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> the power of the state envisioned gets smaller and more directly accountable to citizens. Pure majoritarianism doesn't work, you know. It leads to grossly im

by cbd1984 10y ago

> the power of the state envisioned gets smaller and more directly accountable to citizens. Pure majoritarianism doesn't work, you know. It leads to grossly immoral systems which destroy the rights of minorities. There needs to be larger governments, governments not ruled by the local majority, which can step in to curb the abuses an unchecked majoritarian government would otherwise get away with.

SwellJoe 10y ago
It's wonderful how many straw men reside in discussions of anarchism. I have, nowhere, suggested "majoritarianism" (that was a bear to spell on my phone, which wanted to correct it to "authoritarianism").
- cbd1984 10y ago
  Except without a higher authority to prevent it, majoritarianism is exactly what ends up happening. It isn't a strawman if it's inevitable.
  - programmarchy 10y ago
    To you have any evidence to back up that claim, or just a blind assertion? From Majoritarianism [1], quoting anarchist anthropologist David Graeber: > "Majority democracy, we might say, can only emerge when two factors coincide: 1. a feeling that people should have equal say in making group decisions, and 2. a coercive apparatus capable of enforcing those decisions." Graeber argues that those two factors almost never meet: "Where egalitarian societies exist, it is also usually considered wrong to impose systematic coercion. Where a machinery of coercion did exist, it did not even occur to those wielding it that they were enforcing any sort of popular will." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> There needs to be larger governments, governments not ruled by the local majority, which can step in to curb the abuses an unchecked majoritarian government would otherwise get away with. Changing the size of government doesn't fix any problem created by majoritarianism. A larger government only makes it so that when the majority gets it wrong, they get it wrong everywhere at once and there is nowhere left to run.
- cbd1984 10y ago
  A larger government is less likely to be ruled by the prejudices endemic to a single region.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    Bullocks. Almost nothing is region-exclusive. What you'll see instead is that 80% of the South and 35% of the North supported slavery, which when you average them together you get the wrong answer. Then the federal government passes the Fugitive Slave Act instead of letting every slave in Virginia escape to Boston, which would have destroyed the institution faster and with a lot less blood than Lincoln providing the catalyst for secession and war with a blatantly undemocratic abuse of executive power. That's how it goes. You can't expect the US Congress to do the right thing. They pass the Fugitive Slave Act, the Defense of Marriage Act (signed by B. Clinton), laws against abortion, laws favoring banks and coal companies at the expense of the poor and workers, etc. Read Roe v. Wade. The court wanted to do something that Congress wouldn't but they had no justification for doing it, so they made one up. It's utterly contrived. Striking down DOMA was only slightly less contrived (and 5-4 instead of 7-2), and only because modern courts are getting so much better at contriving things due to all the practice. But the same Court gave us Dred Scott and Buck v. Bell and Bush v. Gore. The same Office of the President gave us Hoover and Nixon and Bush Jr. Gay couples are only happy today because Justice Kennedy is the swing vote, but Kennedy was appointed by Reagan. If Reagan appointed somebody else then DOMA is upheld and any state can ban same sex marriage. So we have a federal government that will pass DOMA with a large bipartisan super-majority but strike it down by the narrowest of margins, when we could have one that much more clearly has no authority to be involved in the matter at all.
    - cbd1984 10y ago
      The Civil Rights Era wouldn't exist but for an active Federal Government overruling state and local governments. Same with Obergefell and similar pro-GLBTQ laws and rulings. Countries need a strong central government to overrule local governments ruled by prejudice. To think otherwise is historically illiterate.

by cbd1984 10y ago

SwellJoe 10y ago

It's wonderful how many straw men reside in discussions of anarchism. I have, nowhere, suggested "majoritarianism" (that was a bear to spell on my phone, which wanted to correct it to "authoritarianism").

cbd1984 10y ago
Except without a higher authority to prevent it, majoritarianism is exactly what ends up happening. It isn't a strawman if it's inevitable.
- programmarchy 10y ago
  To you have any evidence to back up that claim, or just a blind assertion? From Majoritarianism [1], quoting anarchist anthropologist David Graeber: > "Majority democracy, we might say, can only emerge when two factors coincide: 1. a feeling that people should have equal say in making group decisions, and 2. a coercive apparatus capable of enforcing those decisions." Graeber argues that those two factors almost never meet: "Where egalitarian societies exist, it is also usually considered wrong to impose systematic coercion. Where a machinery of coercion did exist, it did not even occur to those wielding it that they were enforcing any sort of popular will." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> There needs to be larger governments, governments not ruled by the local majority, which can step in to curb the abuses an unchecked majoritarian government would otherwise get away with. Changing the size of government doesn't fix any problem created by majoritarianism. A larger government only makes it so that when the majority gets it wrong, they get it wrong everywhere at once and there is nowhere left to run.

cbd1984 10y ago
A larger government is less likely to be ruled by the prejudices endemic to a single region.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  Bullocks. Almost nothing is region-exclusive. What you'll see instead is that 80% of the South and 35% of the North supported slavery, which when you average them together you get the wrong answer. Then the federal government passes the Fugitive Slave Act instead of letting every slave in Virginia escape to Boston, which would have destroyed the institution faster and with a lot less blood than Lincoln providing the catalyst for secession and war with a blatantly undemocratic abuse of executive power. That's how it goes. You can't expect the US Congress to do the right thing. They pass the Fugitive Slave Act, the Defense of Marriage Act (signed by B. Clinton), laws against abortion, laws favoring banks and coal companies at the expense of the poor and workers, etc. Read Roe v. Wade. The court wanted to do something that Congress wouldn't but they had no justification for doing it, so they made one up. It's utterly contrived. Striking down DOMA was only slightly less contrived (and 5-4 instead of 7-2), and only because modern courts are getting so much better at contriving things due to all the practice. But the same Court gave us Dred Scott and Buck v. Bell and Bush v. Gore. The same Office of the President gave us Hoover and Nixon and Bush Jr. Gay couples are only happy today because Justice Kennedy is the swing vote, but Kennedy was appointed by Reagan. If Reagan appointed somebody else then DOMA is upheld and any state can ban same sex marriage. So we have a federal government that will pass DOMA with a large bipartisan super-majority but strike it down by the narrowest of margins, when we could have one that much more clearly has no authority to be involved in the matter at all.
  - cbd1984 10y ago
    The Civil Rights Era wouldn't exist but for an active Federal Government overruling state and local governments. Same with Obergefell and similar pro-GLBTQ laws and rulings. Countries need a strong central government to overrule local governments ruled by prejudice. To think otherwise is historically illiterate.