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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Steve Lokness who wrote (236055)10/28/2013 5:00:13 PM
From: Sam  Respond to of 543351
 
Sooooooo, if it's a good and wise program - people will be willing to tax themselves for it.

lol, so easy to say (just as it is so easy to say things like, "Oh the Chinese will fix their environmental problems, there are technological fixes for them all"). But as Machiavelli pointed out in The Prince (and repeated more than once in the Discourses):

`` We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders. This indifference arises in part from fear of their adversaries who were favoured by the existing laws, and partly from the incredulity of men who have no faith in anything new that is not the result of well-established experience. Hence it is that, whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.''

Mach, The Prince, ch 6

Of course, that idea wasn't really new with him, Aristotle and plenty of others thought it before him. He just said it in a more colorful way and context, and developed a whole way of looking at political matters from it.