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When do we get to vote on the lockdowns, democracy man?
by Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
When do we get to vote on the lockdowns, democracy man?
- chillwaves 6y agoDo you vote? Because that's your answer.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoNo politician ran a campaign on enforcing lockdowns. Nothing was put on the ballot, no votes were held. Where is the consent of the governed to all you who worship democracy?
- chillwaves 6y agoDirect democracy doesn't really exist so not sure what you are complaining about.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoWhat we have now is neither direct democracy nor representative democracy. Nobody voted for this.
- chillwaves 6y agoWhat we have is literally representative democracy. Did we not just have elections last November?
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoWho voted for or against the lockdowns? If something this important was never held to a vote either directly or via representative, its not democratic.
- MperorM 6y agoI don't understand why this exact pattern of argument happens so much in online debate, but I really despise it. Acrobatic_Road makes a reasonable point that they don't feel they were given the proper means to express their policy preferences, and reasonably calls it 'undemocratic'. After all the reason we want democracy in the first place is so that ordinary citizens can influence the policy. Chillwaves reasonably points out that America is a representative democracy and so you vote for candidates whom you trust to vote in accordance to your policy preferences. That's two great points! We should be able to have an interesting discussion right? For example we could discuss ways in which the US system of representative democracy is failing Acrobatic_Road. We could also discuss why we might like it despite its failings. But for some reason, online debate seemingly always end up in an inane discussion debating definitions with one side claiming X is not truly Y while the other side claims X lives up to standard definition of Y. Nobody is any smarter. We entirely failed to learn anything from each others perspective. We can be better than this :(
- Pfhreak 6y agoWhen you voted for your representatives.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoOur representatives never voted on lockdowns. It's all done by executive decree.
- Pfhreak 6y agoYou didn't vote for your executive branch?
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoWhich governors ran on imposing lockdowns?
- ChrisLomont 6y agoNo governor lists all the powers granted by previous legislatures as things they are running on. If you don't like them having such powers, elect people to remove such powers. That you don't like it does not mean the majority of civil society doesn't like it, and the price you pay to have civil society is having laws not every single person likes at all times. But the mechanism is there to pursue change.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoIf the voters had known that their governor would exercise virtually unlimited powers based on what amounts to a little known emergency powers dictatorship clause - would they have voted for him? If not, do these governors really have the consent of the governed to do these things willy nilly of the legislature's blessing?
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
- wussboy 6y agoYou seem confused as to the purpose of democracy. It is not to capture the wisdom of the crowd. The crowd is intensely stupid (as a vote on lockdown would certainly reveal). It is an agreement that power will change hands peacefully.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoYou're just wrong about this. A democracy is the rule by the people. That's why the Declaration of Independence says rulers derive their just powers from the governed. Democracies aren't particularly good at ensuring a peaceful transition of power as history shows (just look at the Roman Republic). "Peaceful transition of power" is a phrase that's not even relevant to other forms of government where one administration rules indefinitely. >The crowd is intensely stupid (as a vote on lockdown would certainly reveal) Oh, thanks for admitting that lockdowns are undemocratic.