tony curzon price's Bookmarks tagged democracy →  View Popular

In a 2005 debate in Reason magazine, Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey articulated his vision of virtuous, socially responsible business.

"Human nature isn't just about self-interest," Mackey wrote, paraphrasing Adam Smith. "It also includes sympathy, empathy, friendship, love, and the desire for social approval. As motives for human behavior, these are at least as important as self-interest. For many people, they are more important."

In July of last year it was revealed that Mackey used a pseudonym in numerous online posts critical of Whole Foods' competitor Wild Oats, a chain of natural supermarkets Mackey was in the midst of trying to acquire.

Encouraging employees to practice virtue in factory and community is one thing; getting CEOs to do the same may be a challenge of a different order.

The one element clear right through representative democracy’s advance across the world has been the centrality of popular rejection of autocratic effrontery, often exhilarating at the time but in retrospect a transitory pleasure. The structure of modern representative democracy (the form of state now called by that name) does not provide a clear model for any community to rule itself in freedom, let alone in reliable serenity and prosperity. What it provides is a practical basis through which to refuse to be ruled unaccountably and indefinitely against your will.

Less steadily and on far less egalitarian terms, it also provides a framework through which to explore together what people should and should not attempt to do as a community. Virtually none of the elements of an answer to that question can come from democracy as an idea. Almost all have to be pieced together arduously from somewhere else.

A link on the front page of Digg means tens of thousands of visitors to your site, so it’s no surprise that people are setting up systems to game it. The newest attempt is called Spike the Vote. It’s easy to wag your finger at them and say “shame on you,” but Digg is going to have to deal with threats like this if the content on its front page is going to mean anything.

"Democracy is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for successful development", replies Stiglitz carefully. "Though I would argue that it helps achieve sustainable development, a defence of democracy in my mind should not be instrumental." His argument for democracy is not that it is good for development; it is that it is good for people.

This reminds me of a story by Derek Powazek in his book Design for Community, where he makes the point that the harder it is for someone to comment on something, the better the comments are. In other words, people who jump through hoops (or pay attention long enough) to comment are the ones who really care about the subject matter, they’re invested in the story and see value in taking the time to respond.