7 ms·

I mean, if "the vast majority of citizens thinks something is a good thing", shouldn't it be legal in the first place? Because democracy.

mijowi 4y ago
True but that works better when the lynchees get to vote with the same ease as the lynchers.
- washbrain 4y ago
  Even if they can vote equally, there's no guarantee that minority populations will have the numbers to protect themselves from the tyranny of the majority. We haven't even gotten to the "equal access to voting" part here in the States yet, so we have a long long road before we get to the "voting is a good tool for minorities to protect themselves" phase.
  - watwut 4y ago
    The population of blacks in south was pretty large tho. In some states they had majority. The violence was to keep them away from power.
    - washbrain 4y ago
      For sure, but that's definitely not universally the case today.
    - vkou 4y ago
      Also, a jury needs a near-unanimous, or unanimous verdict to convict. All it takes is a few pro-lynching jurors, and the accused flies free as a bird.
simonh 4y ago
That’s the argument advocates of direct democracy generally support, but no actual democratic systems fully implement direct democracy. In practice what we generally have is representative democracy, where we delegate the power to make laws, and make and implement policy to representatives. Those representatives have personal moral responsibility for the laws and decisions they make and are sovereign individuals in their own right, as is any citizen. There’s an argument (I think a strong one) that having been elected they have a right to make laws or rule according to their own beliefs and conscience, within the limits of the law. They’re not just the compliant meat puppets of “the people”. Of course there are examples of direct democracy, in the form of referendums on specific issues, and these highlight many of the problems with direct democracy. You end up with votes raising spending, alongside votes cutting taxes, with a side order of votes banning government borrowing. You get situations like Switzerland voting to align with the EU along with its free movement provisions, then a referendum mandating ending free movement (but not any other aspects of the treaty), then a referendum confirming maintaining the EU treaty. Take Brexit, what does it mean? Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, there are infinite different possible variations. Which one did the British public intend? Well, different members of the public intended different things, who gets to choose? What happens when the public vote for one thing but most elected people in government responsible for implementing it think it’s a bad idea? The problem is “the people” don’t have a single coherent group consciousness capable of reconciling competing priorities. That’s what leaders are for.
- cyphar 4y ago
  > That’s the argument advocates of direct democracy generally support, but no actual democratic systems fully implement direct democracy. To be fair, Switzerland comes very close. The public can pass initiatives or constitutional amendments without government intervention through public votes, and the few Swiss people I know consider this to be the primary political system in Switzerland (not the representative electoral system they have, though they also have a very interesting mechanism for their President which requires cross-party agreement for any government decision). Saying "no system fully implements direct democracy" feels like a no-true-scotsman stance, since by the same token no system fully implements representative democracy either (AFAIK no country guarantees that there is a precise percentage match of party representation to the popular vote with no lower bound on how many votes a party needs to enter, as it would be unworkable to have such a system). > The problem is “the people” don’t have a single coherent group consciousness capable of reconciling competing priorities. That’s what leaders are for. The flip side is that in representative democracies (especially with broken voting systems that are not even remotely representative such as in the US, UK, and most of the world) you are very limited in your choices of leader and thus sentiments which are popular with the public can be completely ignored. There is no mechanism to force a public initiative that has legal weight, so you have to hope that a major party will be in favour of your pet issue and they can convince other bureaucrats to support something that is popular. I would not say that I'm a proponent of direct democracy but I don't think having some public initiative system would be a bad thing. But if we are going to keep representative democracies with the argument that the leaders represent the people but have some expertise (though cynical people would argue that is not the case anyway) then you cannot have broken electoral systems because their political power is no longer morally justified. But of course, no party that gets in power would likely ever change the entire electoral system since they have a strong political incentive to not do so (and with representative democracies, election promises aren't worth the paper they're written on).
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > The flip side is that in representative democracies (especially with broken voting systems that are not even remotely representative such as in the US, UK, and most of the world) you are very limited in your choices of leader and thus sentiments which are popular with the public can be completely ignored. There is no mechanism to force a public initiative that has legal weight, so you have to hope that a major party will be in favour of your pet issue and they can convince other bureaucrats to support something that is popular. Please don't lump the extremely broken US political system with the slightly less broken British and former colonies (Canada, Australia, NZ, etc.) and even less so with the rest of democratic countries around the world which is usually using representative systems. Furthermore, some countries have explicit constitutional schemes where a petition with enough signatures needs to be voted on in parliament or even called in as a referendum.
makeitdouble 4y ago
It would depend on what happens next...do the people against lynching get their own place where they decide their own rules democratically ? Or the other way, do pro-lynching people go build a new Lynching Empire somewhere else and leave their land and resources behind ? I'd be a supporter of freedom to decide any rule within a group if there was infinite resources and we'd just move freely to the places we want to be with the groups we want to belong to. Short of that, the majority agreeing on something is probably not enough to warrant changes, but then of course we have to deal with the imbalance...
- watwut 4y ago
  People against lynching were primary in the lynched demographic. It was among other things a way to make then scared to go vote and to punish success.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> if "the vast majority of citizens thinks something is a good thing", shouldn't it be legal in the first place? Because democracy Sort of. It’s tyranny of the majority [1]. The meaning of democracy has changed over millennia. Classically, democracy encompasses “freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, inclusiveness and equality, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights” [2]. Each of these involves constraining majoritarianism. Unfortunately, in modern use, this balance has been lost, with the term democracy becoming more and more interchangeable with direct democracy, a system that predictably fails. So classically, no, jury nullification of lynching is a failure of several fundamental democratic principles. But in a modern sense, yes, it’s the will of the majority of a certain set of people. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  Traditionally, democracy meant 'all Athenian male unenslaved citizens meet up every now and then to decide by majority whom to banish from the city' -> the exact reason why democracy was a dirty word for classical political philosophers, like Plato: tyranny of the masses was built in from the start. What you describe was an "age of enlightenment"-style idealised version of democracy that lived for a short time before it was being killed again, bit by bit. And that direct democracy thing ... it works for the Swiss, and many would argue the problem today is not too much democracy, but too little, and it becoming ever-smaller.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    Democracy was discussed deeply and implanted varyingly after Athens fell. And even then, concepts of free and equal speech were tied to the concept. > that direct democracy thing ... it works for the Swiss We don’t have direct democracy. Our initiative and amendment processes have a referendum component, but it’s tightly moderated by the legislature and requires supermajorities to override it. And to the degree it's being discussed, it's with respect to reforming it so political parties can't bypass the parliament.

mijowi 4y ago

True but that works better when the lynchees get to vote with the same ease as the lynchers.

washbrain 4y ago
Even if they can vote equally, there's no guarantee that minority populations will have the numbers to protect themselves from the tyranny of the majority. We haven't even gotten to the "equal access to voting" part here in the States yet, so we have a long long road before we get to the "voting is a good tool for minorities to protect themselves" phase.
- watwut 4y ago
  The population of blacks in south was pretty large tho. In some states they had majority. The violence was to keep them away from power.
  - washbrain 4y ago
    For sure, but that's definitely not universally the case today.
  - vkou 4y ago
    Also, a jury needs a near-unanimous, or unanimous verdict to convict. All it takes is a few pro-lynching jurors, and the accused flies free as a bird.

simonh 4y ago

That’s the argument advocates of direct democracy generally support, but no actual democratic systems fully implement direct democracy. In practice what we generally have is representative democracy, where we delegate the power to make laws, and make and implement policy to representatives. Those representatives have personal moral responsibility for the laws and decisions they make and are sovereign individuals in their own right, as is any citizen. There’s an argument (I think a strong one) that having been elected they have a right to make laws or rule according to their own beliefs and conscience, within the limits of the law. They’re not just the compliant meat puppets of “the people”. Of course there are examples of direct democracy, in the form of referendums on specific issues, and these highlight many of the problems with direct democracy. You end up with votes raising spending, alongside votes cutting taxes, with a side order of votes banning government borrowing. You get situations like Switzerland voting to align with the EU along with its free movement provisions, then a referendum mandating ending free movement (but not any other aspects of the treaty), then a referendum confirming maintaining the EU treaty. Take Brexit, what does it mean? Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, there are infinite different possible variations. Which one did the British public intend? Well, different members of the public intended different things, who gets to choose? What happens when the public vote for one thing but most elected people in government responsible for implementing it think it’s a bad idea? The problem is “the people” don’t have a single coherent group consciousness capable of reconciling competing priorities. That’s what leaders are for.

cyphar 4y ago
> That’s the argument advocates of direct democracy generally support, but no actual democratic systems fully implement direct democracy. To be fair, Switzerland comes very close. The public can pass initiatives or constitutional amendments without government intervention through public votes, and the few Swiss people I know consider this to be the primary political system in Switzerland (not the representative electoral system they have, though they also have a very interesting mechanism for their President which requires cross-party agreement for any government decision). Saying "no system fully implements direct democracy" feels like a no-true-scotsman stance, since by the same token no system fully implements representative democracy either (AFAIK no country guarantees that there is a precise percentage match of party representation to the popular vote with no lower bound on how many votes a party needs to enter, as it would be unworkable to have such a system). > The problem is “the people” don’t have a single coherent group consciousness capable of reconciling competing priorities. That’s what leaders are for. The flip side is that in representative democracies (especially with broken voting systems that are not even remotely representative such as in the US, UK, and most of the world) you are very limited in your choices of leader and thus sentiments which are popular with the public can be completely ignored. There is no mechanism to force a public initiative that has legal weight, so you have to hope that a major party will be in favour of your pet issue and they can convince other bureaucrats to support something that is popular. I would not say that I'm a proponent of direct democracy but I don't think having some public initiative system would be a bad thing. But if we are going to keep representative democracies with the argument that the leaders represent the people but have some expertise (though cynical people would argue that is not the case anyway) then you cannot have broken electoral systems because their political power is no longer morally justified. But of course, no party that gets in power would likely ever change the entire electoral system since they have a strong political incentive to not do so (and with representative democracies, election promises aren't worth the paper they're written on).
- sofixa 4y ago
  > The flip side is that in representative democracies (especially with broken voting systems that are not even remotely representative such as in the US, UK, and most of the world) you are very limited in your choices of leader and thus sentiments which are popular with the public can be completely ignored. There is no mechanism to force a public initiative that has legal weight, so you have to hope that a major party will be in favour of your pet issue and they can convince other bureaucrats to support something that is popular. Please don't lump the extremely broken US political system with the slightly less broken British and former colonies (Canada, Australia, NZ, etc.) and even less so with the rest of democratic countries around the world which is usually using representative systems. Furthermore, some countries have explicit constitutional schemes where a petition with enough signatures needs to be voted on in parliament or even called in as a referendum.

makeitdouble 4y ago

It would depend on what happens next...do the people against lynching get their own place where they decide their own rules democratically ? Or the other way, do pro-lynching people go build a new Lynching Empire somewhere else and leave their land and resources behind ? I'd be a supporter of freedom to decide any rule within a group if there was infinite resources and we'd just move freely to the places we want to be with the groups we want to belong to. Short of that, the majority agreeing on something is probably not enough to warrant changes, but then of course we have to deal with the imbalance...

watwut 4y ago
People against lynching were primary in the lynched demographic. It was among other things a way to make then scared to go vote and to punish success.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> if "the vast majority of citizens thinks something is a good thing", shouldn't it be legal in the first place? Because democracy Sort of. It’s tyranny of the majority [1]. The meaning of democracy has changed over millennia. Classically, democracy encompasses “freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, inclusiveness and equality, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights” [2]. Each of these involves constraining majoritarianism. Unfortunately, in modern use, this balance has been lost, with the term democracy becoming more and more interchangeable with direct democracy, a system that predictably fails. So classically, no, jury nullification of lynching is a failure of several fundamental democratic principles. But in a modern sense, yes, it’s the will of the majority of a certain set of people. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

DocTomoe 4y ago
Traditionally, democracy meant 'all Athenian male unenslaved citizens meet up every now and then to decide by majority whom to banish from the city' -> the exact reason why democracy was a dirty word for classical political philosophers, like Plato: tyranny of the masses was built in from the start. What you describe was an "age of enlightenment"-style idealised version of democracy that lived for a short time before it was being killed again, bit by bit. And that direct democracy thing ... it works for the Swiss, and many would argue the problem today is not too much democracy, but too little, and it becoming ever-smaller.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Democracy was discussed deeply and implanted varyingly after Athens fell. And even then, concepts of free and equal speech were tied to the concept. > that direct democracy thing ... it works for the Swiss We don’t have direct democracy. Our initiative and amendment processes have a referendum component, but it’s tightly moderated by the legislature and requires supermajorities to override it. And to the degree it's being discussed, it's with respect to reforming it so political parties can't bypass the parliament.