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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neeka who wrote (215545)	8/13/2007 7:47:41 PM
From: skinowski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794337

I think it was Socrates who asked the question (paraphrase): "If you want to find out something, are you going to ask a 100 men who do not know the answer, or the 1 man who does"? I consider this to be the archetype of an elitist approach to problem solving when related to social issues. Many people - in politics and in general - think that "intelligent" individuals - or limited groups of such individuals - are better capable of understanding any given problem and of discovering the best solution. They do not believe very much in allowing "market forces" consisting of disorganized individualistic yo-yo's to come up with solutions. While Socrates was right, unfortunately in things societal and political his approach is wrong. Maybe because the "intelligent" elites are never quite as smart as they think they are... and they can never foresee the unintended consequences of their actions... or maybe "best" political solutions are "unknowable", maybe they are something which is live, and keeps evolving. In any case, the "political experts know better what's good for the people" way of thinking caused plenty of totalitarian craziness and wars. Generally, the Democratic party in its modern incarnation seems to have a much stronger predilection towards collectivist, top-down approaches towards political decisions than the Republicans.