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hOBBES : YOU HAVE TO ORGANIZE LIFE WITH SOME WAY OF SETTLING DISPUTES

What are SOME the alternatives to UNCHECKED political DEBATE AND REPUBLICANISM TO ACHIEVE Good GOVERNMENT?. hOBBES : YOU HAVE TO ORGANIZE LIFE WITH SOME WAY OF SETTLING DISPUTES. All people are born equal? Sure they are… at least equal enough that all of us can kill other people

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hOBBES : YOU HAVE TO ORGANIZE LIFE WITH SOME WAY OF SETTLING DISPUTES

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  1. What are SOME the alternatives to UNCHECKED political DEBATE AND REPUBLICANISM TO ACHIEVE Good GOVERNMENT?

  2. hOBBES: YOU HAVE TO ORGANIZE LIFE WITH SOME WAY OF SETTLING DISPUTES • All people are born equal? Sure they are… at least equal enough that all of us can kill other people • What does life look life in the absence of government among roughly equal people? Nasty • How do societies end perpetual war? Many forms of politics have been tried (hegemony in the case of authoritarian regimes, republicanism in the case of early American democracy, mass democracy in the case of contemporary American politics)

  3. Plato: Why might PHILOSOPHER KINGS BE Better than politics? • Should everyone be politically equal? Are they in the US? • Plato’s hegemony: Working class (irrational), guardians (passionate one’s of course), and philosopher kings (rational) • How will the all-powerful philosophers be kept in check? • Why will the masses go along with this?: What is the purpose of the noble lie? • What are the suboptimal alternatives to this govt structure? Timocracy (property-owners), Oligarchy (brute force of the few), Democracy, and Tyranny

  4. Is all politics really ABOUT economics? • Why did Karl Marx place a priority on economics to explore social behavior? • Why does the state exist according to Marx? • What else other than governmental power makes up the superstructure?...And hegemony? • Why is revolution inevitable and good for Marx? For him, what’s the problem with supplying goods according to “supply and demand”? • Why did Marx think a dictatorship of the proletariat be would necessary to achieve a just society? Why did those who put his ideas think a vanguard or party would have to run society over the long run? • What was a communist society supposedly supposed to look like? How would family and community politics be restructured? • What has Marxism looked like on the ground? (the USSR or Cuba vs. Germany and Sweden… Is socialism just a nice way of saying communism? • Is modern day socialism inherently antidemocratic and does it require governmental ownership of the means of production? Are their any examples of socialism, communism, or the Western European mode of socialism in contemporary American society?

  5. Can social scientists do better than politicians? • What should we make of BF Skinner’s Walden 2? Could anything like this work on the large scale? If behavior modification works for pets, why not us? (liberties vs. collective rights) • Should social scientists play a decisive role in selecting rulers? What do you think about the Goldwater Rule for psychologists? • Should social scientists have ultimate say in the raising and education of children? Don’t they now? (Less so in the US than Europe for sure)? • What role should the social sciences play in regulating economic output? (think about college major choice) • Should technocrats make the decisions on important issues in ways that insulate them from everyone else? Isn’t this what courts are? • Could deliberative democracy or expert democracy be better than our democracy?

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