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"The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." — Winston Churchill (probably not, actually, but it's usually attri

"The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." — Winston Churchill (probably not, actually, but it's usually attributed to him) Or just read any poli-sci research concerning voters. It's basically all horrifying and/or depressing.

throw0101c 4y ago
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." — H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C major (1916)
belos 4y ago
This is absolutely one of my favorite quotes, because it’s both true, and points to what we need, which is better systems. I’m currently writing out a design for a better system! At the moment I’ve published some work toward it, including commentaries on some of the major problems a new design needs to resolve. Some of the key ones include the dilution of representation, which means that emotional appeals have a much easier time driving voter behavior, bundled governance, which means we get far less expertise among our policymakers, and lack of justifiable governance - we don’t have to prove that our rules do what we intended them to do. I’d love to invite more folks to give feedback and think about some of these ideas. It is possible to design a better system, but somewhere along the way we sort of gave up on doing more than incremental reform. I'm currently still laying foundations, but hope to be laying out a worked out proposal within the next few months. https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/a-beginning https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/a-beginning https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/table-of-contents https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/table-of-contents
- shagie 4y ago
  > This is absolutely one of my favorite quotes, because it’s both true, and points to what we need, which is better systems. To which one would reply... Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.… https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
  - belos 4y ago
    People often use this to imply that we can't make better things. That's a really sad belief. I will agree that it's tremendously hard, and requires enormous care, but the Founders of the US weren't gods. They didn't have perfect knowledge of all possible ways of organizing things. With science we say we stand on the shoulders of giants, and I think it's possible to do so in this realm too.

throw0101c 4y ago

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." — H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C major (1916)

belos 4y ago

This is absolutely one of my favorite quotes, because it’s both true, and points to what we need, which is better systems. I’m currently writing out a design for a better system! At the moment I’ve published some work toward it, including commentaries on some of the major problems a new design needs to resolve. Some of the key ones include the dilution of representation, which means that emotional appeals have a much easier time driving voter behavior, bundled governance, which means we get far less expertise among our policymakers, and lack of justifiable governance - we don’t have to prove that our rules do what we intended them to do. I’d love to invite more folks to give feedback and think about some of these ideas. It is possible to design a better system, but somewhere along the way we sort of gave up on doing more than incremental reform. I'm currently still laying foundations, but hope to be laying out a worked out proposal within the next few months. https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/a-beginning https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/a-beginning https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/table-of-contents https://bestofagreatlot.substack.com/p/table-of-contents

shagie 4y ago
> This is absolutely one of my favorite quotes, because it’s both true, and points to what we need, which is better systems. To which one would reply... Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.… https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
- belos 4y ago
  People often use this to imply that we can't make better things. That's a really sad belief. I will agree that it's tremendously hard, and requires enormous care, but the Founders of the US weren't gods. They didn't have perfect knowledge of all possible ways of organizing things. With science we say we stand on the shoulders of giants, and I think it's possible to do so in this realm too.