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Old 10-23-2007, 09:55 AM
mosdef mosdef is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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Default Re: AC-ism in history?

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If democracies showed a consistent pattern of failing in the short term then that would invalidate democratic government, yes. The existence of multiple stable, extremely prosperous democracies with high standards of living and good human rights is essentially what validates the system.

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While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post, from a purely logical standpoint you can't conclude "democracy => high standards of living and good human rights" by observing democracies with that have sufficiently high standards of living and human rights under your personal preferences. In particular, you need to build a causation case in addition to just observing correlation.

Furthermore, many supporters of anarchocapitalism believe that freeing a society of government intervention would aid in establishing higher overall standards of living and greater respect of human rights (in particular property rights). The goal is not necessarily to strive to achieve some arbritrary level of social "quality" that is not being achieved now. As an analogy, suppose I take $50 out of your wallet every morning and set it on fire. Your overall quality of life may remain quite satisfactory. Does that mean you wouldn't ask me to stop?
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