9 ms·

"because most people are not equipped to understand what is reasonable" I hear this all the time now. But let's be clear -- this is the talk of fascism. Demo

• slg 6y ago
  We are a representative republic. Part of that reason is because it is too burdensome to expect the general public to have the information and expertise to be fully involved in governance. We delegate that responsibility to our representatives. EDIT: I removed a line that was superfluous to my point and was drawing attention away from my actual point.
  • welterde 6y ago
    This gets repeated again and again, but is just wrong. The USA is both a representative democracy and a republic - the same as most other democracies on this planet. Republic just means that the government is a public affair - there is no monarch. It's the opposite of a monarchy.
    • slg 6y ago
      You are missing the point of my comment. The main focus is not the distinction between democracy and republic. It was that we do not govern ourselves directly. We elect people to do that for us because most of us aren't equipped to do it ourselves. The comment I was replying to called that fascism. I removed the "We are not a democracy." line in my previous comment to refocus it on what I was really trying to say.
  • yrimaxi 6y ago
    These kind of comments always get downvoted but it is pretty accurate. Certainly people like Madison didn’t want a thriving, egalitarian, democratic, civic culture and nation.
    • dane-pgp 6y ago
      "But a representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable." -- Alexander Hamilton https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0162 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-01...
      • yrimaxi 6y ago
        Aha. So you agree.
• SurfingInVR 6y ago
  If it really is fascism vs. fascism (it isn't), why not choose the side where less people die?
  • WatchDog 6y ago
    Which side is that?
    • SurfingInVR 6y ago
      Just a thought, but the party closer to the ruling parties of nearly every other country where average life expectancy hasn't been on the decline, unlike the US.
      • WatchDog 6y ago
        Here is a comparison of US life expectancy vs a selection of socialist governed nations[0]. US life expectancy may have plateaued, but doesn't appear to be in decline, and it's still above even Cuba, which has perhaps the highest amount of social spending on healthcare as portion of GDP. Meanwhile, Venezuela and Mexico are in clear declines. With regards to which extremes of the political spectrum have the highest body counts, I would say the far-left Marxist states are the clear winners, with somewhere in the region of 42 to 160 million killed. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart&time=1962..2015&country=CHN~PRK~ZAF~USA~VEN~VNM~OWID_WRL~AGO~DZA~COG~MDA~MOZ~MEX~NAM~ZWE~CUB&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...
        • munk-a 6y ago
          Just to clarify it looks like that chart has a number of specifically chosen countries. I'd suggest you add some more western countries with socialized medicine - Canada is well above the US as is the UK and I think those are both pretty comparable to the US in terms of personal wealth... Oh also Sweden is well above, but Sweden tends to be an outlier due to just how well socialism is working there. Here is a copy of the chart with some additional countries: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart&time=1962..2015&country=DZA~AGO~CHN~COG~CUB~MEX~MDA~MOZ~NAM~PRK~ZAF~GBR~USA~VEN~VNM~OWID_WRL~ZWE~SWE~CAN&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=chart...
• hardwaregeek 6y ago
  Well I think the fascism comes with the conclusion, i.e. "because most people are not equipped to understand what is reasonable, therefore we must control them" Whereas something like "because most people are not equipped to understand what is reasonable, therefore we must provide them with the tools to understand what is reasonable" isn't necessarily fascist.
  • bduerst 6y ago
    Fascism calls out the problem but has the wrong solutions. It's tied to race, nationalism, authoritarianism, and other tribal aspects that are easy for some to grab onto but really do not have any place being part of the solution. If you talk to anyone defending the anti-democractic occupation of the nation's capital today, you'll see that their response is typically is pro-fascist in this regard. Even this morning, they quoted Adolf Hitler at the capital: https://twitter.com/always_margot/status/1346578062700400647 https://twitter.com/always_margot/status/1346578062700400647
    • baybal2 6y ago
      Fascism does not see the problem, it is the problem. The grandiose, arrogant, and blind social elites calling out the popular masses to be socially alienated. Whose social alienation it would be? Of course such masses will be of service to any any much significant opportunist group. People will vote even for a devil himself if one promises to get rid them off such elites. Just like that, 20 years ago, in a country far, far away, the destitute populace decided, in its sane mind, to vote into power not anybody, but an ex-officer from a mafia-like intelligence organisation people worked so hard to remove from power just 10 years prior.
      • bduerst 6y ago
        When I say calls out the problem, I mean fascism speaks to the class rift, and tells them all the wrong ideas and solutions. We agree that this is creating even worse problems. The wealth divide in the U.S. has been steadily increasing, and the solution for the working class (higher education) isn't working like it used to, even making it worse for young people. This has lead to an angry working class who feel justified in blaming their problems on other out-groups, whether that's BLM, democrats, China, Mexicans, tech companies, doctors, lgtbq, etc. This is what fascism is feeding on in America, and it has to stop.
• subpixel 6y ago
  More accurately put, "more people than you'd ever imagine are susceptible to unreasonable arguments". Too dumb, no. But definitely too gullible - and the is made worse by the profit that is to be made manipulating such people.
  • andromeduck 6y ago
    What can we expect when our education system values regurgitation over deliberation and cosuming facts versus discovering them?
• DSingularity 6y ago
  Benevolent dictators is what we all need.
  • efitz 6y ago
    I’m fine with that as long as _I_ am the dictator, otherwise no.
• ravi-delia 6y ago
  This seems like an argument from 'my opponent believes something that could possibly be used to justify something bad'. People are not equipped to understand what is reasonable. No one is. 90% of being reasonable is just following with the herd because the world is really really hard to understand. That is an argument against democracy, and also every other form of government involving people at any level. Such is life, at least until some kind of weird technical solution pops up.
  • munk-a 6y ago
    To reinforce this point we agree[1] that some experiences can be so extreme as to cause long term psychological damage. PTSD is a really extreme example of not being able to cope with what reality was (due to generally experiencing an extremely bad portion of reality) - so I wanted to reinforce that at the extremes information can be damaging and different people do have different tolerances of how they cope with such information. I'm not saying that reading a news article is equivalent to PTSD but it's a spectrum and we all sort of need to accept that different people have different abilities and tolerances when it comes to being exposed to extremism and propaganda - heck we'd all probably pride ourselves here as being able to see through the BS of most advertising but we also need to acknowledge that advertising is effective on a lot of folks. 1. As a society in general, I hope you'll allow.
• wvenable 6y ago
  > I hear this all the time now. But let's be clear -- this is the talk of fascism. No it's not. This is declaring a problem -- which I think is a very real problem -- but not suggesting a solution. I don't believe anyone is suggesting fascism is the solution to this problem -- except for you. But now that you've provided this unreasonable response, it's now much more difficult to discuss it. You've unintentionally provided an example of the very thing we're talking about.
  • coryfklein 6y ago
    He is suggesting a solution - self governance. Trust the people to make their own decisions, because there is no better alternative. What else can we do, have some committee that decides what the public is allowed to hear? That is fascism.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • wvenable 6y ago
      Nobody is suggesting getting rid of democracy -- this is red herring. This is a bad faith argument about bad faith arguments. It's no wonder people can't decide which direction is up. In a conversation that is supposedly about how people are being mislead by media we're 2 seconds away of Godwin's law again. It's exhausting.
      • akiselev 6y ago
        Seriousness aside, Godwin himself agreed that the law no longer applies after Charleston.
        • ModernMech 6y ago
          Do you mean Charlottesville?
          • 6y ago
• Quarrelsome 6y ago
  I think that's unfair. On this website specifically we're very tended towards college educated. If you follow the bright path you can end up being somewhat sheltered to the concerns and the motivations of much of the general population. This leads to people being blindsided by things like Trump or Brexit. Its important to register that we tend towards a slanted world view.
  • aksss 6y ago
    ...and importantly, often unable to understand the perspective of others without resorting to patronizing explanations. I have imperfectly adopted a principle in discourse: that if I have to resort to patronizing explanations to understand, I'm not working hard enough to understand.
• drenvuk 6y ago
  Have you seen the crap that people believe and the shitty sources that they're accepting the information from? The Facts AKA barely plausible bullshit is being served to anyone who wants to believe in an alternate yet more interesting reality fitting their own beliefs. Social media has given everyone a soap box, a megaphone and a repeater and the ability to piggyback on other people's shouting directly into people's ears and eyes. Do you think this is a good thing? No one is vetting anyone seriously, no one is being consistently judged on their honesty, accuracy, track record or motives. It's not entirely about being dumb, more and more it's turning out to be about how much time people are able to commit to understanding what they're reading. This is why people are known as experts in the first place. Do you really think everyone is capable enough to handle the highly nuanced planning and decision making necessary for governing millions of people on the balance of thousands of existing laws and regulations? Sometimes you can't boil information down into something that everyone can understand in a short enough amount of time which would be what is necessary for each person to play a role in democracy. Just like we pay someone to fix our plumbing we should be paying our politicians to figure this stuff out for us. We don't have the time or attention span. It's impossible.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• eloff 6y ago
  "because most people are not equipped to understand what is reasonable" > I hear this all the time now. But let's be clear -- this is the talk of fascism. Nonetheless it seems objectively true to me. This may just be my biased perspective being substantially smarter than average, but I'm continually surprised by how gullible, uneducated, and uninformed the average person is. In the USA especially - stop skimping on your education system there! I'm also surprised pleasantly by what humans in the aggregate accomplish, so it's not all doom and gloom.
• baq 6y ago
  Look at the story and tell me if that’s proof of the population’s ability to self govern or quite the contrary? I’m not really sure.
• res0nat0r 6y ago
  But the population is too dumb to do a lot of things, "self governance" by believing what Rudy Giuliani lies about on Twitter isn't a valid source. The same way that there are large pockets of disease outbreak in rich areas of the country because moms with accounting degrees think they're smart enough to be immunologists because they have an internet connection. We're literally watching democracy die in real time and its directly due to social media and internet disinformation, on top of the already existing radio/tv disinformation.
• alasdair_ 6y ago
  It's the talk of fascism if we then say "therefore, don't let the people make decisions". I'd much prefer: "most people are not equipped to understand what is reasonable" ... and therefore let's help them to understand.
• Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  It's not that the populace is stupid, it's that the populace is being fed misinformation. It is the responsibility of, well, everyone, but especially those in power—journalists, politicians, pundits—to act in some semblance of good faith. To try to inform their audience. To not say things they know to be false. The people storming the capital right now have been told by (1) the president of the united states, (2) the news channels they watch, and very possibly (3) their religious leaders, that Donald Trump would have won the election if not for a conspiracy to rig voting machines and throw away millions of ballots. So of course, in that case, the right thing to do is storm the capital and protect democracy! The basic problem is that too many public figures have decided to reject their most basic responsibility to society. And I just don't know what to do about that.
• 8note 6y ago
  In democracy, majorities also hold power, which they do not in the US