Comment by blumkvist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blumkvist | Hacker News Reader

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1) A true democracy has never existed. The needle is pushed by a tiny percentage of all the people. Such is the nature of humans. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up for a debate. Do you really want that Walmart cashier lady's take on policy? There are counter arguments as well of course, but that's not the main point of this thread.

2) >It's fantastic capitalism - profit above environment, profit above health, profit above morality, profit for the few against rights and freedoms of the many.

This statement shows that you have 0 understanding of capitalism in regards to society. Capitalism is not about selfishness. It is about self-interest. For example, it is not in the long term self-interest of energy companies that we are experiencing global warming and they know it, and despite what you think they are working on fixing that. It's just not so simple to shift.

3) Having said that, I for one, don't want someone who has such strong feelings about things he understands so little about, to have a say in policy making. He can be swayed so easy by emotions and articles in the NYT and form an opinion about complicated problems he has no clue about. But representative democracy is great, right?

>Do you really want that Walmart cashier lady's take on policy? //

Indeed, democracy is flawed - IMO it's the least worst system we have a chance of implementing effectively and with relative stability. I may not want a particular group's opinions but I'm prepared to accept that system over others.

As for "0 understanding of capitalism in regards to society" - I'm using capitalism as a short form for "Western capitalism" which is epitomised by things which aren't truly "capitalism" per se.

Semantic niceties aside energy companies in my country regularly act against their long term interest as do most businesses. Indeed they usually only act in a way that might be termed moral to fulfil legal obligations and then they tend to find a way to subvert their obligations. But then as the rhetoric here often reminds us "companies are there solely to make profit", shareholders complain if they do anything beyond their obligations. Energy companies are looking at their own goals and not societies needs.

As for 3 ... I'll confess now I didn't read the NYT article [I just assumed it was the same content as has been doing the rounds in the last couple of months - very similar to what's happening with TPP], I've been following TTIP since I learnt about it from ex-colleagues in the IPR community about 18 months ago. 38degrees started their campaign about 14 months ago IIRC. I'm the first to admit I'm ill informed on it, but that's almost the whole point - negotiations and details of the direction and end goal are hidden and actively kept secret even from representatives. There's no way for me to be completely informed. Representative democracy can't work if the representatives aren't even allowed to access the knowledge needed to make decisions for the people and it fails to be democratic when the people aren't able to see if those representatives are acting in their own interest or in the interests of the people they deign to represent.

I'm the oil company that will continue to sell oil until wells pump out dust, destroying the environment in the interim, but its okay because we've diversified and have many contingency plans.

Have you seen our catalog of contaminate filters for your home's closed air filtration system?

If you subscribe now, you can have access to our Above The Clouds solar farm. Yields on surface farms have decreased considerably as the out of control heating of the atmosphere blocks out the sun.

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