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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: OT ; Re: The joy of FORTRAN
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2024 18:11:06 +0100
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 02/10/2024 17:46, rbowman wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Oct 2024 08:30:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> 
>> On 2 Oct 2024 07:29:49 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 2 Oct 2024 03:05:23 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 2 Oct 2024 02:40:51 GMT, rbowman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Democracy leads to mediocrity and worse.
>>>>
>>>> “Democracy is the worst system in the world ... apart from all the
>>>> others.”
>>>>      -- Winston Churchill
>>
>> You have this implicit assumption in the USA that you are the best in
>> the world at everything. Therefore if you do something badly, nobody
>> else can be doing it better.
>>
>> Quite a few other countries manage to do democracy better than you; why
>> not learn from them?
> 
> You keep making the assumption that I consider democracy a good thing.

It isn't the worst, by a long chalk.

I always like Heinlein's qualified democracy. You got a vote for 
education,  a vote for owning your own house, a vote for being  a parent 
and a vote for having served in the army. Something like that.

Or if you were a junked up piece of trash on social security, you didn't 
get a vote at all.

Populist leaders in an unsophisticated population leads to the excesses 
of South African democracy, but its still better than next door 
Zimbabwe, which is a ruthlessly ethnically cleansed single tribe 
'communist' monoculture, with a 10th rate economy.

The problem is one of educating people to be capable of making informed 
choices, when the government takes over the schools and turns out 
indoctrinated assholes.




-- 
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain