Absoluteism

[Chairman_Tiel]

As far as I can tell, this recent conflict was sparked by differences of viewpoints concerning power and how it is distributed/overrided. So, what are your thoughts on absoluteism and how it relates to the former?
(not necessarily applied to just this forum)

[fr0stbyte124]

Is this a philosophy discussion or a rules discussion?

[Chairman_Tiel]

The former, though it might impact the latter.

[fr0stbyte124]

In that case, I think a good starting pont is to acknowlege that democracy doesn't really work on a message board. You need someone running the show or things fall apart. Whether or not that person is doing a good job, or whether they are fair or not shouldn't be weighted on the same scale as "is that role necessary?".

Where this gets tricky is that while someone needs to have that sort of power, they also need to remain objective, which sometimes means going against your personal opinion about whether someone needs to be put in line. But I've mostly ignored those cases and left the job to other people, so I'm not really one to talk.

[Iv121]

We have at least two acknowledged authorities by the whole community - it is you and Shiva. You will need to overcome this "If the case is too sensitive I'm not on it" thing because if not you who will ? In theory it is possible to hold "Mistrust" votes if deemed necessary to free the key persons of their obligations if they are not capable of doing their work though I doubt there will be need to. In theory if such a vote is called it must be active for a long period of time (up to a week) to ensure everyone is voted and it can only be held if enough time passed since the last vote so people won't try to destabilize the forums frequently.

Now that we have an authority we trust established we will have someone to go to in case stuff goes not as planned (such as the case of the moderators). How do they solve the problem ? They can come up with their own choice, they can call a public vote if they want but they will need to solve the issue because no one else can. They won't be able to do whatever they want though because the community may stop trusting them but you will need to screw up quite hard to convince half of the community you cannot do the job properly.

[hyperlite]

Shiva has the divine right, and we have to deal with that. There you go. Problem solved.

[Keon]

Mackeroth. Problem solved.

[Chairman_Tiel]

Somehow I remember saying something about it not having to do with this forum in particular. Does absoluteism have a place in government, or in fact, does government belong in the first place?

Governments today are seen as taking away the very rights they were created to protect, and many *cough* Avenger *cough* would rather see it done away with entirely. Personally I think that it helps balance things out to have another assembly with higher staying power over the people who might desire ludicrous things (*cough* Welfare packages *cough*) but then inevitably we end up with a Bread and Circuses scenario...

[Dux_Tell31]

Well, I'm reading Plato's Republic at the moment. So I'll get back to you after I'm done with that.

[҉]

There have certainly been times when governments have become corrupt, and it's very difficult to prevent that, but the solution is not to remove government entirely. I just finished reading a book called The Squares of the City, by somebody, that kinda talked about this. I'm not at all certain that I can summarize the book, for reasons that anyone who has read it will probably understand, but it was a very interesting read. In theory a totalitarian dictatorship is the best possible government, provided you find the right person to be dictator (Hint for life: It will nearly always be the person suggesting that, at least in their opinion. Don't listen). The obvious problem with that is that the number of people who would make good dictators is rather limited. Peter Wiggin was one, by all accounts, and there are a number of kings in history that ruled as dictators but are remembered as great and wise rulers, but there are a lot more who are remembered as despots (Look at every dictator for the past hundred years, for example). Likewise in theory, the best way to govern a country would be to have every citizen vote on every issue and do what the most people want. That's another one that works better in theory than in practice. You have to find a balance, and that's something that is very hard to do.