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> If we understand democracy in this way, it is not only indispensable to anarchy: it is anarchy. This was such an interesting read. The last sentence nails on

> If we understand democracy in this way, it is not only indispensable to anarchy: it is anarchy. This was such an interesting read. The last sentence nails on the head why pure democracy doesn't work. Nothing gets done. Pure democracy is a meeting with more than 12 people in it. This is incidentally why political parties are emergent phenomena in real-world democracies. It's also why archetypal leaders are either ineffective, or devolve into dictators of one form or another. Real political power in democracies comes from forming coalitions, and gaining agreement. Archetypal leaders, representing any one single ideal, aren't able to do that.

ofou 5y ago
> "So ultimately the concept of democracy makes sense as something that ordinary people have actually done, and continue to do when they can create spaces of possibility in which they can act as equals to solve their common problems." I agree you your comments, btw I think is still an open problem how to deal with political parties in real-world democracies.
- secondaryacct 5y ago
  It s a balancing game with changing rules - a sane democracy accepts to change (I dont think the american system is a democracy fwiw, as a French). For instance, sometimes an election with 13 parties will have open primaries in 5 of them binding the entire population to each candidate who will end up similar to each other, and the next time parties change the rule to avoid this risk and end up with a wide pentagram of mainstream extremes, and some revert back etc. As long as you have more than a binary split, anyone can join parties militant groups and local officials approve the national election candidates (so you have a soft gatekeeper), you open up to arbitrary mutations that prevent rotting fixtures. The GOP/Dem eternal fight in the heavens is distracting people from their duty to elect people to solve problems imo. Elections are a duty to manage the country, not a right to choose between two sides of the same coin.
- c21h30o2 5y ago
  To me it seems obvious that we will get technological solutions to voting that can make direct/local democracy more competitive against representative democracy. I think we won't need national governments as much anymore, instead we need a global "lightweight" government that does as little as possible, and much more diverse and bespoke local city/community level governance where the governed mostly govern themselves. Shared resources such as fishing quotas, forests, mineral deposits etc. should be governed by smart contracts where the incentives of the voters are aligned with long-term sustainability. It shouldn't matter which country a person is from or how big their boat is, if they extract X tons of something they need to buy X tons of quota for it on the open market.
SamWhited 5y ago
> The last sentence nails on the head why pure democracy doesn't work. Nothing gets done. Pure democracy is a meeting with more than 12 people in it. I keep reading this but can't square it with what the last sentence seemed to say. I'm pretty sure they were arguing the opposite of what you took that sentence to mean, or am I missing something obvious?
kragen 5y ago
You seem to be reading Kevin with the understanding that "anarchy" means "nothing gets done" or "ineffective organization". But that's a misreading that amounts to begging the question; Kevin's principal point in this essay (and, perhaps, across his writings in general) is that pure democracy is a very effective form of organization that gets a great deal done.
- michaelbrave 5y ago
  I've always believed pure democracy can be very effective but has problems of scale and the complexity that comes with it

ofou 5y ago

> "So ultimately the concept of democracy makes sense as something that ordinary people have actually done, and continue to do when they can create spaces of possibility in which they can act as equals to solve their common problems." I agree you your comments, btw I think is still an open problem how to deal with political parties in real-world democracies.

secondaryacct 5y ago
It s a balancing game with changing rules - a sane democracy accepts to change (I dont think the american system is a democracy fwiw, as a French). For instance, sometimes an election with 13 parties will have open primaries in 5 of them binding the entire population to each candidate who will end up similar to each other, and the next time parties change the rule to avoid this risk and end up with a wide pentagram of mainstream extremes, and some revert back etc. As long as you have more than a binary split, anyone can join parties militant groups and local officials approve the national election candidates (so you have a soft gatekeeper), you open up to arbitrary mutations that prevent rotting fixtures. The GOP/Dem eternal fight in the heavens is distracting people from their duty to elect people to solve problems imo. Elections are a duty to manage the country, not a right to choose between two sides of the same coin.
c21h30o2 5y ago
To me it seems obvious that we will get technological solutions to voting that can make direct/local democracy more competitive against representative democracy. I think we won't need national governments as much anymore, instead we need a global "lightweight" government that does as little as possible, and much more diverse and bespoke local city/community level governance where the governed mostly govern themselves. Shared resources such as fishing quotas, forests, mineral deposits etc. should be governed by smart contracts where the incentives of the voters are aligned with long-term sustainability. It shouldn't matter which country a person is from or how big their boat is, if they extract X tons of something they need to buy X tons of quota for it on the open market.

SamWhited 5y ago

> The last sentence nails on the head why pure democracy doesn't work. Nothing gets done. Pure democracy is a meeting with more than 12 people in it. I keep reading this but can't square it with what the last sentence seemed to say. I'm pretty sure they were arguing the opposite of what you took that sentence to mean, or am I missing something obvious?

kragen 5y ago

You seem to be reading Kevin with the understanding that "anarchy" means "nothing gets done" or "ineffective organization". But that's a misreading that amounts to begging the question; Kevin's principal point in this essay (and, perhaps, across his writings in general) is that pure democracy is a very effective form of organization that gets a great deal done.

michaelbrave 5y ago
I've always believed pure democracy can be very effective but has problems of scale and the complexity that comes with it