large debt holders.
Watch Louis Rossman's YouTube coverage of the US programs as a potential recipient/applicant. As a small business owner, he has a front seat to the incompetence of US lawmakers. It's the same kind of thing which smells like grandstanding incompetence, which also afflicted the "banking reforms" post 2008. The laws aren't written by and for people who actually know how things work.