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Look at it from a townie perspective. We all go to the town hall. I say my piece. You say yours. The people decide. If they choose right, great. If they c

Look at it from a townie perspective. We all go to the town hall. I say my piece. You say yours. The people decide. If they choose right, great. If they choose wrong, also great. When you start getting into increasingly leveraged situations, that's where it all goes wrong. There's the momentum problem (people mobilized for a once-noble cause carry on long after it ceases to be noble). There's the advocacy problem (right-or-wrong you have to present your side as strongly as possible because it's an adversarial system--no room for compromise or subtlety). And of course there's good old demagoguery where the alpha-dog rides rough-shod over everything else. All of this evolves into a mono-culture problem where they're all reasoning from bogus premises they re-enforce among themselves. Anything that exacerbates the problem of one man having more than one voice is not a step in the right direction.

canadian_voter 10y ago
Okay, so you're advocating for some sort of direct democracy. It sounds lovely, but I'm not sure it's realistic. We sure as hell don't have it, so how do we go about getting it? We live in a world where there are huge imbalances in power. We can say it ought not be that way, that it should be another way, but any sensible individual interested in making change must confront political reality and take it into consideration when deciding how they can best effect change. > Anything that exacerbates the problem of one man having more than one voice is not a step in the right direction. Some people have no voice at all, while others are hugely influential. This isn't about going from some current equality (1:1) to inequality for some group (1:2). This is about going from out state of gross inequality (100:1) to as close to equality (1:1) as we can get. I think we're mostly on the same page, just coming at it from different positions.
- jstewartmobile 10y ago
  Democracy doesn't even have to figure into it. Until the machines take over, if people would just open their eyes and exercise a little discipline, they would realize they can flip that 100:1 around in record time. Think Bartleby the Scrivener: "I would prefer not to."

canadian_voter 10y ago

Okay, so you're advocating for some sort of direct democracy. It sounds lovely, but I'm not sure it's realistic. We sure as hell don't have it, so how do we go about getting it? We live in a world where there are huge imbalances in power. We can say it ought not be that way, that it should be another way, but any sensible individual interested in making change must confront political reality and take it into consideration when deciding how they can best effect change. > Anything that exacerbates the problem of one man having more than one voice is not a step in the right direction. Some people have no voice at all, while others are hugely influential. This isn't about going from some current equality (1:1) to inequality for some group (1:2). This is about going from out state of gross inequality (100:1) to as close to equality (1:1) as we can get. I think we're mostly on the same page, just coming at it from different positions.

jstewartmobile 10y ago
Democracy doesn't even have to figure into it. Until the machines take over, if people would just open their eyes and exercise a little discipline, they would realize they can flip that 100:1 around in record time. Think Bartleby the Scrivener: "I would prefer not to."