Benjamin Studebaker

Yet Another Attempt to Make the World a Better Place by Writing Things

Tag: Occupy Wall Street

February 27, 2014

A Critique of Radical Democracy

A lot of smart people recognize that there are serious structural problems with the current political system, but there is much disagreement on how those problems should be dealt with. While I have often argued for sophiarchism, in many corners radical democratic theory remains more popular. I’d like to offer an argument for rejecting, at least in part, what radical democratic theory has to offer. “Radical democratic theory” is a lengthy phrase, so, for our mutual convenience, I will refer to radical democratic theory as “Rad-Demism” and those who believe in radical democratic theory as “Rad-Dems”. Read the rest of this entry »

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November 10, 2012

Occupy Wall Street and the Rolling Jubilee

I have been a long-time sceptic of the Occupy Wall Street movement–its reluctance to coalesce around any specific issues or solutions to said issues, its lack of structure, hierarchy, and organisation, and its fondness for Rousseauian direct democracy all have been and remain major turn-offs for me. There’s reason we remember Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mandela; good protest movements require good leadership, specific goals, and specific means. However, I have discovered one strand of OWS that is not completely useless. In fact, it may provide an answer to one of the most serious problems afflicting our economy–high levels of household debt and governments unwilling to do anything about it.

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