neuronotic
I think a key thing is to view 'democratic' as meaning more than merely the opportunity to choose - the common narrative around what a 'democracy' is. Rather, it is the opportunity to participate in framing of the choices, without pre-existing powerful interests having disproportionate influence.
Noam Chomsky is an easy reach for a reference to some thought on the matter. He's written so much, but here's the first thing that I find: http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_noth...
Instead we ought to view tax as being a tool which acts as a force of contraction in the economy, taking money out of circulation that has been put there as a result of government spending.
Both of these (fiscal) mechanisms - spending and taxing - ideally act as a mechanism to democratise the economy. 'Ideally' in the sense that the mechanisms for choosing and applying such policies are democratic, rather than authoritarian, subject to capture, etc. 'Democratise' in the sense that without this intervention, the 'market' has free reign - with ensuing consequences that influence over it is not in the hands of the many.
Libertarians (especially of the free-market ilk) may see this as a positive, however, I think it is plainly obvious that a market is never free, and has a tendency to concentrate wealth (and thus power). In my opinion, decisions over our collective efforts and available resources ought not to be in the hands of the few, but rather, in the many - via truly democratic mechanisms and institutions.
Some interesting, related vids that discuss boom/bust, QE and the like:
com.twitter.common.application.AppLauncher exit
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java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Failed to parse:
app_class - No parser found for java.lang.Class<? extends com.twitter.common.application.Application>
The notion that we have the ability to save everything doesn't seem to account for the placement of such technology in a wider context. For example, take dimensions such as the political and economic - which are themselves subject to physical entropy such as fundamental communication and informational limitations manifested by the physical laws underpinning our 'reality'. It seems to me these are examples of some significant hard barriers to reaching such utopia’s of permanence.
So we have a socio-political-economic system that gives rise to things like intellectual property, which in turn leads to allocation of social energy in endeavours such as prohibiting, rather than facilitating, the perpetuation of the content for posterity.
Of course this is a gross simplification, but hopefully functionally illustrative. Down with IP!
Property is theft :p