Reforming Democracy

Regardless, you have to come to some new investagtion with some preconceptions. It’s good to know what they are, and that that’s what they are.

Yeah, I can go along with that.

Ah. If that’s what you mean, it’s not a quality that seperates conservatives from liberals, as far as I can tell.

I guess I’m the other way around- if I meet somebody who’s beliefs are too eclectic; some Marxist stuff, some libertarian stuff, some Catholic stuff, some Muslim stuff; my gut reaction is that they are believing according to personal taste and favorite sound-bytes without regard for a coherent system.

Well, libertarians deny that there is any such thing as social justice; they maintain that all justice is individual.  A conservative could believe in the government being used to maintain social justice; maybe they see restrictions on abortion as a sort of social justice, for example.  I think conservatives and libertarians would agree that the State should not be trying to fix 'economic injustice', and both would probably agree there is no such thing.  
  Conservatism is as root the view that as much as possible should he handled by the community instead of the State, and that the information required to solve major problems is revealed through tradition instead of through revolution. 

I don't like may of the bills that liberals propose for just the reason you say, but I wouldn't constitute that as [i]misuse[/i].   If a liberal wants to propose a bill that I think is a hideously bad idea in order for Congress to debate and vote on it, that is precisely the correct use of the legislature.   There may be bills a leftist proposes to the federal legislature that I think should be a state matter, but even then that's just a reason to vote the bill down, not an indication that the legislature has been 'misused'. 
This phenomonen you are discribing- where if a person with a contrary political opinion tries to use the political system, it must be characterized as 'misuse' or 'abuse' somehow- this is what liberals do, not conservatives. I have no problem with liberals participating in the political system, I simply think they are incorrect about most things. 

Well of course their isn't, not should their be, because we live in a free society where people can vote to ruin their own lives if they are sufficiently ignorant and determined.  All you can do is educate people, expose the shifty manipulators to the light of day so as many folks as possible know what's really going on, and pray.  Again, it is the left that will pass any law, restrict any behavior, reform any Constitution to bring about their utopia.  It is a part of being an adult conservative to accept that being right doesn't mean being entitled to have your way. 

 There is a concept in conservatism called "The tragic view of human nature". You can compare it to the Fall in Genesis.   Briefly, it is this:  There is no utopia, there is nothing that a man can do that another man can't fuck up, we are not all basically good at heart, the good guys will not always win, nor should they even always win.  So not only is it a given that some people will will fuck their lives up or ruin other people's lives, but in any kind of good society, this has to be permitted.

Yes, and you can extent this beyond legislature to how the left and the right view each other.  So for example, John Stewart of The Daily Show is viewed by conservatives as that foolish man who's ideas should be disagreed with.   Rush Limbaugh is viewed by liberals as a [i]problem[/i] that needs [i]fixing[/i]; they are always trying to find away not just to push their answers to his questions, but to ensure that he isn't allowed to present his ideas at all.  The idea that broadcast laws should be adjusted such that liberals don't get to have a say in the media is completely alien to a conservative way of thinking.  See sexism, racism, see homophobia, see this new transphobia word; attempts by the left to present ideas they disagree with as not just incorrect, but as social ills that measures need to be taken to stamp out.  That's why your rant a few days ago about how conservatives get all fearful when they hear another opinion and demand absolute adherence to their doctrines made me chuckle.   A conversation with a liberal is like walking through a minefield- it's only a matter of time before you say something that they have decided is a form of microaggression or is coming from a perspective of privilege, and then the conversation is over because you're Skeletor to them.  

That would be the libertarian view. Conservatives would add the mechanisms of civil society to that list.

Any preconceptions I may have take the status “up for questioning” in my mind–which is what allows me to be flexible. There’s very little I consider to be firm knowledge.

Well, that’s something worth thinking about.

Short of theft, I agree.

Ok, I think I’m started to see your point. I’m not really resistant to it, it’s just… unexpected. It kind of undermines the whole point of this thread. I started this thread thinking that the problem of political corruption could be “fixed”–that if enough clever people put their heads together, we could come up with something systematic that would be an improvement on the current political system most Western countries have. I was very impressed by the social system envisioned by Eric and I took it (still do) that it represents more or less what most conservatives want to establish. That being said, I called it the “solution” to the problem of political corruption. But what that meant, for me and my aspiration to come up with an improved political system, was that we need to find a way to prevent the government from having more of a reach in the economy and people’s lives than the original Constitution allows, a way to ensure that it sticks to what the original Constitution outlines as its proper function in society. So I started to question whether the right of liberals to use the legislature to do just the opposite–to give the government more power in the economy and people’s lives–was a problem needing to be fixed. I was serious when I said this was a dilemma–meaning that I don’t think the solution would simply be to bar them from the legislature or to prevent anyone from using the legislature to get bills passed to have the effect of giving the government more power in the economy and people’s lives.

But you think that conservatives trying their best to persuade the people (including liberals) of their views, or to use the legislature to lessen the government’s power over the economy and people’s lives (or strengthen it insofar as that serves the purpose of the original Constitution?), is the best approach? That we don’t need a systematic change in how the political process works?

But what happens if liberals manage to turn the state into an all out socialist country, or a communist one? Is this simply a possibility we have to live with?

What’s meant by “civil society”?

Well, prejudices are preconceptions too- types of people or sources you are more likely to trust than others, a preference for statistics over anecdotes, or arguments over statistics, etc.

Yeah, you could call theft economic injustice as long as you’re understanding it as a subject of personal justice and not social justice- in other words, all questions of justice come down to particular people’s interactions with other particular people’s, not the status of one ‘class’ with respect to another. Or at least, this is the conservative/liberterian line vs. what a liberal would say.

 Yeah, I guess I am undermining it because of a few central things:  I'm not sure you and I have the same definition of corruption.  Under my understanding of corruption, the U.S. and Canada just don't suffer from nearly as much of it as many other countries do, and, while I do think corruption is something that can and should be fixed when it is encountered, the examples of 'corruption' I saw when I came to this thread seemed to be "special interest groups I don't like getting their way some of the time", which is not corruption to me. That's what started the whole left vs. right thing, is when I saw things like "Sometimes people agree with the NRA" being cited as corruption. 

I haven’t read much of what Eric has said in the thread, or indeed, much of anything that directed to me. I have this irritating habit of skimming/ignoring things I suspect I will agree with. Adversarial of me, I suppose.

I agree with the spirit of that, but any solution has to take into account that the founders didn’t envision a world in which a person in Maine could buy stuff from a person in California, and have it in their posession the next day. Or a world in which a man could speak, and have people all over the planet hear his words in the moment he is saying them. There are a lot of things that bind us together, and create opportunities for us to affect each other economically, that the Government might have to have something to say about. But I am speaking out of my element there.

 It is a problem to be fixed in the sense that people need to be educated enough that their attempts are shot down through the vote most of the time. But it is not a problem to be fixed in that the legal system has to be adjusted in some way to keep their ideas from being able to participate, in my assessment. 

It is the best approach because it is the only just approach as far as I am aware. It may or may not work. Tragic view of human nature. Certainly there are any number of systematic reforms that would be more effective in keeping progressive/marxist changes out of politics than mere education- but I can’t think of any that wouldn’t also be unjust. In super hero parlance, it would make us no different from them.

I do. I’m old enough to have already seen the liberals turn the state into a place that hates God, thinks perversion is normal, and that a man is a woman simply if he decides he is. This, right now, is already the once-hard-to-imagine dystopia in which the bad guys won and ruined everything. And still I say, education and shining light on the people being sneaky is the only just way to procede.

The natural forces in society that people form without need for the State to enforce them with violence. So for example, people are pressured to do/not do things because of how their families will react. Or how their Church will react. Or how their neighbors will react. We shun people that misbehave- whether that’s the drunk, the philanderer, the pervert, or the greedy buisinessman. We pass our beliefs onto future generations, and teach newcomers to our society what is expected of them in any number of ways. Francis Bacon gives an excellent example of this in The New Atlantis. It’s been some time, but to paraphrase, a bunch of people shipwreck on a previously unknown island populated by a strange, advanced society. They are kept waiting in a hotel of sorts for a while, and their captain decides that they ought to behave like perfectly good Christians on the assumption that they are being monitored, and that how they behave will influence what the natives ultimately decide to do with them. So they behave themselves better than they did while on the ship, just to impress upon the natives what kind of people they were, based on a presumption of shared ethics. If you forget for a moment that the natives were a in a position to do violence to the crew, this mirrors how civil society keeps each of us in check all the time; and progressives have a thousand slogans and movements to undermine its effects.

Sure. Do you bring this up just as a point in fact, or are you implying something about my prejudices?

Ah, perfect juncture to bring this thread full circle. Let’s talk about “political corruption” using the NSA’s spy tactics on Americans as an example. The first question then is: is this an example of political corruption?

Earlier in this thread I defined political corruption as “the unwarranted violation of basic human rights on a mass scale and/or the phenomenon of politicians, or entire governments, failing to preform the job they were hired or elected to do by the people.” (I can see us quibbling over what a “human right” is but I want to somehow cover the case of unwarranted cruelty and butchery at the hands of the government). The cases you brought up–“special interest groups I don’t like getting their way some of the time” and “Sometimes people agree with the NRA”–aren’t even up for considerations under that definition.

But what about what the NSA is doing–spying on Americans without their consent? This wouldn’t be possible without the Patriot Act (am I correct?), and that got voted in favor of, so it went through the system as a usual order of business–so I don’t think we can call the PA an example of corruption (as an aside, however, I wonder what conservatives think of an act which permits what seems to be a blatant invasion of privacy, and therefore the government intruding into people’s private lives–an act proposed by the Republican party no less). What about the spying itself–or the extent to which it is done, or the misuse of it (in the sense that the NSA might be spying on Americans for purposes other than to weed out terrorists, though I have no basis to back that up)? The only sense I got from the video I posted in the OP that this was political corruption was William Benny calling it “unconstitutional”. Is it unconstitutional? And what about the martial law bill that Obama signed, the subject of one of the other videos. I assume this was put to a vote. Do the people have any say in a vote like this, or was it a matter exclusively for Congress to decide? (for some reason, I’m assuming the Patriot Act was voted on by the people–I think I heard this on TV when it was happening–but I should be asking the same question on this).

I tried to summarize Eric’s vision here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=185699&hilit=utopia&start=475#p2487664

This also marks the turning point when I stopped being left-leaning and started being right-leaning.

This almost sounds as if you have doubts that the Constitution ought to be revert back to its original form, which is signaling to me that you and Eric have very different visions of what it means to be conservative (though I think your statement of its central tenets–that “as much as possible should he handled by the community instead of the State, and that the information required to solve major problems is revealed through tradition instead of through revolution”–keeps you and him bound together, only the amount that the community ought to handle by itself distinguishing you two (I believe I remember Eric saying he borders almost on being libertarian, but he’ll have to jump in here and correct me if I’m wrong)).

Understood.

Understood and agreed.

Ok, but I think the point at which we’d have to say “they’ve won”, is when they’ve made it impossible (legally, through terrorism, by dissolving the legislature, etc.) for those who disagree with them to attempt to change the system. I don’t think it’s there yet, but do you think it will ever get to that point? The reason I ask is if they’ve been making strides towards this point despite the best (and honest) efforts of conservatives to fight it, it would not appear that the democratic system works, and it stands to question whether we ought to try to come up with a better system, one that’s no less fair and just, or do we just accept the tragic view of human nature? Or do you think it’s too early to tell?

This thread should be renamed reforming oligarchy.

Democracy is just another form of oligarchy. Quit kidding yourselves.

The world is a giant oligarchic police state.

Your idiotic politics and voting matters not.

Who’s kidding themselves? We were talking about how democracy is a barely-concealed oligarchy in the “Irony of Corruption” thread days ago.

All governments are oligarchies. What alternative do you support?

Oh, just pointing out that prejudices are unavoidable, and not necessarily bad things.

 At the very least it's against the NSA's charter to conduct any operations on U.S. citizens or on American soil, and it seems like some of their actions are illegal.  I don't think that makes them corrupt, though- to me, corruption implies a misuse for personal gain. If the NSA is doing what it's doing out of a sincere effort to protect us from terorrists or whatever, then I don't think what they are doing is corrupt- though it may be unethical and worthy of condemnation for some other reason. 

Wellll…it wouldn’t have the skin of a legal mandate without the Patriot Act. Whether or not the lack of such a mandate would have stopped them is another question entirely.

Reactions to the Patriot Act seem to be mixed from conservatives- some ar against it because it’s an example of Government being given greater freedoms to spy on people and so on, some are tacitly for it because being against it always seems to be bundled with a general attitude of not talking Islamic terrorism seriously as a threat. If there is a consensus, it seems to be that if the U.S. took border security seriously, was willing to admit that the problem was with Muslims specifically and stopped worrying about appearing insufficiently multicultural, the Patriot Act would be unnecessary. One could compare it to the increased airport security; conservatives are against the airlines patting down old ladies and refusing to let people bring bottled water on flights, but they consider these things symptoms of the irrational lengths people are going to appear non-racist and to refuse to admit that specific groups are the ones we have to watch out for.
So yeah, as long as the left insists that Islam is a religion of peace and to focus on Arabs as potential threats is intolerable, we have to have things like the Patriot Act that pretend all Americans are equally suspect.

Collecting data about people without due process could be considered illegal search and seizure I would think.

Patriot Act was voted on by Congress, like most anything federal is, it wasn’t a referendum. The only say people have in things like this is to elect different folks in November. At this point I’d wax political and point out that the President is basically making up the law as he goes anyway- if Congress didn’t approve the NDAA, he’d just go around them and put it in effect as an executive action, like the dozen or so times he’s changed the rules to Obamacare since it was passed.

Original form? Like without the Amendments to let blacks and women vote and so on? Keep in mind that the Constitution has a process by which it can be legally changed, so it wasn’t intended to stay the same for all eternity- but it wasn’t intended to be ignored to be ‘interpreted’ into saying things it clearly doesn’t say by the Supreme Court, either. I don’t mind if the Constitution changes as long as it changes via the legal process provided for it to happen which involves all the State legislatures voting on it. That’s the irony- no, the lie- behind all these liberals that claim that the Constitution is a living document to defend their radical interpretations. The Constitution CAN change, it WAS intended to change, but the process provided involves such a democratic level of involvment from the people that the libs know their radical reforms would never see the light of day if they were actually subjected to due process. So they use judges that nobody voted for and nobody can remove, instead.

We are very nearly there about the issues that matter to me.  It's practically illegal to express political opinions liberals don't want to hear, and people lose ther jobs for it all the time.  My point, though, wasn't to say that we're at some point of no return or that the left has everything they want.  My point is just to say that in order to talk about a world in which the left has done irreperable harm and twisted society in ways previously unthinkable, one doesn't have to look to the future. 

The democratic system works insofar as it keeps the State accountable to the people and it ensures the State gives the people what they want.  "What the people want", however, is manipulated by forces that don't have anything to do with the legal system- school and media and such.  I mean, if I convince everybody that you're a child murderer, and then we hold a democratic vote and decide to hang you, I don't think that demonstrates a flaw in the democratic system, does it?  It worked flawlessly within the limits of its scope. 

I still think the legal system is ok, and the left is doing it’s mischief through extra-legal means.

Can’t even answer a simple question it appears.

True dat.

That’s a different definition of corruption than the one I gave above. Not a bad definition, and it speaks more to the character of the corrupt individual, whereas mine speaks more to the function of individuals or the government (that’s what I was trying to get at anyway). According to mine, they certainly are corrupt (breaking the law or going against one’s own charter is an example of an agency failing to performing the function it is expected to perform). According to yours, they may not be, but you’ve gotta have a lot of faith in the good intentions of the NSA, as well as the Bush administration and Congress, to believe they only want to keep Americans safe from terrorists. I’d be more skeptical (one of the things William Benny said was that they had plans to spy on Americans long before 9/11, and that he believes their only agenda is just that–to spy on Americans), but I’m not in your shoes, and if I were an American citizen, I may see things differently.

So would you consider that a misuse of the system?

I’m not sure about those Amendments specifically. This is one of those conversations I had with Eric which I took to be representative of conservatives in general. I could be wrong. If I recall, he did say something close to: the proper function of government was laid out in the original Constitution and most conservatives feel it should stay that way (which, I gathered, is where the name “conservative” comes from–conserving the original forms of government and Constitution). But Eric did say (I believe) that he would want universal suffrage, so I take it he, like most conservatives I would assume, understand the importance of allowing for Amendments, but not just any old Amendment.

What I’m worried about is that these changes can potentially be the system’s own undoing. So long as your statement in bold holds true, it hasn’t done so yet. But with things like the ability to spy on Americans and the martial law bill, I can easily see the government making a move to take power and turn your country into an all out totalitarian regime (then we can talk about oligarchy). All Obama has to do is wait for some crisis, declare martial law, and never look back. The tools with which you now keep the government accountable–the legislature, voting every four years, appealing to the Constitution in order to hold politicians accountable to the law–all these will have crumbled away. And this need not be at the hands of the liberals either–what the liberals are doing, according to what you’ve been telling me, is one way in which those in power have gained, and are gaining, more power, but it could also happen through more Acts passed in Congress, ones that the people have no say in (liberals or conservatives).

I take it this is all old news to you–I would think most Americans have understood that these are the possibilities in a system such as yours–but the videos I see in the OP scare me: they tell me that it is not only a possibility, but very, very close to reality at this point. Do you agree? Do you think we’re coming dangerously close to another collapse–like Rome–or is this just the next scare? Like the countless scares Americans have been through for decades or centuries? And even if we’re not close, do you see these changes moving in that direction, or is the system built to handle that kind of scenario (in the sense that if it really does get that bad, the people will still be able to use the system to turn it around, and will want to)?

Shall we continue where we left off, Joker? Talking about oligarchies defined as governments that govern?

I, for one, think you still have a variety of different kinds of oligarchies. If all an oligarchy is is a government that governs, then I don’t see why you can’t have a republican oligarchy. It would simply be a system in which the rulers are drawn from the people and return to the people–a sort of cycling of citizens into government (in which they do indeed “control” things) and back again when their terms are up (or they die).

There are different strains of oligarchy but the end result of all of them always remain the same.

For instance, their inevitable transformation into authoritarian despots.

That’s exactly what all governments transform themselves into.

Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.

I think the people can have a good run for a while–revolutions and toppled governments usually precede new “golden eras” in which the people celebrate their new found freedom–sometimes it’s true freedom, sometimes it’s an illusion–I think even the people of the Soviet Union in the years after the Russian Revolution had high hopes that they were on the road to a bright and prosperous tomorrow. But all these “new world orders” eventually degrade over time–some of them more quickly than others.

My question in this thread is: if it’s happened before–if the people of various countries in various times in history were able to overthrow oppressive regimes and, for a while, take a breath of the fresh air of freedom–then couldn’t it happen again? And how was it done? What made it work? Does it only become possible after it has once again disappeared–in the sense that freedom can only be won at the cost of bloody and violent revolution against a panel of tyrannical overlords?

The answer in history is repetitive and clear.

In order to challenge centralized despots and authoritarian regimes they must be violently overthrown.

And that’s exactly the answer I was waiting for (why’d it take do long?).

How does one spark a violent revolution?

History books are full of answers that you may be looking for.

Well, they tell me that no one individual can do it alone. You have to have a movement.

Well, it’s interesting. The NSA certainly seems to be breaking the law, or at least the spirit of the laws we plebs understand, but I haven’t ever seen them found guilty of anything; their actions keep on being defended as constitutional when they go to court.

The one thing that’s missing from all the accusations against the NSA is a demonstration of an absence of need. What I mean is, even if it turns out that some of what the NSA is doing is found unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, I don’t see them doing anything that doesn’t completely fit the context of the situation the US finds itself in, and what the NSA would be trying to achieve when seen in the best light. In other words, if preventing another 9/11 really is all they are interested in, then spying on a whole bunch of conversations and doing so without taking the time to get a warrant seem like essential tactics. Maybe not ethical tactics, but you can certainly say, “OK, I can see why they would feel the need to do this in order to protect the country”. In order to be skeptical of the NSA’s intentions, I’d have to see them abusing their powers in ways that very clearly have no benefits to national security.
Like for example, when the IRS was outed for specifically targetting conservative groups. Completely outside the legality of it, that is using the power of the IRS for something that has nothing to do with it’s mission (stifling certain poliical voices) for the personal gain of those doing so (I’m assuming the people leading the investigations against conservatives are not conservatives themselves). I don’t see credible allegations that the NSA is doing anything like that.

Yes, that I would. A judge using his authority to interpret the Constitution to ‘interpret’ things that aren’t there is a clear misuse of the system; not only because it’s outside his mission statement, but because we actually have another, superior method already in place for doing what they are doing illegitimately.

I would want universal suffrage because we already have it and taking it away would seem odious and catastrophic for no clear benefit. That said, I can see how a just, ethical society could exist in which only people who meet certain criteria get to vote.

The founders were worried about it too. Any generally democratic system has the potential for the demos to vote it to death.

Well, the good thing is that the U.S. being the U.S., we’d most likely fall into a civil war if that were to happen.

Don’t forget the 2nd Amendment. The gun is the ultimate tool with which to keep the government accountable.

Any collapse in the U.S. is going to be social, not governmental.  As long as the American people are still [i]American People[/i], the government can pass as many laws as it likes and ultimately we won't stand for it and they'll be tossed out if that's what it takes; we're too ornery and too well-armed. The real risk to the United States- and this is developing along with the procedural risks that concern you- will be the break down of civil society, tradition, American spirit and so on.  When the American people don't give a fuck about their national/religious/familiar identity, and are too apathetic and/or self-centered to care about anything beyond their wallet, [i]then[/i] then State will be free to become totalitarian because the people won't have the will to do anything about it.  The current period of vicious polarization in the country is either the beginning of some upheaval, or a death throe. 

So yes, some Obama-type will try to sieze power. The men won’t be manly enough to step up because schools will have taught them to behave like women, the citizens won’t have any strong ties to their own families, history, religion, state, or municipality to give them something to fight for or a cause to rally around, and then that will be the end of the U.S. as we know it. At least, that’s how it will go if it goes bad. That’s why I’m so much more opposed to cultural Marxism than economic.

This is very true. You will get no argument from me on this.

I have my own ideas for an insurrection if one was to occur that is.

While you aspire towards the likes of a modern Gandhi or Washington I on the other hand aspire towards a modern Attilla, Bjorn Ironside, and Genghis Kahn. [Winks]

Reforming democracy is relatively useless, but reforming demography is not useless.

These are my presuppositions:

size=140[/size] Currently there are three main modern problems:list the ecological problem,
(1.2) the economic problem,
(1.3) the demographical problem.[/list:u]
So, if we really want to solve that three main modern problems, then we can do it only by considerating this three facts:

list the pollution of the environment is a disaster,
(1.2) the wealth is unfairly distributed,
(1.3) the offspring is unfairly distributed.[/list:u]
size=140 [/size]Currently the politicians are not able to solve that three main problems and produce more and more regulated markets.

size=140[/size] „Free“ markets have not existed anymore since the end of the Stone Age and will not exist until the Stone Age will come back.
The politicians don’t solve but increase the problems. The market allone can’t solve but decrease the problems, if such a market is wanted, allowed.

My solution requires less regulated markets and laws than we have today. A familiy manager is needed for my solution and will be found soon via market, if those bureaucratic laws which currently forbid to have family managers will be eliminated. Many other laws will have to be eliminated as well before the concept of the family management will be successful.

Many people have no time for their children - a family manager would do the job temporarily instead of them. Many people merely have children because the state pays for them - that is criminal, unsocial, thus egoistical, and of course that leads to many more problems which increase exponentially. Many people who want to work, to supply, to carry, to achieve, to accomplish, to afford will be able to have children then, now they can’t, and other many people who don’t want to work will have children too but not more than one per adult (= two per married couple).

The merely one law which is needed for my solution is that which says: „it is not allowed to have less and more than one child per adult“. In view of the fact that many laws will disappear, this one law is no problem at all. Furthermore, my solution leads to more wealth because the productive can be reproductive again (now they can’t), so that there will be also productive people in the future. Because of the probability that again more intelligent and responsible people would take more care about their environment the reduction of the pollution of the environment would also become more probable.

„Dangerous thinking“ must be allowed on this forum because it is a philosophy forum and no party conference. My solution is a taboo, I know, it is not wanted by the rulers because if practised it will be successful, and that means that the rulers will lose their control and consequently their power. The rulers don’t want other humans, especially intelligent humans, because they are not needed, machines can replace them.

I have made a proposal how to solve the three main problems of Western modernity which has become the three main problems of the planet Earth, thus of all human beings, probably of all „higher“ living beings, perhaps of all living beings. If each adult of the human beings is allowed to have one child but not allowed to have both less and more than one child, then the population shrinks very slowly because the reproduction rate is merely 1,0 and not 1,07 or more (population growth). My solution means that the qualitiy of the population grows, while the quantity of the population shrinks, so that all become richer and also more responsible for their environment because of their quality.

Else the reverse continues: Western modernity as a way of life for all human beings as a growing population with unfairly distributed wealth and offspring on a more and more uninhabitable planet Earth.