4 ms·
There's a point where "everyone for themselves!" doesn't quite cut it. The most obvious example is probably fraud. You could argue everyone must check whether a
by nothis 9y ago
There's a point where "everyone for themselves!" doesn't quite cut it. The most obvious example is probably fraud. You could argue everyone must check whether a deal they get involved with is legit and accept the risks of being screwed. But that's not how it works since we must enforce a basic level of trust by law for society to function. A slightly less obvious but still rather well known example is addiction (drugs, gambling, etc).
The reason we elect politicians rather than deciding how to deal with big, social issues like that ourselves is because it's a full time job. Most people don't have the time and have no obligation to research "free-software based & decentralized social networks". They don't know about it and don't have the time or education to even know there's alternatives. We're so cynical about politics that it's hard to even trust politics to solve any of this since it's all so backwards and corrupt but I believe, because of the sheer impact it has on society, this is a political problem and needs to be solved through actual laws.
- pdonis 9y ago> The reason we elect politicians rather than deciding how to deal with big, social issues like that ourselves is because it's a full time job. I agree that being a politician is a full time job, but it's not the job you appear to think it is. The job of a politician is to get reelected. Any good the politician happens to do is a side effect that you can't count on happening again.
- munk-a 9y agoIt's the ideal job we're electing them to fulfill, our broken election system makes this very much not their job, but the statement is correct in theory.
- pdonis 9y ago> It's the ideal job we're electing them to fulfill But we don't elect ideal politicians, we elect real ones. There has never been any such thing as a political system where the "ideal job" actually existed, and I don't see any prospect of such a system ever existing. So the specifications of the "ideal job" are irrelevant; we need to look at the real jobs that real politicians actually do.