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As every other country on earth right now, Hungary is not a democracy at all. So there's that. At some point we need to understand the novlang used here, by sq

As every other country on earth right now, Hungary is not a democracy at all. So there's that. At some point we need to understand the novlang used here, by squatting the word democracy to label the political system based on elections, people in power manage to prevent to emergence of an actual democracy. Please stop misusing this word so we have a better chance of actually having a democracy somwhere at some point in the future.

willbw 9y ago
A practical democracy must be an abstraction of a pure, idealistic democracy. You cannot have millions of people deciding on every issue. Democratically elected representatives are one way we can do this. There may be better ways of doing things but it doesn't make democracies not democracies.
- bb611 9y ago
  > You cannot have millions of people deciding on every issue. From a technical perspective, this is clearly untrue.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > From a technical perspective, this is clearly untrue. It's impossible if you take “every issue” literally, as you are multiplying the number of pdecisions that must be made by each participant per unit of time so much that the time to consider them is non-existent. It's less impossible if you reduce it to the kind of decisions typically made by a legislature, which mainly just sets rules for executive and judicial officials to apply in deciding more specific issues. But even then it's of dubious practicality; obviously not every citizen can have a full-time legislative staff, and most of other things besides legislation to devote their time to.
mindcrime 9y ago
Please stop misusing this word so we have a better chance of actually having a democracy somwhere at some point in the future. Please stop promoting democracy as the be-all end-all of systems for organizing human society. As the old saw goes "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the outcome".

willbw 9y ago

A practical democracy must be an abstraction of a pure, idealistic democracy. You cannot have millions of people deciding on every issue. Democratically elected representatives are one way we can do this. There may be better ways of doing things but it doesn't make democracies not democracies.

bb611 9y ago
> You cannot have millions of people deciding on every issue. From a technical perspective, this is clearly untrue.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > From a technical perspective, this is clearly untrue. It's impossible if you take “every issue” literally, as you are multiplying the number of pdecisions that must be made by each participant per unit of time so much that the time to consider them is non-existent. It's less impossible if you reduce it to the kind of decisions typically made by a legislature, which mainly just sets rules for executive and judicial officials to apply in deciding more specific issues. But even then it's of dubious practicality; obviously not every citizen can have a full-time legislative staff, and most of other things besides legislation to devote their time to.

mindcrime 9y ago

Please stop misusing this word so we have a better chance of actually having a democracy somwhere at some point in the future. Please stop promoting democracy as the be-all end-all of systems for organizing human society. As the old saw goes "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the outcome".