Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 June 24

= June 24 =

Democracy as utilitarian
I've recently stumbled across Robert Nozick's argument that democracy is a kind of utilitarianism. Has this argument been made by anyone else? There's something off about it, so I'm not willing to say that democracy is utilitarian. — Melab±1 &#9742; 00:42, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * His reputation among Randians is that what he didn't steal was wrong, and the rest was out of context. You have a cite for this claim? Might help. μηδείς (talk) 01:43, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Funny: that's exactly how I'd characterize Rand w/r/t Nietzsche and Stirner. Nothing ever changes, I guess. I haven't heard of this argument before and can't seem to find it (and thus can't give a pointed critique) - I echo the request for a citation. But assuming Nozick argued this, it would have been with the purpose of criticizing democracy as a be-all, end-all method for making society's every decision. Nozick (like his frequent opponent John Rawls) started from the inadequacy of utilitarianism as a fundamental principle of governance.  If democracy is simply a form of utilitarianism (which I'd argue is false, though at first glance it looks like a nice, simple, neat, clean truth - after all, they're both based on making the majority happy, aren't they?), then it is incapable of administering society as justly as it could possibly be managed, based on previous, more general refutations of utilitarianism. Therefore some other method or hybrid form of governance is needed in order for people to have liberty, protection, justice, etc.  ☯.Zen  Swashbuckler  .☠  16:08, 24 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Trite statements of complex concepts are always wrong. -- Jayron  32  02:11, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * ...except that one. 84.209.89.214 (talk) 11:09, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Democracy in theory (as opposed to in practice) is almost by definition utilitarian, in that it promises the greatest good to the greatest number, since in theory democracy functions as a result of equal individuals making free and rational choices for their own good, and an egalitarian vote of all rational individuals should result in the greatest possible good for the greatest number. Of course, democracy in practice is very different from democracy in theory, not least because there is no society in which individuals have true equality. Marco polo (talk) 16:02, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * In pure democracy, tyranny of the majority would be standard operating procedure. A good example of that axiom is the recent attempts to pass state constitutional amendments denying civil rights to same-sex couples. That's why we have courts, to recognize unconstitutional attempts at restricting freedoms. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:31, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Bugs enjoys this because it agrees with him. He's prolific enough that it doesn't take much time to find an opinion of his own to disagree with him here. Shadowjams (talk) 08:21, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Your comments don't make sense. Regardless of that, farther down the page there's a section called "Paradox of a Democracy dissolving itself into dictatorship", which discusses the same general point I was making. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:35, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Paying after the tax dead line April 15
Wouldn't the IRS actually benefit a lot and make huge profit, if all tax payers paid aftet deadline? I mean with all the surcharges... --112.198.82.159 (talk) 01:20, 24 June 2014 (UTC)


 * That would depend, for one, on how much they spend tracking down those who haven't paid. Dismas |(talk) 01:23, 24 June 2014 (UTC)


 * For a majority of ordinary wage-earners, withholding makes this somewhat irrelevant (filing late means that the IRS only gets to keep the interest earned on the amount of the tax refund to be paid)... AnonMoos (talk) 18:20, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * They do that anyway braintrust. Shadowjams (talk) 08:27, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Ideally, you want to be slightly underwithheld so that you just owe the IRS a small amount come April 15th. The OP is correct that requesting a delay theoretically brings more money in. But it may well not be that simple. Also, the IRS is not a for-profit organization. But the more money they bring in, the more the government can spend. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:31, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Soviet anthem
Why did the Soviet Union change their anthem from the Internationale to a new song? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.38.169 (talk) 17:42, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't vouch for the reliability of this source, but its account seems plausible: . Marco polo (talk) 17:48, 24 June 2014 (UTC)


 * 88.115.38.169 -- the vague generalized sentiments of the Internationale became less relevant after Socialism in One Country became the reigning doctrine, and were definitely outmoded when Stalin unleashed a revival of Russian nationalism to attract popular support in order to help his regime win WW2... AnonMoos (talk) 18:14, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The Internationale was never the official anthem of the Soviet Union. It's the official song of the Communist Party still, and was used unofficially as an anthem, but the National Anthem of the Soviet Union (now, with different words, the National Anthem of Russia) became official in 1944. --jpgordon:==( o ) 23:03, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Cities big and small
I just learned that the City of Greater Geelong LGA is far bigger than the City of Melbourne, even though of course the populated places of those names are the other way around. Why would such a situation exist: are Victorian LGAs' boundaries the result of implementing some sort of broad statewide policy on LGAs, or was it simply a matter of "this seemed best when they made the decision"? I note that it varies from state to state, as well, with the City of Brisbane governing a huge area of the city, while the other City of StateCapitalNameHere LGAs are pretty tiny. Nyttend (talk) 22:28, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * From Local government in Australia, it looks like LGAs are a one-size-fits-all solution for local government, and their names such as 'city' or 'shire' are purely cosmetic. So there's probably no single guiding principle here - while LGAs may be individually optimised for some combination of size, population, and population density that suits their administrators, there's no rule to say they have to follow the same principles in doing so. This contrasts strongly with, say, Germany, where there are 5 levels of government, and how many of them apply to a given place is at least in part a matter of federal policy. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:35, 24 June 2014 (UTC)


 * The City of Wagga Wagga occupies 4,825 sq km, about 4 times the size of Greater Geelong, but has only about 30% of Greater Geelong's population. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  23:07, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
 * What about Lesser Geelong? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:27, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Bugs, see City of Geelong, which was lesser. I'm basically asking about situations with a single LGA encompassing a whole populated place and its surroundings versus a single populated place including a whole LGA and parts (or entireties) of others; wide areas, per se, wasn't the question.  Nyttend (talk) 02:56, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Bugs wrong, again. Shadowjams (talk) 08:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * About what? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:32, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I know next to nothing about Australian urban history but a fair bit about urban history in the United States, where a similar frequent and inconsistent mismatch between municipalities and urban areas exists. In the United States, the explanation is almost always historical and often has to do with class-based parochialism and efforts at exclusion. The drawing of municipal boundaries in the United States is rarely done with an eye to the greater good of the whole urban area, though there are exceptions, such as Unigov for Indianapolis.


 * More typically, municipal lines are drawn when an area is first settled. At that time, the area's urban centers do not extend beyond the few square miles (or square kilometers) allotted to their respective municipalities. Over time, however, the built up area expands beyond the boundaries of the urban center's municipality into surrounding, formerly rural municipalities.


 * Often, those newly suburban municipalities are occupied by residents and businesses who enjoy the positive externalities of the urban centers' amenities without having to contribute to the cost of those amenities. Often, as well, higher income residents gravitate to one or more of the newly suburban municipalities partly because their schools exclude the children of the lower classes, with whom they don't want their own children to mingle. Also, by ensuring that their local taxes go only to their own municipalities' schools, higher income people can ensure ample funding for their own children's education and ensure that their tax dollars do not go to fund the education of the lower classes.


 * In many cases, the population of suburban municipalities collectively soon exceeds that of the central city. This allows them to outvote residents of the central city at the superlocal (state) level and thereby preserve their municipal autonomy. Possibly, a similar historical process has resulted in the political geography that Nyttend has noticed in Australia.  Marco polo (talk) 15:43, 25 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I should add that, in the United States there has been a countervailing trend in cases where core cities were able to offer services that suburban areas could not offer, especially in the western United States, where water is scarce and core cities may have privileged access to water. In these cases, sometimes up to the present day, suburban areas have willingly sought incorporation into the core city. Also, during the 19th century, suburban areas often sought core city services such as fire protection and sewer services and agreed to annexation by the core city in order to obtain them. This latter process seems to have come to a halt in the early 20th century when the development of quasi-municipal entities such as fire, water, and sewer districts enabled suburban municipalities in some areas to band together to meet their needs for services and thereby retain their municipal autonomy. I have no idea whether such countervailing trends might have existed in Australia. Marco polo (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * But the problem with comparing USA and Oz is that, as far as I can tell, LGAs cover everything in the country, which is very different from everywhere in the USA outside of New England (not to be confused with New England (New South Wales), which, thanks to Jack, I know not to be in Queensland) because the rest of the USA has lots of unincorporated areas, and even in states where everything's incorporated (e.g. Pennsylvania), cities/villages/towns tend to be clustered around the population centers, rather than the grid of New England where municipalities just aren't based around population centers. We'd have to imagine a version of New England in which Boston is still just a small piece of land around the downtown, or it gobbles up the rest of Suffolk County and areas beyond.  I wonder how much sense of identity people have for their LGAs; does the guy who lives in the City of Melbourne distinguish himself from his neighbour across the street who lives in the City of Stonnington, for example?  Nyttend (talk) 16:16, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * It depends. For some issues, you need to know which city you're living in, to know which council to complain to or whatever.  The good burghers of Brisbane have only one city to worry about.  The Brisbane City Council covers the entire metropolitan area and has a bigger budget than the state of Tasmania.  But the other state capitals are all divided into various cities.  Then there are federal and state electoral districts, whose borders are regularly adjusted to reflect demographic shifts.  Neighbouring houses in the same suburb in say, Melbourne, could be in the same state seat but different federal seats, or v/v, and not necessarily in the same LGA.  But for most purposes, they'd all regard themselves as Australians, Victorians and Melburnians, in that order, and only enter into other distinctions as the need arises.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:57, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Living in the Northeast as I do, I somewhat neglected the parts of the United States where urban areas may be unincorporated. But even in these cases, the unincorporated areas (except in Alaska) fall within established counties (or parishes in Louisiana, which are essentially counties). County governments perform municipal functions in the United States, and the historical logic I outlined applies to (unincorporated) county jurisdictions just as it does to other municipalities.  In essence, U.S. counties, or their unincorporated areas, amount to LGAs in the Australian sense. Marco polo (talk) 21:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The important thing to remember in these digressions is that civilization requires a certain sorts of services to be provided to the populace in order to maintain standards of living, including maintaining public roads, water supplies, recreation areas, police, fire departments, schools, etc. How a country organizes itself to provide these services efficiently to its people is somewhat arbitrary, and there is no one-size-fits all system, and there are not easy analogues between countries (or even within a country, when looking at the wide variation in the U.S.) for how one system works to deliver those services versus how another system works.  The way in which those services are delivered, the size of the territory and population covered by the governmental units tasked with providing those services, the names for those governmental units, and the way in which the people living in those units may or may not participate in the decision making process vary wildly from place to place.  Whether it is a New England town, a Louisiana Parish, a Local government area in Australia, Unitary authorities of England, Communes of France or any of a number of other ways to organize a country, they all exist to provide those services and the rest of this is just what adds to the variety of human life on earth.  -- Jayron  32  03:04, 27 June 2014 (UTC)