7 ms·

> A business? No. A bank? No. A country? No. In a modern democracy, only one of those three could conceivably have your interests at heart. Lumping them all to

by RichEO 4y ago

> A business? No. A bank? No. A country? No. In a modern democracy, only one of those three could conceivably have your interests at heart. Lumping them all together damages participation in democracy, which exacerbates the problem.

kortilla 4y ago
Democracy absolutely does not care about you and thinking it does is damaging to democracy. Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. If your interests don’t align with thah majority, the country is not acting on your behalf. Knowing that an participating in democracy without tying up your identity in the outcomes is critical.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Well it does care about you, just that the level of care you receive is roughly what hundreds of millions of others also get. 1/250000000 is a pretty small amount in the grand scheme. We typically round down small fractions to zero so a very niche opinion with a few hundred folks is still approximately zero.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    No, that math isn’t correct. If you are in the minority, there is no compromise in democracy. The level of care you receive is exactly 0 if the majority voted against you. 20 years ago you couldn’t have 40% of a gay marriage, it was just no gay marriage.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      People typically live for more than just a single issue. Averaged over many thousands of issues, some of which you end up enjoying benefits from and some of which you end up suffering penalties from, and after many years of residence, it does work out that way.
      - pksebben 4y ago
        it might. It might, if we didn't split votes by district, then by county, then by state, and bundle them. It might if our representation weren't purposefully skewed to favor states with let populations. It might if there were runoff voting. It might if there weren't an electoral college, circumventing all that already miserable voting procedure. It might if voting we're a national holiday. It might if we had a choice that wasn't "this pile of shit over here" versus "that mass of excrementt over there". Really, they're different! It might if, after the elections were over, there wasn't a whole industry, made up of politician's former colleagues, making truckloads of money to peddle influence on behalf of big business and billionaires. To believe that our democratic process does anything to connect the political zeitgeist of the people to actual policy is to believe in the tooth fairy.
        MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Yes, the things you believe in are ostensibly 1/250000000th the importance of the sum total of what everyone in the U.S. believes in. For example, if the 'political zeitgeist' your referring to is comprised of 50 million eligible voters, and if the other 200 million are fence sitters on believe in another 'zeitgeist', then it's in fact correct for the U.S. as a country to completely ignore the 50 million. i.e. to block it from having any effect on 'actual policy'. After all, minority rights are only guaranteed up to the 3/4 threshold, after which a constitutional convention could do anything, such as reinstating slavery, prohibition, or even abolish the existing constitution and all laws passed by Congress entirely, etc...
        pksebben 4y ago
        You've sort of missed my point. I'm not pushing a particular political agenda, here. I'm talking about how many roadblocks there are between a vote and a policy change, of any stripe. The fact is, if we all agreed on something, it still wouldn't matter. The process of voting would not see that idea through to any meaningful realization - which sort of defeats the purpose of voting, doesn't it?
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. Only if you’re a dictionary. Democracy as practiced routinely resists the will of the majority (eg attitudes towards climate, reproductive rights), and also routinely reinforces minoritarian protections once established (eg accessibility for people with disabilities). Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    You’re quibbling over the layers of indirection a representative democracy adds, but it doesn’t fundamentally change. If the majority of people wanted to strips rights for those with disabilities, they would be well within the constitution to do it. > Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever. Sure, but the point is that regardless of governing mechanism, the government is not acting in your interest (unless you’re an authoritarian dictator and even then there is internal resistance).
    - eyelidlessness 4y ago
      I’m not quibbling anything.
      - kortilla 4y ago
        Yes, pointing out the delay representative democracy induces as proof that democracy doesn’t represent the will of the people is quibbling.
        eyelidlessness 4y ago
        You must have misunderstood my comment. Only one of my examples might conceivably be delayed. One is explicitly being reversed, and the other is protection of a vulnerable group regardless of majority status. My point isn’t that democracy fails to represent the will of the people. Democracy is more complicated than that, in some ways more flawed and in some ways better.
yucky 4y ago
Democracy is incompatible with freedom. As soon as enough people decide I should die or lose my possessions or do some other thing I don't want to do, I am forced against my will with violence. So we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom and foresight of the masses. No wonder we're screwed.
- glial 4y ago
  Curious to know your definition of freedom, and what system of government it is compatible with.
  - gibspaulding 4y ago
    I was expecting some sort of pivot to "but of course all government is incompatible with freedom, and democracy is better than most, and anarchy doesn't scale well, so democracy it is!"
  - yucky 4y ago
    If there are no systems of government compatible with freedom, does that indicate there is a problem with the idea of freedom or a problem with the idea of government?
    - fulafel 4y ago
      It would seem that groups of people getting along always necessarily involves some compromise between these, whether structured ("government") or the law of the jungle.
- jerojero 4y ago
  I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? Much like any political system you can imagine, a democratic system requires a complex web of rules and regulations to function properly. For one, so-called democracies always require more specification. Are you talking about direct democracy? Are you talking about deliberative democracy? Are you talking about representative democracy? Democracy does not mean, by the way, the "rule of the majority" because "demos" does not mean majority but people. And for the common people to rule you need a system to encompass it. Of course, over time there have been a lot of criticism and a lot of work done in deciding which rules and which structures are the most appropriate to make the necessary compromises for our political systems to work. To put things on perspective, in Switzerland for example they have decided that the will of the swiss people is above international treaties. And this does pose a problem, for example there was a referendum a couple years back for the banning of face covering; a policy which affects everyone, yes, but affects most a particular group (muslim women). But in most cases, swiss people have a very full participatory democracy and their political system is incredibly stable. It's not perfect, and a lot of experts in the field consider countries should never be above international treaties such as the human rights treaty that most countries have signed. When you say "we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom of the masses" you're making a pro-elitism argument. In that the masses ought to be ruled by people better than the masses; and in many ways, this is the approach countries like China have taken. To me, a big problem with this approach comes from the ego of individuals. Is it really possible to change someone's mind who happens to be in a position of power such as that? Is it easy? Personally I believe this to be a much more dangerous prospect. A good example of this can be seen, I think, in Meta (the company) where Zuckerberg is pretty much destroying the company and everyone but him can see it. Yes, this man build the company, but does that expertise translate to every future challenge? It is why we tend to prefer collective decision making, usually smaller bodies, but could there be space to make better use of bigger collectives? I think so. So in short, I think you should probably read a little more about political philosophy to be able to say something as big as "Democracy is incompatible with freedom". It's a pretty big statement.

by RichEO 4y ago

kortilla 4y ago

Democracy absolutely does not care about you and thinking it does is damaging to democracy. Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. If your interests don’t align with thah majority, the country is not acting on your behalf. Knowing that an participating in democracy without tying up your identity in the outcomes is critical.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
Well it does care about you, just that the level of care you receive is roughly what hundreds of millions of others also get. 1/250000000 is a pretty small amount in the grand scheme. We typically round down small fractions to zero so a very niche opinion with a few hundred folks is still approximately zero.
- kortilla 4y ago
  No, that math isn’t correct. If you are in the minority, there is no compromise in democracy. The level of care you receive is exactly 0 if the majority voted against you. 20 years ago you couldn’t have 40% of a gay marriage, it was just no gay marriage.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    People typically live for more than just a single issue. Averaged over many thousands of issues, some of which you end up enjoying benefits from and some of which you end up suffering penalties from, and after many years of residence, it does work out that way.
    - pksebben 4y ago
      it might. It might, if we didn't split votes by district, then by county, then by state, and bundle them. It might if our representation weren't purposefully skewed to favor states with let populations. It might if there were runoff voting. It might if there weren't an electoral college, circumventing all that already miserable voting procedure. It might if voting we're a national holiday. It might if we had a choice that wasn't "this pile of shit over here" versus "that mass of excrementt over there". Really, they're different! It might if, after the elections were over, there wasn't a whole industry, made up of politician's former colleagues, making truckloads of money to peddle influence on behalf of big business and billionaires. To believe that our democratic process does anything to connect the political zeitgeist of the people to actual policy is to believe in the tooth fairy.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        Yes, the things you believe in are ostensibly 1/250000000th the importance of the sum total of what everyone in the U.S. believes in. For example, if the 'political zeitgeist' your referring to is comprised of 50 million eligible voters, and if the other 200 million are fence sitters on believe in another 'zeitgeist', then it's in fact correct for the U.S. as a country to completely ignore the 50 million. i.e. to block it from having any effect on 'actual policy'. After all, minority rights are only guaranteed up to the 3/4 threshold, after which a constitutional convention could do anything, such as reinstating slavery, prohibition, or even abolish the existing constitution and all laws passed by Congress entirely, etc...
        pksebben 4y ago
        You've sort of missed my point. I'm not pushing a particular political agenda, here. I'm talking about how many roadblocks there are between a vote and a policy change, of any stripe. The fact is, if we all agreed on something, it still wouldn't matter. The process of voting would not see that idea through to any meaningful realization - which sort of defeats the purpose of voting, doesn't it?
eyelidlessness 4y ago
> Democracy is just executing the will of the majority. Only if you’re a dictionary. Democracy as practiced routinely resists the will of the majority (eg attitudes towards climate, reproductive rights), and also routinely reinforces minoritarian protections once established (eg accessibility for people with disabilities). Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever.
- kortilla 4y ago
  You’re quibbling over the layers of indirection a representative democracy adds, but it doesn’t fundamentally change. If the majority of people wanted to strips rights for those with disabilities, they would be well within the constitution to do it. > Democracy is ultimately the same thing as any other governing philosophy, except it’s more malleable by people without concentrated power than most other systems. Certainly more than a bank or whatever. Sure, but the point is that regardless of governing mechanism, the government is not acting in your interest (unless you’re an authoritarian dictator and even then there is internal resistance).
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    I’m not quibbling anything.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      Yes, pointing out the delay representative democracy induces as proof that democracy doesn’t represent the will of the people is quibbling.
      - eyelidlessness 4y ago
        You must have misunderstood my comment. Only one of my examples might conceivably be delayed. One is explicitly being reversed, and the other is protection of a vulnerable group regardless of majority status. My point isn’t that democracy fails to represent the will of the people. Democracy is more complicated than that, in some ways more flawed and in some ways better.

yucky 4y ago

Democracy is incompatible with freedom. As soon as enough people decide I should die or lose my possessions or do some other thing I don't want to do, I am forced against my will with violence. So we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom and foresight of the masses. No wonder we're screwed.

glial 4y ago
Curious to know your definition of freedom, and what system of government it is compatible with.
- gibspaulding 4y ago
  I was expecting some sort of pivot to "but of course all government is incompatible with freedom, and democracy is better than most, and anarchy doesn't scale well, so democracy it is!"
- yucky 4y ago
  If there are no systems of government compatible with freedom, does that indicate there is a problem with the idea of freedom or a problem with the idea of government?
  - fulafel 4y ago
    It would seem that groups of people getting along always necessarily involves some compromise between these, whether structured ("government") or the law of the jungle.
jerojero 4y ago
I imagine you've never really engaged in political philosophy very thoroughly? Much like any political system you can imagine, a democratic system requires a complex web of rules and regulations to function properly. For one, so-called democracies always require more specification. Are you talking about direct democracy? Are you talking about deliberative democracy? Are you talking about representative democracy? Democracy does not mean, by the way, the "rule of the majority" because "demos" does not mean majority but people. And for the common people to rule you need a system to encompass it. Of course, over time there have been a lot of criticism and a lot of work done in deciding which rules and which structures are the most appropriate to make the necessary compromises for our political systems to work. To put things on perspective, in Switzerland for example they have decided that the will of the swiss people is above international treaties. And this does pose a problem, for example there was a referendum a couple years back for the banning of face covering; a policy which affects everyone, yes, but affects most a particular group (muslim women). But in most cases, swiss people have a very full participatory democracy and their political system is incredibly stable. It's not perfect, and a lot of experts in the field consider countries should never be above international treaties such as the human rights treaty that most countries have signed. When you say "we are stuck relying on the intelligence and wisdom of the masses" you're making a pro-elitism argument. In that the masses ought to be ruled by people better than the masses; and in many ways, this is the approach countries like China have taken. To me, a big problem with this approach comes from the ego of individuals. Is it really possible to change someone's mind who happens to be in a position of power such as that? Is it easy? Personally I believe this to be a much more dangerous prospect. A good example of this can be seen, I think, in Meta (the company) where Zuckerberg is pretty much destroying the company and everyone but him can see it. Yes, this man build the company, but does that expertise translate to every future challenge? It is why we tend to prefer collective decision making, usually smaller bodies, but could there be space to make better use of bigger collectives? I think so. So in short, I think you should probably read a little more about political philosophy to be able to say something as big as "Democracy is incompatible with freedom". It's a pretty big statement.