But, and I hate to be the cynic here, does anyone really believe that even if all 323 million Americans commented in opposition to killing net neutrality, that Ajit Pai would relent?
It's all but guaranteed he's going to do this. The only question is when, not if :(
The idea of this tolerance is a kind of peaceful existence, which, the author argues, is inadequate for democracy but makes us feel good.
The essay is "Beyond Tolerance" by Robert Wolff, and it's part of a three essay book called Critique of Pure Tolerance, which as the name may not suggest to the reader is written from a strongly left-wing point of view (it even contains an essay by Frankfurt School critical theorist Herbert Marcuse!). You can read the PDF of it here, I hope others are as enlightened by it as I was: https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Wolff_Moore_Marcuse_A_Criti...
I see, that it's not long (124 small form pages), but I'm very interested in what do you [or others] think of the essence of the essays, what are the insights that it gives to the reader. What was unexpected? What was expected?
I also see that it's from 1968. How has it aged?
I have similar trouble with Society of the Spectacle, though I managed to find help getting through it. Some are more approachable though, like Marcuse's shorter essays, Marx's non-Capital economic works and Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom. Edit: and of course Slavoj Zizek, though he is known to simplify and reduce concepts until the reader only gets a "kinda yeah" idea of what's being talked about.
Sometimes I really do wonder if the wealth of distracting information presented to me, so easy to grab in a capitalist economy has dulled my brain, or if I even had that brain to use in the first place.
The sense of the first essay is that pluralistic democracy functions in such a way that groups, once recognised, have some of their needs met at various levels of bureaucracy, however none of them get all that they ask for and all of them get a little. What they ask for tends to affect only their own group with little overreach. Although this seems like a good idea, it also functions on the principle of simply blocking out those "fringe", "radical", "extreme" groups which aren't regarded as legitimate; it does not do this by denying their claim to the platform of groups, but it does this by denying their existence or plight in the first place. The author uses the examples of those left in poverty in America before Kennedy and those who campaigned for disarmament before the Cold War. As examples of groups on the platform, he uses religious ones (Protestants and Jews in particular) and ethnic ones.
He argues that there is another model of pluralism, which he calls the 'referee' model, which contends that so far as the government is instituted to merely protect interest groups from colliding, it favours the stronger ones over the weaker ones. He writes in support of this,
>In the field of regulation of labor unions, for example, the federal agencies deal with the established leadership of the unions. In such matters as the overseeing of union elections, the settlement of jurisdictional disputes, or the setting up of mediation boards, it is the interests of those leaders rather than the competing interests of rankandfile dissidents which are favored. In the regulation of agriculture, again, the locally most influential farmers or 1eaders of farmers' organizations draw up the guidelines for control which are then adopted by the federal inspectors. In each case, ironically, the unwillingness of the government to impose its own standards or rules results not in a free play of competing groups, but in the enforcement of the preferences of the existing predominant interests.
I don't think my summary is adequate, as I first read the essay a long time ago, and I'm not sure if I completely agree with it or not (the author cites Durkheim when he talks about the flaws and advantages of classical liberalism and conservatism, how they together spawn pluralistic democracy) so I would recommend reading it if you get time.
Edit: as for the importance of the first essay, from my point of view not much has changed, though I can't say for sure beacuse I only hear about America on the news. As for the last essay, I would say that it is extremely important considering the current political climate in Western countries, though many (especially on HN) would disagree with my view.
The preference toward the majority (plurality) is not surprising considering how regulatory capture is the norm in the US, due to the strong views of anti-federalism. (Which, I guess wasn't much different in the 60s and before.)
One camp sees that there are big businesses that have achieved rentier positions in the economy and advocates passing laws or using force to punish them.
The other camp sees that it is usually federal rules + global competition which created behemoths in the first place and advocates against further restrictive laws.
The two camps fight about whether there should be more rules or less. Meanwhile the problems are left to fester until the next crisis, when the New Rules are able to win.
The civil war, the banking crises of the industrial revolution, the Great Depression, and the "great" recession, etc.
One camp does this by back rooms deal and government contracts, positioning companies to stay ahead of the competition. Big businesses have to pay or the competition will do it.
The other camp does this through removing rules which otherwise would allow competition to grow into a threat. The methods of the first camp get describe by the second as threats, and big businesses have to pay to remove both.
No one is paying to deal with next crisis.
For example in the civil war era you had northern opinions which wanted tariffs, more navy power, etc. and saw plantations as rentiers on "property" they should not have ever owned. In the other camp you had southerners who opposed federal restrictions on trade and were very conscience of the competition between global powers, with England wanting cotton yet also outlawing the gulf stream slave trade.
And I should have been more articulate: I am not refuting the parent post about when perhaps the current camps formed. Just that the formation of such camps is not unusual in American history.
The U.S. was invented at a time of monarchy. Three things it innovated were polyarchy (a ruling class of many rather than one, a king), a written constitution (power comes from people who grant a revocable mandate of authority to the polyarchy, rather than mandate from heaven to the monarch), and one person one vote. Of course who gets to vote is not by any means democratic: you had to be citizen, be a man, be white, and own land.
It's become much more democratized since then, on paper. And it could become a democracy at any moment.
However if you look at the ethnic and economic make up of the country compared to their representatives, the polyarchy is still overwhelmingly landed elite, male, and white. The average net worth of a Congressperson is around $7 million. And there's no meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans when that's broken down, so I'd say we have a one party system with two factions. It's distinctly non-democratic, still, in practice. And it even looks more like an evangelical prosperity theology driven church than a democracy.
But most people don't vote. And most voters, vote party line. It's a tribal system, most voters are deeply ignorant of issues. They're sufficiently happy being peasants and serfs, and having a polyarchy of lords rule them.
So every news outlet give Trump's a snowball's chance in hell of winning and Hillary Clinton is a member of the political establishment, but there's no democracy; plebian votes don't count.
People may it may not reach" correct" conclusions, but America is most certainly democratic.
Best I can think of is Congress passing a law to enforce net neutrality.
Regulatory decisions are also required to, in general terms, make sense and be fair. The new EPA head is currently coming to the realisation that there are limits to his power, especially when he's trying to change rules which had just recently been created: quickly flip-flopping on regulatory issues is an open invitation to be sued by, for example, companies that have based decisions on the assumption of regulatory stability. It's also really hard to argue convincingly to abolish a rule, when the almost unchanged group of people has just made the convincing case for that rule a year ago.
But beyond those squabbles, he is accountable to the people who hire and fire people in his position: the President and Congress. The assumption being that people realise it is the Republican Party who deserves the blame for this disaster of an idea.
That being said, Congress has rightly delegated the ability to manage things like radio transmissions, the environment, food and drugs, etc. to bodies that have more time and domain knowledge, and under a decent president and Congress, we wouldn't have to worry about bad actors making their way to the tops of these organizations. And frankly, do you really have faith that Americans would do any better having to elect tens or hundreds of people to various positions in regulatory bodies?
From where I'm standing, I don't see a huge opposition against this move apart from a vocal minority. I believe it's due to the fact that at this stage the arguments are academic, and as such highly debatable. If they kill net neutrality and people see substantive impacts on their wallets or service, that will be the time to take up arms. At this point in time, I don't see it happening.
The powers that are enforcing ISP monopolies, and are against municipal broadband, are part of the problem.
The bot programmers and TV programs on both sides don't seem to respect this.