> That’s outstanding. And that’s the thing. It’s become very fashionable in the last couple of decades to forget what good government can do, what good union or

> That’s outstanding. And that’s the thing. It’s become very fashionable in the last couple of decades to forget what good government can do, what good union organizing can do. In my opinion this is missing the problem. Government, in a democracy, is decided by the masses. I think people, as individuals, are generally quite intelligent. But I also think people, as groups, are quite stupid. Mob mentality is very much a real phenomena and it's something we've not come even remotely close to growing out of. Similarly for tribalism. In the instance he's referring to (film critics associations boycotted Disney after Disney blacklisted writers from an influential publication, leading Disney to rescind the blacklisting) you had a very small and very well informed demographic working together. That has very little to do with the democratic process. Most people do not know much about any given topic, and so when you query the masses on anything the majority opinion is going to be heavily influenced by marketing and 'propaganda.' What people do or think is not really based on reality, but who presented their argument in the glossiest case. So to bring this theoretic into the practical. Imagine you ask people about a certain hotkey issue, in most recent times perhaps it would be Trump's tax plan. Many people would have extremely strong opinions one way or the other. Now ask people to actually describe, without handwaving, what the plan actually was. People, for the most part, are going to be completely ignorant. We, collectively, form strong decisions about things we don't even know the basic fundamentals of! I don't know how this can change in practical terms. It's the nature of a democracy. But that just kicks the can to another problem. If we can't come to informed decisions on an individual policy, how are we supposed to be expected to come to informed decisions on candidates using every resource available to make us believe that they are who we, collectively, want in office? As tools and technologies for directing the masses in one way or another become ever more effective, this disconnect between reality and mass opinion is only going to increase.