Well, that was a good break–now I want to recap on where we are:
The focus of this thread, despite its title, is the problem of political corruption and how to solve it. I called this thread “reforming democracy” because I implicitly, and without realizing it, made an assumption–that the problem was that the democratic process (by which I mean the manner in which we vote for our presidents or prime ministers, not in that the country is run by 51% of the people) was being undermined. I assumed that the democratic process was adopted as a means of curbing political corruption by way of limiting power, but that as history rolled on, politicians, big companies, lobbyists, and other powerful individuals/groups found clever ways of circumventing the democratic process and thereby gaining levels of power well beyond the limits that democracy was supposed to impose. Therefore, the time is ripe, I thought, to reform the democratic process.
But Liz and Eric, and eventually Ucci, have drawn my attention to the fact that there are other spheres of public life in which to look for the source of the problem–in particular, the economy (and if Arminius is serious about contributing to this thread, we may look at culture too). The main goal remains the same however–how to deal with the problem of political corruption–but we’ve since moved away from looking at the democratic process.
Later, the thread took another turn: I very quickly discovered the age-old conflict between conservatives and liberals. This was all new to me but tediously familiar to most Americans. This turn was a decisive one, and I’m inclined to say it represents the point at which I discovered the problem of political corruption at least in America (and eventually the solution). What the debate between conservatives and liberals taught me was that we must not merely think of the problem of political corruption as that between a government and its people, but also between factions in the people themselves, each political party being only the tip of an iceberg–90% of the corruption, in other words, is beneath the surface, between the factions of the people themselves, factions which form, out of themselves, and use political parties to represent them and fight against the opposing faction on their behalf.
I posed a question to Ucci earlier in this thread: given this consideration–that a huge bulk of the corruption that occurs in politics stems from warring factions within the people themselves–would it be fair to say that most of the corruption that occurs at the level of politics is carried out by one party against the other, or can one party carry out acts of corruption against the very people they are supposed to serve and represent (I don’t think I would get very far asking whether one party carries out acts of corruption against the opposing faction as I’m sure that faction would unhesitatingly say yes, they carry out acts of corruption against us all the time, while the other faction would say no, the acts they carry out are acts of justice). So for example, Obama, in order to win the most votes he can during the weeks before he was elected, might decide to betray the very people whom his party is suppose to represent and server–he decides to make a promise to conservatives and Republican supporters: if you vote for me, I promise to make a concerted effort to ignore or even fight against anti-gun lobbyists (he’d somehow have to peddle this in such a way as to not lose votes on the liberal/democrat side, but you can see what I mean by political corruption against one’s own constituents).
Corruption against one’s own constituents is something we ought to address if we’re still concerned with the government, as a unified block, oppressing or exploiting or abusing the people, as a unified block, (which we should be) but from where I stand now, I see the conflict between the factions that each party represents and serves as far closer to the root of the problem. As I said in an earlier post, if the people can resolve their issues, the problem of political corruption (in terms of the government abusing their power over the people) would be a cinch to solve.
Now, as much as I think we’ve hit the root of the problem, I think we’ve also come up with the best solution so far: the conservative ideal of minimizing government; after all, the less government, the less political corruption–and this is especially true if we limit government to those spheres in which they function well (if it functions well at all). Eric and Ucci assure us that the studies to prove this exist–studies showing that the economy thrives best the more free the market–that is, the less the government intervenes. And to those liberals whose main concern is not so much that an economy thrive at her best, but that the worst off in society have at least their basic needs taken care of, conservatives like Eric and Ucci assure us that the best way to approach the worst off and their basic needs is to just allow the free market to thrive–in that way, everyone–even the poor–get richer–and if there are still those who are too poor to afford the basics (food, shelter, health care), then they can rely on charity, for in a truly free market that thrives, there will be enough money to go around that even charities will have enough to feed the poor, to shelter them and to provide adequate health care. It’s a glorious utopian vision. Ucci and Eric assure us that studies exist out there to prove that this is not only possible but will happen.
Of course, before we blindly take their word for it, we must get passed the problem of the contaminated information pool–it’s not enough to click on their links; we must put in the extra effort of doing our own personal peer reviews of the articles and reports they link us to. And there is a bit of a science behind this–not a perfect one, but it does seem reasonable–for example, Ucci suggests we look out for a pattern: one study comes out suggesting one set of results followed by apologists from the other side trying to explain the data away rather than deny the results, chances are it means those apologists couldn’t quite find any flaws in the results or the methods by which they were attained. Eric also suggested some approaches: make sure you can get a clear description of the methods they used to acquire the results (I’m finding that Thomas Sowell is an excellent source of examples of how such investigations into the methodologies of many studies often reveal just how sloppy and flawed those methodologies turn out to be). He also suggested looking at the sample of participants used: internet surveys for example will attract a much different crowd than studies recruiting (and paying) live volunteers.
Now I haven’t done this yet–I’m lazy and I can’t find the time (but this is a project which I’m considering to have no deadline so I have the rest of my life and I do hope to get some more solid answers before I die)–and so at this point everything that I’ve gathered from everyone here has only achieved what I call “heterophenomenological” status. Heterophenomenology is a term coined by Daniel Dennette which denotes a scientific approach to studying the mental states of others. The idea is that while it hinges on the reports of others, it takes a completely neutral stance towards the truth or falsehood of those reports; the point is not to get accurate, objective facts about the state of reality based on the reports of the subject but to get a picture, a phenomenology, of the subject’s state of consciousness–that is, the world as the subject sees it (in fact, I’m inclined to say the heterophenomenological approach doesn’t even depend on the subject telling the truth about his/her own mental states, but on whether a coherent picture of a phenomenological world based on the subject’s reports can be painted at all). This is the status that everyone and their contributions to this thread have achieved in my mind. I’m not sure if this comes across as disappointing or offensive (I get the impression many here are overly eager to have me swallow every word they post and believe it wholeheartedly). I apologize if this is so, but I’m not going to change my attitude towards this. But I do want to emphasize that this is not a resting place for me–I do intend, slowly, gradually, to look deeper into the studies to support the claims Ucci and Eric have been making, and if they know they’re right, they should have nothing to worry about (though they might have to exercise a bit of patience with me). The up shot is that, as far as the heterophenomenological approach goes, Eric’s vision is really very impressive and inspiring–it takes the cake as far as coherency and plausibility go, which goes a long way to instilling hope that we can have a better, happier, more prosperous society with minimal political corruption.