7 ms·

The benefit of living in a non-democracy is that you don't need to be informed. You can spend all your time on making money and spending money, and that's your

by Lendal 4y ago

The benefit of living in a non-democracy is that you don't need to be informed. You can spend all your time on making money and spending money, and that's your life. No worries. But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. Think of it as a democracy tax. If you didn't live in a democracy, you wouldn't have this tax on your time. Freedom isn't free, eh? Of course, this democracy tax is totally voluntary. You're only obligated by your own morality. You may choose to opt out of democracy entirely. Not voting or being informed is your choice, if you wish to live your life off the backs of others. No one will make you feel guilty about it at all. Right? ;)

SllX 4y ago
> But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. I don’t think you fairly addressed his question at all in this comment, and the reason lies right in that vague word: “things”. People who live anywhere will always take an interest in information which directly affects them, or that they can profit off of, or which might cause them to incur losses. Generally there are multiple means of attaining this information and the “news” in the mass media sense is just one of them. I don’t for example pay close attention to all legal news, so when I need legal advice which tends to be situational in nature I hire people who do rather than proceeding on my own partially-informed opinions from what I gleaned out of a newspaper which probably missed important details and which is usually written from a biased perspective. This is true for any number of domains I don’t specialize in (almost all of them), and in seeking counsel I gain information along the way that can shape my future actions. So lets come back to that word, “things”, which things should people be informed of that you get from the news media but are unlikely to receive from anywhere else?

by Lendal 4y ago

SllX 4y ago

> But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. I don’t think you fairly addressed his question at all in this comment, and the reason lies right in that vague word: “things”. People who live anywhere will always take an interest in information which directly affects them, or that they can profit off of, or which might cause them to incur losses. Generally there are multiple means of attaining this information and the “news” in the mass media sense is just one of them. I don’t for example pay close attention to all legal news, so when I need legal advice which tends to be situational in nature I hire people who do rather than proceeding on my own partially-informed opinions from what I gleaned out of a newspaper which probably missed important details and which is usually written from a biased perspective. This is true for any number of domains I don’t specialize in (almost all of them), and in seeking counsel I gain information along the way that can shape my future actions. So lets come back to that word, “things”, which things should people be informed of that you get from the news media but are unlikely to receive from anywhere else?