> So the interesting subject for debate is: can you reasonably
> expect to have a pure, ideologically correct democracy within
> a free-market society? Does the corruption of wealth and the
> commodification of information and ideas not start to undermine
> the purity of democracy, as Tom hints?
Ah, there's a juicy bit. "Pure, ideologically correct..." The phrase
sends chills down my spine. Who defines that? The Ministry of
Ideology? The Directorate of Truth? The Undersecretariat of
Definitional Correctness? Who's got the inside line on this, anyway?
"Corruption of wealth?" You mean, in itself, or are you implying graft
and influence- peddling? And commodification of information and ideas?
Why again is that evil?
(Oh, god, not "evil." Sorry, try again.) Why again is that undesirable?
And for that matter, why is the notion of wealth buying influence
necessarily a corruption of the beauty of democracy? Perhaps another
way to view this would be to say that government is a corruption of
free-market society made possible by the vile, pathological,
infectious-meme notion of democracy and the tyranny of the majority.
Notice how neatly all of this simply goes away if you leave government
out of the picture entirely. Ah, there, now I've gone and done it.
Shot any possible future political career in the toilet. ;-)
jb