You must log in or # to comment.
Today i learned. Einstein was a socialist. Neat
Of course he was, he wasn’t an idiot
He asks “How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?”
That’s the crux of it I think. In the past, socialist experiments failed to keep the bureaucracy in check and I’m not sure there’s still a good answer for that.
that’s why i want a VERY bottom-up approach, have the fundamental unit of organization be neighbourhood councils or somesuch, basically just a pseudo-formal monthly meeting where people talk about stuff.
The thing about us humans is that we’re actually really really good at small-scale decisionmaking, it’s when it gets to large scales that we need bureaucracy.
So if we make as many decisions as possible on a small, local scale; and at the same time use that to make regular representative politics more grounded in face-to-face personal relations (have each neighbourhood send a representative to the next up level of politics): then we can eliminate a ton of bureaucracy and make what remains much more transparent and understandable to the average person.I see absolutely no reason why we can’t just have another level of governance under the municipal level (or whatever the local equivalent is), we already have things like homeowner’s associations and bostadsrättsföreningar, just make that a universal thing and let them handle basic local matters.
only problem with this is if a group gets into control that essentially wants to extract and skate. Or manipulating things into little fiefdoms. I sorta agree as much as possible should be decided at the local level. carry guns and sale of alcohol come to mind but there has to be national level rights and regulation. Like owning a gun or alcohol in your home or not dumping poisons into waterways.
extract from whom? Themselves?
I would hope it’s obvious i’m not talking about giving neighbourhoods absolute control over themselves, i’m explicitly only talking about clearly local matters like “what do we want our streets to look like” or “we have a neglected property, should we come together and buy it out so we can turn it into a lovely park instead?”.
I’m also specifically talking about not having the same governance structure as existing politics, instead treating it more like associations where everyone can attend the big meetings and directly vote on things.yeah extracting and moving on to become a local member of another place. people move and think of like carpet baggers who really live somewhere else but meet the requirments to vote in another place.
Well, he was intelligent.
It definitely is encouraging to know that clever people in a different era reached the same cincousions as you did
See I had this whole thing in another thread trying to explain socialism can mean different things to different people and times and I get the marxists with no the only definition is workers owning the means of production and im like. Planned economy talk aroud socialism predates his stuff. For me I want democracy and heavily taxed and regulated capitalism with many social safety nets and not allow pho capitalism. by that I mean anything without meaningful competition should be run by the government. As well as things that are necessities for all. Things like utilities, education, and medical care. Toys on the other hand. yeah that can be whoever wants to make a go of it as long as they follow regulations and pay their taxes.
