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Elections do mean poltical inclusiveness. He uses inclusiveness instead to stop idiots citing pretend elections (like some of the tinpot dictatorships have) as a criticism of his thoery. The elections put the Roman Republic way out in front the Caliphate. That is why I do not need to "jot down a few points" on the differences. One is enough.

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If that is what you intend to argue, it is up to you to argue it.

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He deliberately avoids such terms to avoid your sort of idiocy.

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No I am not. You cited one word - shura. I gave you a paragraph in response. You are clutching at straws an demanding I do your thinking for you.

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No it isn't. That is why there are two different terms. Acemoglu argues that there is a causal relationship between them, but that does not make them the same thing.

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I am not ignoring it. My argument is not about why people give up political rights. It is about the consequence of doing so. If people give up economic and political rights for economic security, they are giving up their wealth, not securing it.

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This is an invention of nationalism. In the more distant past, people saw wars as something that happened between noblemen that had very little effect on them. They got treated the same way regardless. They were the herd that the hunters faught over. Mass conscription is a more recent phenomena, only possible with industrialisation (and a good dose of nationalism).

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They were under siege because their livelihood was based on raiding Meccan caravans and slaughtering Jews. Muhammed deliberately wound the Jews up. He was looking for a fight, just like a modern tyrant looking for a war to detract from his own inadequacies.

So 8000 words isn't enough?

Are you still confused about the relationship between elections and political inclusiveness?

freediver wrote on May 13^th, 2016 at 2:09pm:


No, FD, in the distant past, people saw wars as causing their invasion, rape, pillage, torture, killing, and if anyone was left alive, their enslavement.

And if they were on the winning side, they got to do this to others. Their payment was in war booty, or what were called "the spoils of war".

The invention of nationalism happened after the invention of nations - a phenomenon that occurred only recently, in the 19th century. The rise of the nation state was also about security. It was believed that once the borders were agreed, the constitutions written and the treaties signed, war would be no more. The warmongers would simply take their bat and ball and go home. Not cricket.

Alas, WWI saw an end to that idea. Nations just decided to join forces against others - an easy mistake to make. The rise of the nation state also saw the introduction of a system of alliances that made avoiding war almost impossible once one state lit the fuse.

If you think people in the past saw wars as just a distant tiff between noblemen, you're missing a vital part of the world's unconsciousness today. The latent memory of war is alive and well - in our speech and ideology, if not our very cells. The subject is the source of most Western philosophy, from Plato to Thomas Moore to Karl Marx. When Marx was asked the cryptic philosophical question, what is?, he answered with a quick, one-word answer: struggle.

It is a jolly world, no?

Frank wrote on May 13^th, 2016 at 8:11pm:


Marx’s slant was most certainly not monomaniacal, Frank. It was dialectic.

His argument was that the struggle between two opposing forces drives history; the struggle between empires, classes and competing economic superstructures.

It’s fairly hard to argue the historical momentum from the French revolution on was not about class struggle. It’s impossible to argue that the Roman republic and its classes of patricians, plebians and slaves was not driven by class struggle too.

I propose a new argument. The rise of modern.racism - the proposed banning, killing and nuking of the tinted races - is all about class struggle too.  All we’ve done in the developed world is outsource our plebian and slave classes.

Cunning, no? After all, the people who manufacture most of our goods have little political, and almost no economic inclusiveness.

All FD can say about this is, yes but maybe one day they will.

Yes indeed. Maybe one day they will.

freediver wrote on May 14^th, 2016 at 7:41am:


The Roman Republic was a democracy was it?

No it wasn't. Good, now we all agree on that, perhaps you can actually answer K's question - how is the Roman Republic's non-democratic system of elections more "inclusive" than the Caliphate's non-democratic system of shura (consultation)?

polite_gandalf wrote on May 14^th, 2016 at 9:57am:


FD won’t day, G. He’s converted to Islam.

He’s evading.

Karnal wrote on May 13^th, 2016 at 9:17pm:



It was monomaniacal alright, a bit like Mohammed's revelations: they both thought that their ideas were the final answer and solution to all the troubles that went before them. Marx though that the class struggle will end with the triumph of the proletariat whose dictatorship will eventually lead to such enlightenment that there will be no classes and therefore class struggle and no dialectics becuase the opposites will have been dissolved (that's what communism is meant to be). Like all final prophets, he believed he was onto the end of history.

freediver wrote on May 14^th, 2016 at 2:16pm:


How? You've written 8000 words about the Roman empire and Arab inbreeding, but you won't write anything about the very point you're making.

Should we Google taqiyya?