If you were to support a government, which type would you favor? Marxist, Aristo

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   dervishezposted 13 years ago

   If you were to support a government, which type would you favor? Marxist, Aristotelian or Platonic?
   
   Marxists and other radical critics follow the line of thought expressed by Plato’s character, when he argued that government always serves the interest of the strongest elements in society. On the other hand Aristotle and Aquinas argued that effective governments must always serve the common good. With which side do you agree most? Why?
   
   
   

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   junksellerposted 13 years ago

   The world is a completely different place than it was in the days of those men. A completely different model is needed. Our current Westphalian model of everyone for themselves as well as all of our economic and governmental systems fail to address a world of limits and have no way at all to effectively deal with sustainability. They just weren't built for it. We have come to a point where we have to self-limit our own success. This is a bizarre concept and completely against the natural order. We have to somehow develop a static population (or footprint) while simultaneously maintaining viable species strength. A difficult task, even if we framed the issue in such a way, which we have yet to do. Instead we seem to spend our efforts on ridiculous and ancient notions of good vs evil.
   
   I think the reality is that no government can do all things well. I think Marxism has the right spirit in terms of keeping power in the hands of the people, yet starts to have difficulties running large and complex societies. Fascism can be great for efficiency and focus, but not so good for liberty. Democracy can be fair but inefficient. Capitalism can spur great growth but tends to need massive resources, etc. These are generalizations, but the point is that we need a system where alternative forms of governance are possible while the potential for conflict doesn't exist. That's the trick.
   
   Of late I have been imagining an organic model for governance. In it, groupings of people would operate like cells in a body. Within the cell, they could do anything they wanted, but there would be a global set of rules governing the interactions and movements between cell membranes as well as cell sizes.

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