How blinkered do you have to be to defend totalitarian dictatorships?
This is a curious statement. So when something is defined by the chattering pundits as "totalitarian dictatorship" (regardless if true) then, according to your logic, anyone who questions any accusation of any evil-doing thrown at the said dictatorship is then automatically a "defender of totalitarianism"!
Ok, lets try this for size: "Cuban officials murder 10000 children every night and eat their livers. Castro personally cooks them!"
Your turn. If you declare the above statement false, you are a slimey, low-life defender of totalitarian regimes. If you say its true, you are a shameless untrustworthy liar.
People affected by schizophrenia will completely change their arguments to fit evidence that disproves it. Hence even valid arguments reinforce their beliefs. What's your excuse?
You are being incoherent, while also mentioning schizophrenia. Is that what you were diagnosed with?
Remember: the Kremlin archives were opened up to journalists for long enough during the initial period of post-Soviet Russia, and many of the accusations made by western anti-Communists were definitely proven.
Most of the political attrocities in the USSR occured in the period of 1930s-1960s. Very few of the more recent horror stories actually turned out to be true. Most were bogus tales concocted in hopes of gaining importance, political power, influence and ultimately money by the so-called "dissidents" in the West. A situation which sadly repeated itself with Iraq, to much more disastrous consequence. Think Russian versions of Ahmed Chelabi.
But said independent Human Rights organizations (which also have something to say about abuses in the West) should be respected.
The same certainly goes with the uncorroborated claims of abuse and torture coming out of Guantanamo, no?
Pretty much. Keep in mind however that unlike Castro's, Bush's administration is on record speaking of applying torture and otherwise playing legal games with "meaning" of torture and the like. This by itself gives weight to the Guantanamo accusations.
Specifically it renders all testimony coming out of Guantanamo suspect and shifts the burden on proof of lack of duress during interrogations onto the Guantanamo officials.
I'll take a family members first hand account over some leftist whacko apologists "buyer beware" statements anyday.
There is a reason why family members of some victim, specially ones with a common axe to grind and a sympathetic audience, are not reliable witnesses in court.
But then again I am sure you would extend the same type of welcoming attitude to Palestinians with the same stories, except featuring Israel instad of Cuba as the villain, also based merely on the word of "family members", right?
How about a song for the thousands of victims tortured and killed under Castro's regime? You know, the people who weren't imprisioned for involvement in terrorism, but for such "crimes" as running an unauthorized library or demonstrating for democracy? Where are their songs?
I would caution you to take these reports with a grain of salt unless there is some other hard evidence to support them. The same kind of stuff was coming out of Eastern Europe in the 1980s and much of it turned out to be a fabrication. Cuban "commies" were always on the mild end of the spectrum, when compared to, say, China, whom apparently we are supposed to measure with a wholly different measure because they make golf-balls for Wal-Mart.
So don't become a tool for some rabid Cuban exile land-owner who would play the world's smalles violin about human rights abuses in Cuba only to promptly abuse everyone in his path should he manage to get his paws back on the island.
This is precisely what happened in the Eastern Europe where the Solidarity used to broadcast "shocking" reports by rebellious reporters about how well off the top members of the socialist government were: "Two! count em! Two 4-room apartaments!! Outrage!!". Of course as soon as the "freedom loving capitalists" took over, some of the former historical palaces of the nobility which have been designated as museums became houses of some of the same ex-Solidarity members who bemoaned the wretched inequality of the "commies".
I was wondering where the GP got the arithmetic mean from, if no economists would ever use it
From some press-release, spat by a "think tank" and reprinted by a witless "journalist", most likely. By using the term "economist" I was referring to a class of scientific researchers who attempt to employ sound scientific methods, rather then an individual "authority".
Hmm I spot an incongruity here. Thanks for getting back to me though!
See above. "Respectable economist" in this case simply means someone researching the economic mechanisms who is not caught employing mathematically unsound measurements to further a self-serving ideology. It is mearly a shorthand referrence to use of scientific principles instead of demagougery.
But at any point in time the shorthand notation can be expanded into arbitrary level of detail because it is based on verifiable science, unlike your wholly comical assertions in your previous post which can, and were, completely demolished by employing the very same technique.
The effects are diametrically opposite, in your case such scrutiny was efficiently destructive to your arguments, in my case it simply reinforces my observations.
He and his countrymen will soon be dead or enslaved, and their daughters clad in burqas and serving as brood mares for howling Mahometan head-choppers.
A significant portion of foreign opinion of the USA is based on such monumentally idiotic screeds as the one above penned by the denisens of the USA. No Guardian opinion pieces needed.
The odds of Europe being run over by a disorganized band of Koran totting religious zealot wacko bloodthirsty criminals is far less then the chance of the US being run over by the Bible totting religious zealot wacko bloodthirsty criminals.
We Americans need pay no attention to their opinions of us, which in any case are based on little more than Hollywood movies and opinion pieces in the Grauniad.
True that many Americans pay little attention to anything but their beer can and the footbal game, but the foreign opinions of them are also shaped by... what the Americans do aborad. Like invading whole countries on fabricated evidence, against better judgment of those familiar with those targets of invasion and then trying to blame someone, anyone but themselves for the resulting clusterfuck.
Being abominably stupid, arrogant, immune to criticism and proud of it does not do those Americans any credit.
I also note how you try to position yourself to take place of all Americans, even those who happen to diametrically oppose your view. All so that you play the victim and at the same time pretend to represent everyone in the USA. A typical jingoistic, faux-patriotic, us-vs-them winguttery.
Of all government democracies, I would like to point out Israel's as being the best as a form of government with it's proportional representation.
Of course its policies to its "governed" territories and recent military excursions maybe questionable, but they do seem to have a government with a fair amount of 3rd parties (remember Sharon's new party was able to take power over the old one) and even has Arab members in the parliament.
Trotting out Israel as an example of a model democracy is so counter-productive as to be worthy of a comedy act. It merely goes to highlight in vibrant colours all the failings of such a governance system, in this case its being prone to being manipulated and taken over by far-out religious lunatics, racist supremacists and bloodthirsty warmongers.
That said... Proportional Representation systems actually work in a sense that they do allow for quick changeover from the hands of long term politicians and allow for 3rd parties to survive in politics.
There are many other systems which have similar results, but less undesirable side effects. For example the whole notion of a "party" is highly questionable, yet seems to be meeting with unquestionable acceptance just because it has been the preferred method of dumbing down the governance for the consumption of "our-football-team-vs-theirs" type of thought-challenged voters.
Try this for size: how about a lottery whereby all eligible citizens are selected to a 2-year duty in the Parliment, just like one would serve in a jury? By definition a proportional representation of all social circles. No electioneering, no campaign finance, no TV ads, no parties, no back-room-old-boys-club election deals, etc.
Since this is the very thing an increasing number of Iraqis believe, they must be turning "moonbat" in droves, no?
2) Totalitarian dictatorships are better democracies than Western democracies.
Which of course no one claims. What is the point of contention though is that the Western democracies are becoming flawed to the point of gaining some rather unpleasant resemblances to some of the dictatorships.
As to Venezuela, the place is not a dictatorship, it is a deeply flawed and failing democracy. Chavez can be kicked out of office (wacky constitution changes or not) if his base turns against him. The reason he is in power because a signifcant majority of the population wants him to be there. Venezuela's rich dominate nearly all of the airwaves in the place and are still unable to get the voters to turn against Chavez.
Fidel's Cuba is a dictatorship with no opposition owning something like 90% of TV and radio stations and no referenda on the presidency.
The reason the US politicians fear Chavez far more then Fidel is because Chavez cannot be credibly accused of being a dictator, which was the whole basis of attempting to overthrow any leftist government in South and Central America for many decades now. And even greater panic in the White House can be invoked by an idea that Chavez will convince Castro to run an internationally monitored referendum on his presidency in Cuba and thus drive a stake through the heart of the whole US foregin policy in the region.
This is a feature, not a bug. I don't want to be ruled by people for whom Jerry Springer Show reruns are more important than getting off their fat asses to vote
Many educated and informed people have given up on voting since they have figured out that the system is hopelessly rigged. You forgot to include those. But I was speaking to the theoretical condition, whereby the whole of the voting population is educated and informed but apathic, which was meant to show that the education and information are not by themselves sufficient.
I believe this to be a realistic view. Sugercoating the truth is usually not very helpful in the long term.
I tend to see things, at least here in the US, with a little more hope. Of course, I'm a glass is half-full kind of guy. I just think there is a serious difference in the degree and not just the finesse of the politicians.
Of course there are a lot of other differences, I simply mentioned one of the major ones for brevity.
I cannot however understand how can you see the "glass" being half full in the US when you are faced with a rendition of "democracy" where the choices are permanently limited to pro-elite party A vs pro-elite party B. In order for any politician in the US to become "mainstream" i.e. to receive a blessing from the true rulers of your country: the upper crusts of your society, the moneymen who control all the finances of the electoral process and who also own the so-called "mainstream" media not to mention who also rule the mutual-admiration clubs which each of the party memebers must become a member of to become "viable".
You are reduced to a pathetic excercise of choosing between your rulers' representatives whose range of political views is so narrow that even the idea of universal healthcare, which all the other OECD countries have implemented out fear of the peons revolting, represents "extreme looney left".
Its the slaves voting on the color of their masters' whips.
It wasn't "real democracies" it was "real democracy," as in Venezuela isn't one, and there is no comparison to any other countries except the one you made.
Define "real democracy" then and explain why Venezuela isn't one. Then apply the same criteria to any other "democracy".
You see in order to make a statement such as the GPs, one has to create a set of measurements by which to assess the "realness" of that democracy. Which immediately creates a measuring stick with which to check all the other ones. And so enter all the other "democracies".
What you lack for this are two things. First, an educated and well informed populace. Second, a populace that desires to educate and inform itself.
This is of course one of the pillars supporting my argument. To add further to this, even with an educated and informed populace no one can speak of a "real" democracy when the voter turnout is routinely around 20-30% or some such.
Of course, the glass in America is 3/4 full, in Venezuela, there's just a few drops of condensation on the outside of an otherwise empty glass from the last cold day in hell since Chavez consolidated power.
But hey, to a moral relativist, they're both corrupt. It's just different degrees of pessimism
Naturally this is a slightly arbitrary measurement scale wholly originating in the dark recesses of your rectum.
You have absolutely no way to demonstrate that the "glass" is not 15% full in the US and, say, 11% in Venezuela. Or perheaps its 75.1124% to 62.9561726% or some other such. None of those of course mean anything since there is no reliable way of converting the quality of a political system to some convenient percentage scale.
Sadly a fact which never gets in the way of a demagouge.
The North or the countries of the OECD might make for more interesting and relevant comparisons
That is probably a better metric, I simply used the old Cold War era term.
European democracies actually work.
The problem is of course defining what does "working" in this context mean. Are they an accurate representation of the will of an informed and educated populace? Hardly.
All of the "democracies" as presently practiced are flawed to some degree. The primary problem is that complex issues of governance in any nation have to be ridiculously simplified and sloganized in order to be digestible to the voters. Then you have the mega-corporate media, billionaires and their lobbyists who provide their high-priority "input" into the debate and into the workings of the electoral process itself. I am not sure about Sweden's particulars but in the USA for example it now appears that presidential campaign costs will run into hundreds of millions of dollars. I could go on like this for a while.
Consitutional democracies look good on paper and even do work to a large degree in practice. But none of them can be at present described as "real" i.e. flawless representation of the will of an educated and well informed populace.
I've lived in Venezuela. The shenanigans of our politicians have nothing on Venezuelan politicians. Hugo Chavez was behind two failed coups against then president Perez back in 1992. I doubt if he's above keeping power any way he can.
Which of course the opposition repayed in full by having their own attempted coup staged.
Sure, Venezuela's "democracy" is a sham. So is USA's, Canada's, France's, UK's etc. It is just a matter of how bold and unapologetic the participants of the sham are. Our Western equivalents simply conduct their crookery with much fancier PR.
Which has fuck all to do with the point made. If you get busted for theft, the fact that your neighbor is up for murder doesn't mitigate what you did.
What it has to do with the point is that the GP is holding up "real" democracies as some sort of measuring stick to compare Venezuela to. Unfortunately no one has managed to construct a "real" democracy yet and so he is applying a test that is a-priori impossible to meet in order to make Venezuela appear far more sinister then it really is.
No, it only counts when it's real democracy and not a dog and pony show
I take it then that you are including most of the Western "democracies" in the "dog and pony show" category as their systems are equally or more broken then that of Venezuela.
If bill gates walks into a bar with 20 people in it the mean is suddenly $2bn. Very clever, but it's a spurious example. In any population, if you pick the highest number and add it to your sample, you get a skewed sample. What you miss is that the chance of Bill Gates walking into that bar is 1 in 200 million.
The point of the example was to illustrate the effect on the arithmetical (or mean) average in an extreme scenario so that the effect is visibly and clearly pronounced. It is a technique used just about everywhere in science. The probability of such an extreme scenario occuring is not a factor in the demonstration as long as the principle demonstrated is applicable to the whole range of the values in the problem domain.
Such illustrations involve comparing the size of Earth to that of a grape and Saturn to an orange. Which in your genius view must be completely invalid because the odds of Earth turning into a grape are, shall we say, rather remote, right?!
Secondly - average can means either arithmetic mean, or median.
Not in common usage outside science. Vast majority of the population (who even have a clue as to what an average is) will understand "average" to be the mean, arithmetical average. It is in this context in which politicians, journalists and many Slashdot users employ the term. Since this is the common usage and the original GP did not provide any other information, it is safe to assume he meant the mean instead of the median.
Based on your own argument I'd guess the average the GP was referring to ($1009) was a median...
Of course! Clearly your opinion is naturally overriding what people do in the real world. How else? Based on a lovingly hand-crafted strawman standing in place of my argument no less. Burning too.
Hence it's a stupid example, although has been used by Nassim Taleb and Benoit Mandelbrot so you're in good company.
Let me see here... a method of illustrating a mathematical problem on which Benoit Mandelbrot and Random Slashdot Doofus #574715 named Dilaudid disagree... who could be right? Well, one is a world renowned mathematician responsible for discovering fractals and the other.... err... well... a Random Slashdot Doofus! Hmm... this is a tough one.
I normally try not to use arguments to authority but this contrast is just too bizarre. You could try to improve your position by standing on a steet corner wering a billboard with "Benoit Mandelbrot Is WRONG!" on it ("Bill's never seen an inside of a BAR!!!" on the back).
Btw, that Wikipedia link was posted in this thread a day before you decided to grace us with your presence.
So what you're saying is one of the few real implementations of communism in practice can't be seen as an example of real communism. Please note that I didn't wrap any of those terms in scare quotes. I don't feel it is necessary.
No, I am saying that the propagandists (both Capitalist and Marxist) have mislabelled the thing for various political reasons.
This does not mean that I believe "communism" as envisioned by Marx is workable.
All I am pointing out is that the term "communism" is stolen by Marxists from much older movements. The Bolsheviks (the actual name of the Soviet ideology) re-branded themselves also that way (in order to subsume other competing movements who saw themsevels as "communist" in some way or another) and the rest is history. In later times even the Soviets shied away from the term "communism" and preferred to call themselves "socialist" instead.
Communism as it was historically understood prior to the modern industrial era was all about building... communes. Hence the name. Self-contained small scale societies based on some sort of deep common cause, usually religious in nature.
When Marx appeared on the scene with his megalomaniac utopian ideas using the term "communism" he sent the capitalists into a proverbial hysteria. And ever since "communism" became synonymous in the West with Marxism, Totalitarianism and whatever latest anti-capitalist boogeyman can be conjured.
Yeah, yeah, I know that communism in it's purest form is only practiced in paneled rooms with all participants comfortably seated in armchairs.
You mean Marxism. Or Libertarianism. Or whole gamut of other wacky unworkable social systems.
As I was pointing out, communism and its communes are alive and well in the USA and Canada. In my province alone there is quite a number of Mennonite communes which are operating strictly in the old-fashioned communist way. Complete with common kitchen and shared ownership of all buildings/land/crops/equipment etc. The amusing part is that those communes are actually quite wealthy since they are nearly completely self-sufficient while selling their excess crops to outsiders. They have literally millions of dollars in the bank each, which they use occasionally to purchase latest farm equipment etc. But unlike the Maxists and their kin who depended on political ideology, these communes maintain their internal order based on close family ties and religious convictions and thus will by definition always remain small.
Now having an average that is close to or equal to the median is possible, I don't see why that sentence made no sense to you. All you need is an evenly distributed group to have the two equal to each other.
Yes it is possible but my point was that even if the mean average happens to coincide with median some time, this does not make the mean average a good tool for estimating the general levels of income in a group of people. It is like saying that because twice a day a broken clock is right then it means that this clock is "good enough". Odds are greatly against having a group with a flat income distribution curve and just one significant enough anomaly destroys the usefulness of the mean average for the purpose we are discussing even in such even distrubution scenarios. In other words using mean averages is dangerous because it allows for abuse by charlatans and it gains you nothing useful in return.
But it's the median average, and not the mean average. Still an average though.
Technically its true but most people and journalists are referring to "mean" or "plain" or "arithmetical" average when they say "average". They specifically indicate "median everage" or just "median" (as I did) when doing otherwise.
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This is a curious statement. So when something is defined by the chattering pundits as "totalitarian dictatorship" (regardless if true) then, according to your logic, anyone who questions any accusation of any evil-doing thrown at the said dictatorship is then automatically a "defender of totalitarianism"!
Ok, lets try this for size: "Cuban officials murder 10000 children every night and eat their livers. Castro personally cooks them!"
Your turn. If you declare the above statement false, you are a slimey, low-life defender of totalitarian regimes. If you say its true, you are a shameless untrustworthy liar.
Let's see how you like your own debating tactic.
You are being incoherent, while also mentioning schizophrenia. Is that what you were diagnosed with?
Most of the political attrocities in the USSR occured in the period of 1930s-1960s. Very few of the more recent horror stories actually turned out to be true. Most were bogus tales concocted in hopes of gaining importance, political power, influence and ultimately money by the so-called "dissidents" in the West. A situation which sadly repeated itself with Iraq, to much more disastrous consequence. Think Russian versions of Ahmed Chelabi.
None of which corraborate what the GP is saying.
Pretty much. Keep in mind however that unlike Castro's, Bush's administration is on record speaking of applying torture and otherwise playing legal games with "meaning" of torture and the like. This by itself gives weight to the Guantanamo accusations.
Specifically it renders all testimony coming out of Guantanamo suspect and shifts the burden on proof of lack of duress during interrogations onto the Guantanamo officials.
There is a reason why family members of some victim, specially ones with a common axe to grind and a sympathetic audience, are not reliable witnesses in court.
But then again I am sure you would extend the same type of welcoming attitude to Palestinians with the same stories, except featuring Israel instad of Cuba as the villain, also based merely on the word of "family members", right?
I would caution you to take these reports with a grain of salt unless there is some other hard evidence to support them. The same kind of stuff was coming out of Eastern Europe in the 1980s and much of it turned out to be a fabrication. Cuban "commies" were always on the mild end of the spectrum, when compared to, say, China, whom apparently we are supposed to measure with a wholly different measure because they make golf-balls for Wal-Mart.
So don't become a tool for some rabid Cuban exile land-owner who would play the world's smalles violin about human rights abuses in Cuba only to promptly abuse everyone in his path should he manage to get his paws back on the island.
This is precisely what happened in the Eastern Europe where the Solidarity used to broadcast "shocking" reports by rebellious reporters about how well off the top members of the socialist government were: "Two! count em! Two 4-room apartaments!! Outrage!!". Of course as soon as the "freedom loving capitalists" took over, some of the former historical palaces of the nobility which have been designated as museums became houses of some of the same ex-Solidarity members who bemoaned the wretched inequality of the "commies".
Buyer beware.
No, I am referring to your use of a logical fallacy.
From some press-release, spat by a "think tank" and reprinted by a witless "journalist", most likely. By using the term "economist" I was referring to a class of scientific researchers who attempt to employ sound scientific methods, rather then an individual "authority".
See above. "Respectable economist" in this case simply means someone researching the economic mechanisms who is not caught employing mathematically unsound measurements to further a self-serving ideology. It is mearly a shorthand referrence to use of scientific principles instead of demagougery.
But at any point in time the shorthand notation can be expanded into arbitrary level of detail because it is based on verifiable science, unlike your wholly comical assertions in your previous post which can, and were, completely demolished by employing the very same technique.
The effects are diametrically opposite, in your case such scrutiny was efficiently destructive to your arguments, in my case it simply reinforces my observations.
A significant portion of foreign opinion of the USA is based on such monumentally idiotic screeds as the one above penned by the denisens of the USA. No Guardian opinion pieces needed.
The odds of Europe being run over by a disorganized band of Koran totting religious zealot wacko bloodthirsty criminals is far less then the chance of the US being run over by the Bible totting religious zealot wacko bloodthirsty criminals.
True that many Americans pay little attention to anything but their beer can and the footbal game, but the foreign opinions of them are also shaped by ... what the Americans do aborad. Like invading whole countries on fabricated evidence, against better judgment of those familiar with those targets of invasion and then trying to blame someone, anyone but themselves for the resulting clusterfuck.
Being abominably stupid, arrogant, immune to criticism and proud of it does not do those Americans any credit.
I also note how you try to position yourself to take place of all Americans, even those who happen to diametrically oppose your view. All so that you play the victim and at the same time pretend to represent everyone in the USA. A typical jingoistic, faux-patriotic, us-vs-them winguttery.
Trotting out Israel as an example of a model democracy is so counter-productive as to be worthy of a comedy act. It merely goes to highlight in vibrant colours all the failings of such a governance system, in this case its being prone to being manipulated and taken over by far-out religious lunatics, racist supremacists and bloodthirsty warmongers.
There are many other systems which have similar results, but less undesirable side effects. For example the whole notion of a "party" is highly questionable, yet seems to be meeting with unquestionable acceptance just because it has been the preferred method of dumbing down the governance for the consumption of "our-football-team-vs-theirs" type of thought-challenged voters.
Try this for size: how about a lottery whereby all eligible citizens are selected to a 2-year duty in the Parliment, just like one would serve in a jury? By definition a proportional representation of all social circles. No electioneering, no campaign finance, no TV ads, no parties, no back-room-old-boys-club election deals, etc.
Since this is the very thing an increasing number of Iraqis believe, they must be turning "moonbat" in droves, no?
Which of course no one claims. What is the point of contention though is that the Western democracies are becoming flawed to the point of gaining some rather unpleasant resemblances to some of the dictatorships.
As to Venezuela, the place is not a dictatorship, it is a deeply flawed and failing democracy. Chavez can be kicked out of office (wacky constitution changes or not) if his base turns against him. The reason he is in power because a signifcant majority of the population wants him to be there. Venezuela's rich dominate nearly all of the airwaves in the place and are still unable to get the voters to turn against Chavez.
Fidel's Cuba is a dictatorship with no opposition owning something like 90% of TV and radio stations and no referenda on the presidency.
The reason the US politicians fear Chavez far more then Fidel is because Chavez cannot be credibly accused of being a dictator, which was the whole basis of attempting to overthrow any leftist government in South and Central America for many decades now. And even greater panic in the White House can be invoked by an idea that Chavez will convince Castro to run an internationally monitored referendum on his presidency in Cuba and thus drive a stake through the heart of the whole US foregin policy in the region.
Many educated and informed people have given up on voting since they have figured out that the system is hopelessly rigged. You forgot to include those. But I was speaking to the theoretical condition, whereby the whole of the voting population is educated and informed but apathic, which was meant to show that the education and information are not by themselves sufficient.
I believe this to be a realistic view. Sugercoating the truth is usually not very helpful in the long term.
Of course there are a lot of other differences, I simply mentioned one of the major ones for brevity.
I cannot however understand how can you see the "glass" being half full in the US when you are faced with a rendition of "democracy" where the choices are permanently limited to pro-elite party A vs pro-elite party B. In order for any politician in the US to become "mainstream" i.e. to receive a blessing from the true rulers of your country: the upper crusts of your society, the moneymen who control all the finances of the electoral process and who also own the so-called "mainstream" media not to mention who also rule the mutual-admiration clubs which each of the party memebers must become a member of to become "viable".
You are reduced to a pathetic excercise of choosing between your rulers' representatives whose range of political views is so narrow that even the idea of universal healthcare, which all the other OECD countries have implemented out fear of the peons revolting, represents "extreme looney left".
Its the slaves voting on the color of their masters' whips.
Define "real democracy" then and explain why Venezuela isn't one. Then apply the same criteria to any other "democracy".
You see in order to make a statement such as the GPs, one has to create a set of measurements by which to assess the "realness" of that democracy. Which immediately creates a measuring stick with which to check all the other ones. And so enter all the other "democracies".
This is of course one of the pillars supporting my argument. To add further to this, even with an educated and informed populace no one can speak of a "real" democracy when the voter turnout is routinely around 20-30% or some such.
Naturally this is a slightly arbitrary measurement scale wholly originating in the dark recesses of your rectum.
You have absolutely no way to demonstrate that the "glass" is not 15% full in the US and, say, 11% in Venezuela. Or perheaps its 75.1124% to 62.9561726% or some other such. None of those of course mean anything since there is no reliable way of converting the quality of a political system to some convenient percentage scale.
Sadly a fact which never gets in the way of a demagouge.
That is probably a better metric, I simply used the old Cold War era term.
The problem is of course defining what does "working" in this context mean. Are they an accurate representation of the will of an informed and educated populace? Hardly.
All of the "democracies" as presently practiced are flawed to some degree. The primary problem is that complex issues of governance in any nation have to be ridiculously simplified and sloganized in order to be digestible to the voters. Then you have the mega-corporate media, billionaires and their lobbyists who provide their high-priority "input" into the debate and into the workings of the electoral process itself. I am not sure about Sweden's particulars but in the USA for example it now appears that presidential campaign costs will run into hundreds of millions of dollars. I could go on like this for a while.
Consitutional democracies look good on paper and even do work to a large degree in practice. But none of them can be at present described as "real" i.e. flawless representation of the will of an educated and well informed populace.
Which of course the opposition repayed in full by having their own attempted coup staged.
Sure, Venezuela's "democracy" is a sham. So is USA's, Canada's, France's, UK's etc. It is just a matter of how bold and unapologetic the participants of the sham are. Our Western equivalents simply conduct their crookery with much fancier PR.
What it has to do with the point is that the GP is holding up "real" democracies as some sort of measuring stick to compare Venezuela to. Unfortunately no one has managed to construct a "real" democracy yet and so he is applying a test that is a-priori impossible to meet in order to make Venezuela appear far more sinister then it really is.
I take it then that you are including most of the Western "democracies" in the "dog and pony show" category as their systems are equally or more broken then that of Venezuela.
The point of the example was to illustrate the effect on the arithmetical (or mean) average in an extreme scenario so that the effect is visibly and clearly pronounced. It is a technique used just about everywhere in science. The probability of such an extreme scenario occuring is not a factor in the demonstration as long as the principle demonstrated is applicable to the whole range of the values in the problem domain.
Such illustrations involve comparing the size of Earth to that of a grape and Saturn to an orange. Which in your genius view must be completely invalid because the odds of Earth turning into a grape are, shall we say, rather remote, right?!
Not in common usage outside science. Vast majority of the population (who even have a clue as to what an average is) will understand "average" to be the mean, arithmetical average. It is in this context in which politicians, journalists and many Slashdot users employ the term. Since this is the common usage and the original GP did not provide any other information, it is safe to assume he meant the mean instead of the median.
Of course! Clearly your opinion is naturally overriding what people do in the real world. How else? Based on a lovingly hand-crafted strawman standing in place of my argument no less. Burning too.
Let me see here ... a method of illustrating a mathematical problem on which Benoit Mandelbrot and Random Slashdot Doofus #574715 named Dilaudid disagree ... who could be right? Well, one is a world renowned mathematician responsible for discovering fractals and the other .... err ... well ... a Random Slashdot Doofus! Hmm ... this is a tough one.
I normally try not to use arguments to authority but this contrast is just too bizarre. You could try to improve your position by standing on a steet corner wering a billboard with "Benoit Mandelbrot Is WRONG!" on it ("Bill's never seen an inside of a BAR!!!" on the back).
Btw, that Wikipedia link was posted in this thread a day before you decided to grace us with your presence.
No, I am saying that the propagandists (both Capitalist and Marxist) have mislabelled the thing for various political reasons.
This does not mean that I believe "communism" as envisioned by Marx is workable.
All I am pointing out is that the term "communism" is stolen by Marxists from much older movements. The Bolsheviks (the actual name of the Soviet ideology) re-branded themselves also that way (in order to subsume other competing movements who saw themsevels as "communist" in some way or another) and the rest is history. In later times even the Soviets shied away from the term "communism" and preferred to call themselves "socialist" instead.
Communism as it was historically understood prior to the modern industrial era was all about building ... communes. Hence the name. Self-contained small scale societies based on some sort of deep common cause, usually religious in nature.
When Marx appeared on the scene with his megalomaniac utopian ideas using the term "communism" he sent the capitalists into a proverbial hysteria. And ever since "communism" became synonymous in the West with Marxism, Totalitarianism and whatever latest anti-capitalist boogeyman can be conjured.
You mean Marxism. Or Libertarianism. Or whole gamut of other wacky unworkable social systems.
As I was pointing out, communism and its communes are alive and well in the USA and Canada. In my province alone there is quite a number of Mennonite communes which are operating strictly in the old-fashioned communist way. Complete with common kitchen and shared ownership of all buildings/land/crops/equipment etc. The amusing part is that those communes are actually quite wealthy since they are nearly completely self-sufficient while selling their excess crops to outsiders. They have literally millions of dollars in the bank each, which they use occasionally to purchase latest farm equipment etc. But unlike the Maxists and their kin who depended on political ideology, these communes maintain their internal order based on close family ties and religious convictions and thus will by definition always remain small.
Yes it is possible but my point was that even if the mean average happens to coincide with median some time, this does not make the mean average a good tool for estimating the general levels of income in a group of people. It is like saying that because twice a day a broken clock is right then it means that this clock is "good enough". Odds are greatly against having a group with a flat income distribution curve and just one significant enough anomaly destroys the usefulness of the mean average for the purpose we are discussing even in such even distrubution scenarios. In other words using mean averages is dangerous because it allows for abuse by charlatans and it gains you nothing useful in return.
Technically its true but most people and journalists are referring to "mean" or "plain" or "arithmetical" average when they say "average". They specifically indicate "median everage" or just "median" (as I did) when doing otherwise.
I meant to say that the median is representative in my previous reply to you.