Ah. I see your point now. Yes, and I'm about to come head-to-head with this phenomenon soon. A group of people I'm part of at work are getting a nice, intimate Q&A session with our CEO. I said "What the hell?" and sent a couple of extremely touchy questions to said CEO, and I've convinced a bunch of other people to do the same.
The deal is -- in this age of asking for more and more transparency, and the "hiveminds" that some blogs and other distributed groups have -- it's becoming increasingly difficult for single individuals to impose their will on other people. The UN-o-crats are finding that their little realms of corruption are being exposed, the Louisiana boondoggles are being revealed, cronyism working in domestic emergency planning at every level - local to federal - yeah, some of those responsible will never pay a fine or spend time in a prison. But they can't pretend about what they're up to.
I say this started with the printing press. But people had better watch out for the actions of the mob. In the English Civil War, in the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, the Cuban Revolution -- the "power to the people" ended up with an elite, too. It's pretty impossible, as you say, to prevent an elite from forming. How to keep the elite from abusing others is interesting. People have woken up to the abuse of eminent domain for the benefit of commercial development, as well as other abuses. I'd say the American system is the best currently, but there are plenty other liberal democracies (in the old meaning of the term) who have the possibility to surpass America.
I have no use for a private supersonic jet... a seat in one is good enough for me. ;)
Hooray exposure! Of course, the other side of this is that with too much publicity, people get used to it being right out in the open, and it gets almost accepted as How Things Work. Think of Richard Hatch on the first Surivivor: a manipulating, predacious and self-aggrandizing jerk who won by being exactly that - PROUDLY. My first thought when I heard he'd won was - "It's finally happened. They've gone right out and admitted on global TV what everybody knew but didn't want to really credit: that Nice Guys Lose and @$$#oles win."
Sometimes I think that the schadenfreude of watching one of these Pigs On The Wing fall into a justly deserved sausage machine is the way dramatic depictions of Classic Tragedy (as in fall of a Great Figure) got popular...
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Date: 2005-09-10 12:44 pm (UTC)The deal is -- in this age of asking for more and more transparency, and the "hiveminds" that some blogs and other distributed groups have -- it's becoming increasingly difficult for single individuals to impose their will on other people. The UN-o-crats are finding that their little realms of corruption are being exposed, the Louisiana boondoggles are being revealed, cronyism working in domestic emergency planning at every level - local to federal - yeah, some of those responsible will never pay a fine or spend time in a prison. But they can't pretend about what they're up to.
I say this started with the printing press. But people had better watch out for the actions of the mob. In the English Civil War, in the French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, the Cuban Revolution -- the "power to the people" ended up with an elite, too. It's pretty impossible, as you say, to prevent an elite from forming. How to keep the elite from abusing others is interesting. People have woken up to the abuse of eminent domain for the benefit of commercial development, as well as other abuses. I'd say the American system is the best currently, but there are plenty other liberal democracies (in the old meaning of the term) who have the possibility to surpass America.
I have no use for a private supersonic jet... a seat in one is good enough for me. ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 08:35 am (UTC)Of course, the other side of this is that with too much publicity, people get used to it being right out in the open, and it gets almost accepted as How Things Work.
Think of Richard Hatch on the first Surivivor: a manipulating, predacious and self-aggrandizing jerk who won by being exactly that - PROUDLY. My first thought when I heard he'd won was - "It's finally happened. They've gone right out and admitted on global TV what everybody knew but didn't want to really credit: that Nice Guys Lose and @$$#oles win."
Sometimes I think that the schadenfreude of watching one of these Pigs On The Wing fall into a justly deserved sausage machine is the way dramatic depictions of Classic Tragedy (as in fall of a Great Figure) got popular...
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