83. Chairs + Democracy

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Chairs

A long time ago I wrote about my fondness for the oak cabinetry and tables in the Peet's on 4th Street, opposite Whole Foods. The only thing I didn't like were the chairs that were made of a wood that looked almost like a cheap plywood.

I was reminded of this because this new Peet's (on Market) and another location I peeked into the other day, have a new style of chair I really like. I would describe it as being inspired by Eames chairs, 

Well, now that I look at the Eames originals, the resemblance is not that close, but they are closer to this than to the standard wood cafe chairs they had before.


...or at least by Mid-century modern chairs. Here, the chair wood seems to be more refined than the counters and other fixtures -- the reverse of 4th Street. 

Political philosophy

One good thing about the election of Trump is the way it is provoking political and philosophical debate on government in general and democracy in particular. I'm reading an interesting article in The New Yorker that has got my philosophical juices flowing.

It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians.... 

A more practical suggestion came from J. S. Mill, in the nineteenth century: give extra votes to citizens with university degrees or intellectually demanding jobs.... 

Estlund coined the word “epistocracy,” meaning “government by the knowledgeable....”

Since I've advocated licenses for both procreating and voting, I'm not unsympathetic to this notion except that I view the people Mill wanted to give extra votes to as a huge part of the problem. People with university degrees often have no clue what life is like for the common man. That's part of the reason we have consistently ignored the economic fate of the working classes since WW2. First blacks, who had been employed in war industries, were abandoned and then everyone was left to sort out the consequences of the David Ricardo inspired off-shoring of American jobs starting in the 1970s. The notion that workers could be re-trained and educated to take more intellectually demanding jobs ignores the fact that this is not an option for many. And this ignorant cohort is precisely the source of support for fascist movements.

The economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has made the case that democracies never have famines, and other scholars believe that they almost never go to war with one another, rarely murder their own populations, nearly always have peaceful transitions of government, and respect human rights more consistently than other regimes do...

I wish this were true but I question this conclusion. What data is it based on? The history of "democracy" is pretty thin and short. Athens was quite fond of war and their optional invasion of Syracuse is a fairly exact analogue for our invasion of Iraq. Venice was more of a plutocracy. The U.S. and European democracies have started or participated in any number of wars against 3rd World countries. Not to mention U.S. wars against Mexico and Spain. 

Like many people I know, I’ve spent recent months staying up late, reading polls in terror. The flawed and faulty nature of democracy has become a vivid companion. But is democracy really failing, or is it just trying to say something?

This is the key question. As little as I like the treatment, I can't help thinking this is a necessary ordeal if we are not to go the way of the Roman Republic. It would be very disagreeable to have to one day acknowledge Donald Trump as the Savior of the Republic, but it's not impossible. What would be worse however is if he failed to create a fairer economic playing field for the working classes of all colors.

Next - 84. Absalom