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> I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying. Also to add, centralized political systems cannot be truly "democrat

> I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying. Also to add, centralized political systems cannot be truly "democratic". The middle ages were far more democratic than our modern enlightened times. Canadian historian Francis Dupuis-Déri writing in the book "Démocratie: Histoire politique d’un mot aux États-Unis et en France": "During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, thousands of villages had an organized assembly where communal decisions were made. The 'community of inhabitants', which even had legal status, functioned for centuries by a process of self-management. Kings and nobles were content to manage affairs related to wars or their own private property, to administer justice, and to now and then mobilize their subjects for common chores. The hierarchical or aristocratic authorities did not interfere in the affairs of the community, which met to deliberate on political communal, financial, judicial and parochial issues. They discussed the sharing of the harvest and sale of the surplus, the cutting of wood on communal land, the repair of bridges, wells and mills, and the hiring of instructors, shepherds, watchmakers, forest guards, sometimes even parish priests, and guards when brigands, wolves or epidemics were rampant. They designated those who would serve in the militia, debated the obligation of lodging the royal court should it visit, or the utility of sending a notable to submit to the court of grievances in the nature of community."

hef19898 6y ago
I have to disagree with such a broad statement covering a period of, what, 600 years. Neither do I agree with the premise that leaving small communities alone, not having the populace or these communities a say in larger affairs, and limiting access to te community decisions to a select few people to be more democratic than our current system.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  > broad statement covering a period of, what, 600 years not only was it long period but the Middle Ages are only ever brought up by people educated by a Western/ized idea of history. My point stands because we would never hear of systems that "worked" in a decentralized way because required power structures would have never been in place for them to leave any impact that people will feel should be noted in the history books. James C Scott[1] does a great job tracing decentralized societies fleeing the Chinese empire over a period of several hundred years and settling in the hard to access hills of South East Asia. A successful decentralized society wouldn't be in our history book because the measure of success is different in these systems. In fact things that are a failure in one system are a success in the other. In the same way today, groups like the Jawara/Andaman or similar tribes will always remain a footnote in our books, at least until their successful assimilated into our own "superior" culture, and then we give them an honorary mention (= by then their way of living is destroyed ofc). Another way to read this (and the way I personally do) is that a successful decentralized alternative is often the by-product of (an over-reaching) centralized system. Take a look for what the state labels as crooks, outlaws, degenerates, pirates, insurgents, terrorists, or anyone they are struggling to tax and prosecute, ... in modern times Roma/gypsies are the only ones left who come to mind. Everyone else we eradicate! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_...
  - mdiesel 6y ago
    That works if people's only businesses are what is needed by the small community/tribe. We've reached a point where thanks to a millenia of technological advance, a fraction of the populace works in agriculture. Instead I work in a business that sells a niche enough product that we might have a customer ever other week from somewhere in Europe. In order for that to work, we can't only have customers in our town or its immediate neighbours. So we can have more devolvement, an endless argument here in the UK, but centralised money structures, standards bodies, transport networks, etc are required for this to be feasible. Already we complain that the more niche ideas can be more successful in the US because there's a larger home market.
    - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
      yes I agree. IMO it looks to us like the only "natural" way for humans is a centralized system/power structure because we simply are unable to envision a world which is not. It also would require an unrealistic "deprogramming" of society which makes the idea just another utopia (at least not achievable without huge sacrifice to what we hold dear today). The more likely scenario in which this is more realistic is after a total collapse of anything we associate today with society/humans. Even after collapse we'd have probably lost everyone except the most brutal selfish individuals and therefore we'd have to again first go through similar phases of central power structure ... To paraphrase Zizek's quote on the end of capitalism: We are so far down that road, that it's easier to imagine the end of the humanity than it is to imagine humanity living in a decentralized society.
  - salawat 6y ago
    This is a criminally underratef observation. Well said.
  - AlotOfReading 6y ago
    While I'm personally a big fan of zomia, it should be noted that it's received a lot of criticism and has been notoriously hard to operationalize. There are probably less controversial examples to use here.
loceng 6y ago
> I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying. They're misattributing something to centralization which has nothing to do with centralization, casual vs. causational. A failsafe mechanism is possible here to counter lobbying of industrial complexes. Andrew Yang's policy proposal of Democracy Dollars for example, earmark $100/year to every eligible voter to contribute to politician of choice - which will wash out lobbyist money a factor of 8:1 with money from regular citizens.
dekervin 6y ago
I would absolutely not call democratic a power system where the common has absolutely no legitimate say in deciding whether or not his polity is going to be at war with another ( with the consequences of having their crops, family,etc... wiped off the surface of the earth )
- kiliantics 6y ago
  Which is why I would not call the current power system democratic either. But at least they had say over shares in harvest and communal land and the likes, whereas I have no such things today.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
  by that definition which country in the world is then a democracy today? I'm not being flippant and think your point is really important because it touches on the definition of what we even mean by "democracy", and using your yardstick beautifully illustrates that the only democracy possible would be a hypocrite one. To use an example of our time: we hide our crimes in the complexity of global supply chains and by compartmentalizing ...
  - dekervin 6y ago
    I was objecting to the extreme situation in the middle age where in theory, war was a god given right that flowed from the top. I tend to think that democracies live on a spectrum. What you would call hypocrisy, I would call it finding ways to deal with the current contradictions of people aspirations. It's always the first stepping stone. One advantage of a political system accepting hypocrisy and compartimentalization as statecraft tools is that at some point in the future, it will have to reconcile parts of its actions with its stated values.

hef19898 6y ago

I have to disagree with such a broad statement covering a period of, what, 600 years. Neither do I agree with the premise that leaving small communities alone, not having the populace or these communities a say in larger affairs, and limiting access to te community decisions to a select few people to be more democratic than our current system.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> broad statement covering a period of, what, 600 years not only was it long period but the Middle Ages are only ever brought up by people educated by a Western/ized idea of history. My point stands because we would never hear of systems that "worked" in a decentralized way because required power structures would have never been in place for them to leave any impact that people will feel should be noted in the history books. James C Scott[1] does a great job tracing decentralized societies fleeing the Chinese empire over a period of several hundred years and settling in the hard to access hills of South East Asia. A successful decentralized society wouldn't be in our history book because the measure of success is different in these systems. In fact things that are a failure in one system are a success in the other. In the same way today, groups like the Jawara/Andaman or similar tribes will always remain a footnote in our books, at least until their successful assimilated into our own "superior" culture, and then we give them an honorary mention (= by then their way of living is destroyed ofc). Another way to read this (and the way I personally do) is that a successful decentralized alternative is often the by-product of (an over-reaching) centralized system. Take a look for what the state labels as crooks, outlaws, degenerates, pirates, insurgents, terrorists, or anyone they are struggling to tax and prosecute, ... in modern times Roma/gypsies are the only ones left who come to mind. Everyone else we eradicate! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_...
- mdiesel 6y ago
  That works if people's only businesses are what is needed by the small community/tribe. We've reached a point where thanks to a millenia of technological advance, a fraction of the populace works in agriculture. Instead I work in a business that sells a niche enough product that we might have a customer ever other week from somewhere in Europe. In order for that to work, we can't only have customers in our town or its immediate neighbours. So we can have more devolvement, an endless argument here in the UK, but centralised money structures, standards bodies, transport networks, etc are required for this to be feasible. Already we complain that the more niche ideas can be more successful in the US because there's a larger home market.
  - DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
    yes I agree. IMO it looks to us like the only "natural" way for humans is a centralized system/power structure because we simply are unable to envision a world which is not. It also would require an unrealistic "deprogramming" of society which makes the idea just another utopia (at least not achievable without huge sacrifice to what we hold dear today). The more likely scenario in which this is more realistic is after a total collapse of anything we associate today with society/humans. Even after collapse we'd have probably lost everyone except the most brutal selfish individuals and therefore we'd have to again first go through similar phases of central power structure ... To paraphrase Zizek's quote on the end of capitalism: We are so far down that road, that it's easier to imagine the end of the humanity than it is to imagine humanity living in a decentralized society.
- salawat 6y ago
  This is a criminally underratef observation. Well said.
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  While I'm personally a big fan of zomia, it should be noted that it's received a lot of criticism and has been notoriously hard to operationalize. There are probably less controversial examples to use here.

loceng 6y ago

> I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying. They're misattributing something to centralization which has nothing to do with centralization, casual vs. causational. A failsafe mechanism is possible here to counter lobbying of industrial complexes. Andrew Yang's policy proposal of Democracy Dollars for example, earmark $100/year to every eligible voter to contribute to politician of choice - which will wash out lobbyist money a factor of 8:1 with money from regular citizens.

dekervin 6y ago

I would absolutely not call democratic a power system where the common has absolutely no legitimate say in deciding whether or not his polity is going to be at war with another ( with the consequences of having their crops, family,etc... wiped off the surface of the earth )

kiliantics 6y ago
Which is why I would not call the current power system democratic either. But at least they had say over shares in harvest and communal land and the likes, whereas I have no such things today.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
by that definition which country in the world is then a democracy today? I'm not being flippant and think your point is really important because it touches on the definition of what we even mean by "democracy", and using your yardstick beautifully illustrates that the only democracy possible would be a hypocrite one. To use an example of our time: we hide our crimes in the complexity of global supply chains and by compartmentalizing ...
- dekervin 6y ago
  I was objecting to the extreme situation in the middle age where in theory, war was a god given right that flowed from the top. I tend to think that democracies live on a spectrum. What you would call hypocrisy, I would call it finding ways to deal with the current contradictions of people aspirations. It's always the first stepping stone. One advantage of a political system accepting hypocrisy and compartimentalization as statecraft tools is that at some point in the future, it will have to reconcile parts of its actions with its stated values.