And these are things which can, in principle, be put to great use by a democracy in order to secure better positions for the people.
Or, they can be absolutely squandered by a democracy which has succumbed to regulatory capture by special interests, where people are free to talk as loud as they like about the bad things, and much is made of increasing awareness of those bad things, and nothing changes because public opinion has little effect on the actual process of crafting policy.
Or, an autocratic but benign dictator can hear the complaints and the new ideas, and try in earnest to address them to their citizens' satisfaction. That's happened a few times in history too. Speech can at times be useful even without the power to back it up.
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Date: 17/2/11 01:08 (UTC)Or, they can be absolutely squandered by a democracy which has succumbed to regulatory capture by special interests, where people are free to talk as loud as they like about the bad things, and much is made of increasing awareness of those bad things, and nothing changes because public opinion has little effect on the actual process of crafting policy.
Or, an autocratic but benign dictator can hear the complaints and the new ideas, and try in earnest to address them to their citizens' satisfaction. That's happened a few times in history too. Speech can at times be useful even without the power to back it up.