Democracy can be Despotic TOO! After the presentation there'll be a sing along...
We think this found piece below is somewhat skewed. The video touches upon some of the symptoms of despotism, but it hardly offers a cogent philosophy that explains despotism in the particular. Regardless, I think it is an interesting look at past points of view.
For example, It presents democracy as an ideal. Democracy in it's pure form IS Tyranny of the Majority hence the founders staying away from true democracy and setting up a Constitutional Republic based on Laws and not the will or whims of the majority. It also lauds the mentality, poplar in 1946, of progressive taxation, as though letting people keep what they earn is somehow despotic. In this writer's view, if wealthy people ignore starving people around them, it's not despotic, but rather, immoral.
The socialist might say that the immorality justifies the confiscation of their wealth (except that stealing is also immoral -- reducing the victim to the status of slave). The socialist also declares him- or her-self the final arbiter of what is immoral, including degrees of immorality. Thus a fellow may be moral at a 60% income tax rate and immoral at a 59% tax rate (not having paid his or her fair share--fair share being defined by the socialist).
Ultimately, I think socialism is about condeming society for the actions of a few. That is, the socialist points to several egriegious examples of anti-social behavior and then force everyone else who falls into their loose and arbitrary catagories into a position wherein they can lo longer make decisions on how to spend their wealth, e.g., paying higher wages for their employees or upgrading equipment or starting new enterprises. In this manner, these sharing-faries hobble an economy and then point to the hobbled economy as a reason to take further control of sectors of the economy. It's an oversimplification, for course, because there are numerous ways in which despotic governments hobble an economy and rob the People of individual choice, liberty, etc.
