Democracy and such (I)

Most times we think in actual social and moral ideas as the ones who will stand forever. Obviously this is not true, other ideas will appear, at least in a cyclic way. I would like to discuss the "right ideas" of the present, specially the idea of democracy.

Today democracy is a synonym of universal suffrage. There are a lot of things to say about this. The signs that we have today are that abstension is kept high in countries with universal suffrage. A lot of people (like me) think this is due to the disbelief in the system or disinterest in this act or both. But after these interpretations nothing more is done. Won't these signs mean something? After all the country's decisions are being taken by a non majority of the population, so is this a real "democracy"? In my opinion most of the people is only interested in politics if their fundamental rights (human rights necessary to survival and dignity, freedom of thought and speech, respect) are threatened. If these ones exist I think most people don't care if their regime is a secular western democracy or an absolute and fanatic theocracy.

Today it is an heresy to criticize the democratic system and we are immediately labeled as [insert here an example of bloody regime, a XXth century one is better]. Is the universal suffrage the "final" regime? I think most things are not eternal and this is one example of the things I think. And yes, I believe in the fundamental right of people I said above, I'm not an [insert here an example of bloody regime, a XXth century one is better]. The question is if the political right is one of the fundamental rights, but is it possible a system where everybody has an acting political right?

Let's imagine a system with a small amount of laws (the ones necessary to guarantee the fundamental rights), quasi-anarchic, pacific in a certain moment. Is it possible that everybody meet their desires? Obviously not, just imagine that someone with radical ideas can try to destroy the system by only using his political right (and there are so many persons...), motivated, for example, by religious ideas. The laws of this society arrest him, breaking the anarchic essence that everyone can apply the respective political rights. Otherwise the society colapses. The human societies have sexual, racial, politial and religious tensions, so we can't create a beautiful theoretical system that ignore these practical problems.

Can we change this regime so that it can't colapse in theory and reality this way? Let's imagine that the political right cannot break the fundamental rights not change the regime. This regime is stable, although some people won't apply the radical political right they have because they can't destroy the regime, and this is what we want, a psycho killer should not be able to execute his ideas. But how can we deal with non-radical ideas? As everybody has a political right in this society, different ideas will appear. How can we decide now? One way is the universal suffrage, and here enters the idea of majority.

The majority appeared to solve these problems. Who has more votes wins. This idea solves this problem. But does it always work? Let's imagine this society has two ethnicities, A and B, that want its respective religion (or idea, doesn't matter) as the official one of the state, and they respect the idea of universal suffrage and majority. As A is more populous than B, it wins, and A's religion becomes the official one (we assume all As and Bs vote in their respective religion). What happens to B? Its religion is respected because of the constitution, so that B only lives with the fundamental rights. Let's imagine another situation, that the country will build a new capital city. A lives deep in the country and B lives near the shore. Let's assume the coastal capital has more advantages. As people want to leave near the capital (in reality this happens) A wins again, although B's position has more advantages. I want to focus two ideas:

1 - The political right of A is stronger because it has more people, so the political right in an universal suffrage with democracy depends only in the number of persons with this idea, and it doesn't matter if this idea is a good or bad one for the country.

2 - Ethnicity B always lives in minority relative to A, so that its ideas never get through. It works like if B don't have a political right (because it de facto is never used, but it exists de jure). But B lives peacefully because its fundamental rights are respected

This country's ideas will only be A's. If A's ideas are all bad, this country will lose to some other country in a specific point. The only thing that prevents this is the national conscience of at least some of A's citizens. The only way this country can follow a better way is to guarantee A's citizens feel the duty to focus on the national objectives, not their own's, even if that brings disavantages (e.g. living farther from the capital). In the capital city issue B can use the national benefits to defends its idea, but it would probably be motivated mostly by non-national thinking.

Spain is an example of a plurinational country. The castillian community made castillian the official language of Spain (= spanish...), although other nations had different languages. If a poll would be made to chose spanish's national language, castillian would won because castillian population is bigger. So, Castile is Spain's A nation.

To B citizens the only way to have an idea met is to change to one of A's ideas or rebel against the regime to execute one idea of its own. In this political regime A is the only victorious political force so that B can only dream in a coup d'etat. This happens in reality, specially in countries with two or more very different cultures. After a while, B, that does not exists in politics because of its minority status, asks exterior help or try a separation or elimination of A. If we have societies where universal suffrage and majority ideas are not respected, we can easily have wars.

Africa is very sensitive to these questions because its countries are a result of non-cultural borders, where several ethnicities are put together. Naturally the majority ethnicity dominates politicaly, with a westen world regime, the other ones. As many times nor even the fundamental rights exist a civil war starts. That's why universal suffrage and majority generally do not work in these kind of countries, that have a low national responsability idea. Another trivial way to get the power is through force, and obviously the majority one wins...

Note: the presence of stupid pictures in this post or future ones must be understood as a tribute to the McGyver of pixels: MS Paint.

Planets and Deplanets (II)

The definition of planet that came out of the 2006 meeting was the following:

a) orbits the Sun
b) has enough mass to be in a hydrostatic equilibrium (is round)
c) has cleared the neighbourhood (in his orbit)

My comment:

a) By this definition extrasolar planets are not planets anymore. The use of this word to classify these extrasolar bodies has been used before (see my last post), so I don't see any need to restrict this definition to the Sun.

b) I agree, but this definition must be more precise. How "round" or how much mass does a body need to have to be a planet? The image in the right is an interpretation of Haumea, a "dwarf planet", that is not very spherical because of its fast rotation.

c) I don't agree. Imagine that in a certain stellar system (even if it is for a small amout of time) we have two giant planets in the same orbit (a circle, and they are in oposite positions in this orbit). Because they did not clear their neighbourhood they can't be planets, even if they are big enough to classify as such? Or imagine double bodies. In our system we have some bodies of big dimensions that did not clear their orbit (Ceres, Pluto, Eris, etc) [this definition of clear orbit is not as subjective as it may seem, we can divide the mass of the main body by the mass of the other bodies in the orbit and get a ratio], so it would be enough for them to be in a clear orbit to be planets? I do not see the problem of a belt of bodies that are planets and asteroids, a similar thing happens with Saturn's rings, where we have sheperd moons (here we see Prometheus among some rings) and ring particles in the same orbit.

But this meeting created two more definitions,

Dwarf planet:
a) orbits the Sun
b) has enough mass to be in a hydrostatic equilibrium (is round)
c) has not cleared the neighbourhood (in his orbit)
d) is not a satellite

I do not agree 100% with this definition. But what I find ridiculous is that dwarf planets are not a subclass of planets, but a different class of bodies. As the name points, they are planets, but dwarf ones! I don't understand this distinction. My deeper comment:

a) idem from the definition of planet
b) I agree, and I think that this is the definition that must distinguish a planet and an asteroid, but as I said before it needs to be more accurate...
c) Why this one to the definition of dwarf planet? Wouldn't "dwarf" has more to due with size? (Of course size has to due with orbital clearing, but...) If we want to keep this definition why not a more related name? Like sheperd planet (just an example, from the moons of Saturn)
d) I agree, but satellite is clearly defined?

And the "wastebasket" of the Solar System:
Small Solar System Bodies (!)
a) What's left, except satellites

Where is the definition of asteroid, of comet, of meteor? We just have "small solar system bodies" (SSSB)? I propose that we use the name asteroid for these bodies, and create asteroid subclasses to comet (asteroid with a certain composition and orbit) and meteor (small sized asteroids) The name SSSB seems to be a clear sign of disinterest with these objects...

This definition fails in some points. I would like to see the definition of double body (double planet or double asteroid) and its relation with satellite. The proposal often used is that a double body is a system where the center of mass is located outside both bodies, unlike body + satellite, where the center of mass is inside the bigger body, being the satellite the other. In the Solar System there are bodies like this: Pluto-Charon has a center of mass outside Pluto, so it seems to me that the classification of Charon as a satellite of Pluto is not correct. There are more extreme situations like the asteroids 90 Antiope (image in the right) and 1997 CS29, that are two systems with similar sized bodies, being ridiculous the idea that one dominates the other. In my opinion we lack this definition.

As this definition focus only in the Solar System, the problem of brown dwarfs is not important (as it seems the idea of Sol b is not likely), but if we want to extend one definition beyond our system we must look at this problem. In the right we have the star Gliese 229 A and the brown dwarf Gliese 229 B (smaller body).

My final point is that this definition was voted by a small amout of the astronomical community, even among IAU. Perhaps if the others vote this definition is taken out...

Note: all these images come from wikipedia.