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Originally Posted by JiriHrdina
City Hall refers to more than just council - in fact one of the biggest problems with our this city operates is the city administration. Moreover, the original idea for this whole thing came from a council member...so in that sense it is about how or council operates and come up with these ideas.
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So what you're implying is that the administration should have told Druh that her idea was silly and she couldn't have her road closure? 'Cause otherwise I'm not sure what exactly the administration did wrong here, they followed the process to grant said road closure impartially - which is as it should be, isn't it?
As far as coming up with ideas goes, what process should they be using? From what I see, council members come up with ideas and/or present them from their constituents, then they are debated as to their worth or appropriateness, and then they are voted upon. Both the operation of and the genesis of city initiatives are unremarkable and ordinary; I'm not seeing where the process is the problem, as it is the same, time-tested process almost every other municipal council in the world uses.
Should Bronco be brandishing the iron fist for council members who don't agree with his agenda of roads, roads, roads for the people? Should the voters be forced to endure a "do-over" when they vote for ditzy or demagogue alderpeople? Open warfare between the suburbs and the core until one stands bloodily victorious?
That's the issue I have with this brouhaha: there's all this outrage, yet it seems to be directed nowhere useful. What alternative strategy - other than just not voting Druh in next election - is going to stop this kind of "problem" (which, to reiterate, I don't think is a problem in the first place) from occurring again? Does anyone on the anti-closure side have a point other than that they don't like the idea and wish somehow it could have been prevented by some unnamed and unimaginable power?
Quote:
Originally Posted by JiriHrdina
Yes I think it is wrong to assume what the methods were that someone used to arrive at their opinions.
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Although this is really a broader philosophical question, I will say that all of us are forced to act from imperfect knowledge. I don't *know* what methods people use to arrive at their opinions, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to make a reasonably probable guess. If that makes me an assumptionist, I guess I'll live with it.
I also don't believe that it's possible to NEVER make value judgments about the validity of other people's opinions; if I tell you my "opinion" is that aliens abduct all world leaders and implant them with control mechanisms in order to guide human society into a willing slavery, do you think that opinion was arrived at from a process of careful logic and unshakable fact? If not - why not? I submit that you use the same "wrong" process I do, and that you resort to the same "wrong" assumptions, you just don't think they apply to as broad a range of opinions as I do.