Democracy Sucks

Begging the question

Posted in anarchy, politics by Stephan on May 29, 2008

Ok so there’s this logical fallacy called “Begging the question“, which is using circular reasoning to try and assume that the premise of your argument is true. It can happen in an implicit or explicit way.

The reason I’m pointing this out is because I often see that some people think the existence of government by democracy is justified because the majority willed it. It looks to me like this is an example of begging the question.

The fact that ‘the majority willed it’  has value to somebody, suggests that that person is already using democracy. So it couldn’t be said that “Because democracy has suggested we should use democracy, we should do that”. You can’t use democracy to try and determine that democracy should be used, beecause this is begging the question. That is circular reasoning.

So this means the choice to start a government with control over land, must have been unanimously supported by each individual, a majority consent could not have been enough.

6 Responses

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  1. Francois Tremblay said, on May 30, 2008 at 7:17 am

    You kinda begged the question of what fundamental standard or principle we should use in order to evaluate these mechanisms.

  2. Stephan said, on May 30, 2008 at 8:03 am

    I’m sorry I don’t really understand you, could you rephrase that?

  3. Francois Tremblay said, on May 31, 2008 at 4:53 am

    You say
    “You can’t use democracy to try and determine that democracy should be used, beecause this is begging the question.”
    Then how CAN you determine this? You didn’t talk about the actual standards that we use.

  4. Stephan said, on May 31, 2008 at 9:45 am

    But I mean that if we have already established the private property ethic, then obviously it must be everybody’s own choice.

  5. Francois Tremblay said, on June 3, 2008 at 6:52 am

    That’s true…

  6. [...] “Begging the Question“, Stephan highlights a logical fallacy often used to justify the State’s existence: the [...]


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