Peter Dorman wrote:
>I guess I'm more and less libertarian than Jim. On the one hand, I think
>any decent society would have an enforceable meta-rule (like a
>constitutional guarantee) carving out a private space for personal choice
>in consumption, use of one's body etc. beyond the purview of even the most
>democratic of majorities.
I agree with this. But where do these meta-rules come from? if they're not
a result of democratic decisions by the majority in making a constitution
(as I would prefer under the principle of democratic sovereignty), who
would make them? a Rousseauean Legislator, who intuits the essence of the
General Will? or will they spring up spontaneously?
>On the other, the world faces an impending crisis of over-consumption: the
>pattern of consumption now dominant in the "developed" world cannot be
>generalized to all 6 billion of us. What do we do if all the nice
>post-revolutionary stuff still leaves too many people gobbling too many
>resources? Price 'em out of it with draconian green taxes?
To my mind, the democracy has to be world-wide, so that such decisions can
be sane, instead of us seeing the richest countries making decisions for
everyone without suffering the consequences.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
