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Social Studies skills: Difference between revisions
→Tocqueville effect
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=== Thucydides Trap === | === Thucydides Trap === | ||
=== Tocqueville effect === | === Tocqueville effect === | ||
* or " | * or "Tocqueville paradox" | ||
* Alexis de Tocqueville noted that | * Alexis de Tocqueville noted that | ||
<pre>"The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason for this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on." | <pre>"The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason for this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes. Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on." | ||
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</pre> | </pre> | ||
>> todo: bring in Mancur Olson and Theory of Groups >> see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson wiki entry Mancur Olson] about how interests tend to coalesce over time and focus on protection of gains, stifling innovation... organizations become "congealed" (from | * The "Tocqueville effect" occurs when marginal portions of society gain economic and/or political power and their demands for reform increase, along with attacks on the established order upon which the greater equality arose. | ||
>> todo: bring in Mancur Olson and Theory of Groups >> see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson wiki entry Mancur Olson] about how interests tend to coalesce over time and focus on protection of gains, stifling innovation... organizations become "congealed" (from "How Phil Falcone Was LightSnared" WSJ, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. 2/18/2012) and resist competition and protect the status quo. | |||
=== Economic disparity === | === Economic disparity === | ||