How big philanthropy undermines democracy (2013)

[alexanderdmitri]

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/plutocrats-at-work-how-big-philanthropy-undermines-democracy

[deogeo]

It's very telling that those Parent Trigger laws provide for converting a school to a charter school, but not back to a regular school.

Once the Market gets hold of a formerly public institution, it doesn't like to give it back.

[emteycz]

Who cares about democracy? I thought the goal is not to have democracy but to be free as much as possible while having a positive society, which is best achieved by limited democracy (and that might or might not be the case today).

[petermcneeley → emteycz]

You should watch "The Trap" by Adam Curtis. Basically what you are describing is called Negative Liberty and it is a very particular narrow and limiting type of freedom. https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-trap/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty

[emteycz → petermcneeley]

That isn't what I meant. I wanted to say that I feel like people are focusing on democracy for the sake of having democracy instead of using it as just one tool to achieve maximum freedom like it was supposed to.

[petermcneeley → emteycz]

Yes but "achieve maximum freedom" is a negative liberty concept. Positive liberty is more like parentalism which limits freedom to achieve self-mastery.

[emteycz → petermcneeley]

For this reason I specifically said "while having a positive society". Not that I don't agree (or disagree) but I don't want to argue about this at all. The point is that we have democracy instead of absolutism to have freedom, not to have democracy.

[vectorEQ → emteycz]

don't you see. we need democracy so when people like giving we can give them SHIT and tell them their generosity hurts our values.