|
That doesn't follow at all, and it isn't the consequence of my line of thinking. The arbiter can be time itself. An entity which makes a bad decision can see its bad decision played out over time by various measures. A failing economy, an increase in crime rates, an increase in poverty rates, an increase in some categories of diseases or diseases becoming pandemic or endemic that should be containable and treatable. A good decision, with measurably positive indicators, can similarly be discerned. Of course, the vast majority of nation-level decisions will result in more of a mixed bag of positive and negative indicators. Take, for instance, tax cuts. They aren't uniformly good or bad. To a certain level, they free up capital for people to spend (a form of democratic decision making, I don't believe markets are magical like some, but they are generally efficient and effective). Beyond that level, though, they remove capital for the government to spend on things the people (or someone depending on the type of government) has decided it needs to be spent on and drives up national debt, or curtails national spending which may have other negative consequences (reduced average level of education of the populace, reduced access to essentials like medical care, poor preparation for emergencies, etc.). What I actually want is what we (in the US) ostensibly have. A democratic (the -ic is important) republic with a form of representative democracy. Our votes determine who represents us. Those individuals are tasked with making decisions based on various calculi (risk analysis, economic models, legal constraints and obligations, etc.). I do not want anyone to lose their vote, nor does my comment imply that. Universal suffrage is a good thing, giving everyone an opportunity, ignorant or informed, to have a voice. [EDIT: What I do not want is mob rule. There's a reason the legislature in the US was divided into the Senate and the House. The House offered a risk of mob rule, but the great opportunity for the people's voices to be heard. The Senate balanced this by giving unbalanced-by-population representation to each state. This acts as a measure of restraint against mob rule.] [Sidenote: Can we abandon "s/he" and similar constructs? If the intention is to be more gender-equitable, switch to truly gender neutral terms like the singular-they, or one. S/he remains constrained to the binary system that, presently, is becoming outmoded. Not only that, but it's an awkward construct that is not easily voiced. An article posted here, I think, earlier in the week had attempted another sort of gender-balanced approach by alternating he and she in each paragraph while speaking about theoretical persons. The problem was this: the post was about a singular, theoretical person and it appeared as if the person was swapping genders each paragraph. What's more, the story didn't make sense because it was technically about two different people when it was intended to be about one.] |