Pinochet or Allende?

[John Dule]

I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

[John Dule]

I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

What a poor state of existence the tax evaders, landlords, wage thievers, and pedophile papists would have been through...

Of course, as someone who has previously decried democracy, this type of support would have been expected.

I only oppose democracy because I believe that people shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for others, and because I don't agree with majority rule or doctrines of false equality.

[John Dule]

I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

What a poor state of existence the tax evaders, landlords, wage thievers, and pedophile papists would have been through...

Of course, as someone who has previously decried democracy, this type of support would have been expected.

I only oppose democracy because I believe that people shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for others, and because I don't agree with majority rule or doctrines of false equality.

Ah yes, because a key feature of non-democratic regimes is the absence of people making decisions for others

Same goes for any form of capitalism which, of course, totally relies on that

I haven't supported any other form of government here. I was just clarifying that my dislike of democracy doesn't stem from an endorsement of dictatorship.

[John Dule]

I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

What a poor state of existence the tax evaders, landlords, wage thievers, and pedophile papists would have been through...

Of course, as someone who has previously decried democracy, this type of support would have been expected.

I only oppose democracy because I believe that people shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for others, and because I don't agree with majority rule or doctrines of false equality.

Ah yes, because a key feature of non-democratic regimes is the absence of people making decisions for others

Same goes for any form of capitalism which, of course, totally relies on that

I haven't supported any other form of government here. I was just clarifying that my dislike of democracy doesn't stem from an endorsement of dictatorship.

And I'm just pointing out that opposing democracy on the basis that you don't like "people making decisions for others" is an absurdist position seeing as that is a pretty much inevitable feature of even the most basic forms of social organisation

I oppose most basic forms of social organization. Interacting with others gives me anxiety.

[John Dule]

I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

What a poor state of existence the tax evaders, landlords, wage thievers, and pedophile papists would have been through...

Of course, as someone who has previously decried democracy, this type of support would have been expected.

I only oppose democracy because I believe that people shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for others, and because I don't agree with majority rule or doctrines of false equality.

Libertarianism and individualism already do this by giving people the agency to screw over others, which in turn limits their own options, even though they did nothing except be born in the wrong place.

What you're talking about is creating obstacles for others, which is a bit different. A private individual can make another individual's life difficult, but he doesn't have the monopoly on force and sole legal legitimacy that the state does. So while your boss can fire you, he can't force you to sell your house for less than it's worth so that he can bulldoze it and put in a freeway. I think there's a worthy distinction to be made there.

[John Dule]

Which would seem to make  a democratic regime even more important given the need to have at least some form of accountability over the sorts of things that tend naturally towards being monpolies.

If you're private ownership types runs the water supply and decides you aren't profitably enough to be worth serving, you're stuffed. Whereas at least with nationalised water in a democracy, you would have some sort of recourse.

Look, I didn't come to this thread to endorse completely unrestrained capitalism. This began when I said that just calling Allende "democratically elected" isn't necessarily a point in his favor. Yes, it's a fact, but not one that serves to justify any of his policies. Democracy, like capitalism, is a system that's only as good as the people who are operating inside of it. And this is a tangent, but I wouldn't want to live in a country with a nationalized water supply when there was a drought.

Why? The end result is still the same if there's no means to account for these things, because by limiting the power of the state too much, you're just transferring that legal power and legitimacy over to individuals or worse, a rent-seeking private entity that cannot even be held accountable to anything but profit. Even church-with-state regimes have to answer to a creed, however nominally it may be, and that creed is much less changing than profits.

And that's under the assumption that these higher-ups operate on that bottom line, instead of just affording what they want to afford.

And while yeah, being fired doesn't necessarily equate to selling your house, just exactly what other choices are there if that's the only money left and you got fired because you breathed wrong? So then, what choice do you have but to f*(late and suck-out any sense of dignity or propriety just to not risk such a fate?

I think you are probably assuming a few too many things about my politics. To be brief, I have a few complaints about capitalism, mainly that it pigeonholes people into tasks that serve only to fulfill the needs of others-- so in that sense, it does make some decisions for you (while providing a wider range of choices, I'd argue). I feel I should tie this back to the beginning of this conversation to prevent this thread from being fully derailed: My point was only to say that democracy is not some kind of highest ideal or inherent good that we should be constantly striving for. Majority rule is a brutal, cold way of running a society (and so is capitalism, in many ways). Someone else pointed out that my antipathy towards democracy is well-documented, and I felt the need to clarify that it has nothing to do with some sympathy towards dictators like Pinochet. I can't make a good case for anarcho-capitalism here because I legitimately do not support it.

[John Dule]

Like with the Uyghur genocide question, there is one clear answer here and answering otherwise or equivocating immediately outs you as someone not worth listening to.

I can never understand why people stress "The DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED Allende" as a point in Allende's favor when discussing these two, as if state-sponsored theft is suddenly A-OK if a 50.1% majority says it is.

It is.

A better argument for you would have been that Allende never won 50.1% of the vote in an election, but of course this is all pretty irrelevant given the alternative.

I didn't realize you were so ideologically wedded to democracy. Why should a majority have free rein to take away the rights of the minority?

Mind you, I hate Pinochet and people who defend him. I'm just arguing this particular point.

[John Dule]

I didn't realize you were so ideologically wedded to democracy. Why should a majority have free rein to take away the rights of the minority?

There should be some limits on a majority's power, obviously, but that shouldn't require establishing an absolute right to all private property that trumps any other consideration of public utility. The right to property, like every right, ought to be balanced out with other rights that the state guarantees (including positive rights). Absolute rights are absurd in concept and destructive in practice.

Do you believe that any rights are absolute? I wouldn't expect you to oppose property rights violations in principle, but surely there are other basic human rights that you take an absolute position on (fair trials, unjust confinement, freedom of speech, etc).