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> I am not to optimistic about privacy law in the US when you have a significant part of the political landscape in the US trying to pave the road to the Christ

> I am not to optimistic about privacy law in the US when you have a significant part of the political landscape in the US trying to pave the road to the Christian equivalent of Sharia law. Congress is significantly older and more religious than most of the population. As younger people continue to take office like AOC, the attempt to do this will slowly be pushed back. > There have been politicians toying with the idea that a dictator is needed in the US Honestly, I favor a benevolent dictator with checks and balances, so not a dictator in the usual sense, but rather someone with enough authority to actually do things without opposition, but also an easy means of removal and a jury type deal to overrule certain things (as opposed to legislation having to go through two houses first). Democracy only works when you have an educated population, otherwise you get what's happening in the US. That aside, democracy shouldn't allow people to vote on everything...the same way not everyone is qualified to be a manager and make decisions. Vote on how local money should be spent, for a pool or a park? Sure. Vote on best steps to combat climate change? No. Not when half the population is in denial that it even exists.

avgcorrection 3y ago
> Honestly, I favor a benevolent dictator with checks and balances, Note how people often evoke the specifically benevolent dictator when comparing forms of governance, stacking the deck from the start; democracy and other forms of governance don’t get such a privilege, as they are supposed to be evaluated on its empirical merits. So you don’t have to worry about an evil and selfish dictator by definition. How nice! > Democracy only works when you have an educated population, otherwise you get what's happening in the US. First of all, democracy working cannot be judged on whether people make “educated” decisions: it works if people have the power to choose. Similarily freedom does not work if only people do good things; it works if they have the power to be free. I cannot walk into a grown person’s home and judge whether they should be free to make choices based on the choices they make unless I am so arrogant as to consider myself an adult and them a child (relatively speaking). Yet this “democracy only works” line of thinking reeks of this attitude. But this is an old-as-the-hills false goal, popular among the educated for painfully obvious reasons; the relatively educated can use their elite-adjacent power to systematically de facto disenfranchise regular people by depriving them of whatever their goalpost for “educated” is, over the span of decades. That then becomes a self-reinforcing and (in their eyes) virtuous cycle; more and more disenfranchisement leads to a more and more apolitical and “stupid” people, which in turn “proves” the point! And in the end the educated and the elites get what they want: more power for themselves, less interference from the general populace. Politics is almost always about self- and group-interest. This is not an exception; the “educated” will wax poetic about the virtues of an “informed public”, but most of them just want more power for themselves.
- i2cmaster 3y ago
  We got democracy from Britain, Rome, and Greece. All of these places had what were essentially dictators from time to time, often to overcome crises. Yes some of them were bad, but the illusion of consent democratic governments can create is IMO even worse when they go bad.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    Do you think I am making an argument for the sham-democracies that we have in the world today? Did you even read what I wrote?
    - i2cmaster 3y ago
      I think making that distinction is the same mistake you were pointing out.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I think you misunderstand whas democracy is. You probably think it is about being able to vote something you like, and because there are people with differing opinions you won't get a good outcome — or something among those lines. This is not what democracy is. Democracy is mainly about one thing: Being able to remove people from office you dislike. As soon as you get a dictator, benevolent or not, you cease the power to remove them, their heirs or sucessors from office without civil war and/or revolution. This is why dictatorships will always have a sense of insecurity, because on top of not being able to rely on a fair system of law, you are not even able to rely on the character of the dictatorship. Even a single dictator might change their style drastically throughout their career etc. So if you wish for that, you probably didn't read a lot of history.
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      > This is not what democracy is. Democracy is mainly about one thing: Being able to remove people from office you dislike. This is absurd and wrong on its face if you take the word “democracy” even a little literally, which you should even if only for the theoretical exercise. Democracy roughly means that the people govern. But now you’ve said that it is “mainly” about removing someone else from governance. Huh? Something doesn’t seem right here. This is of course “representative democracy”, or roughly “elite(-driven) democracy”; a sort of governance where the elites jocky for power (as per usual), present to the rest of the population who they may vote for (every two years or so), and then the general population goes back to their private (non-political) affairs. And this according to some people is something that we are supposed to be grateful for. What a sham.

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Honestly, I favor a benevolent dictator with checks and balances, Note how people often evoke the specifically benevolent dictator when comparing forms of governance, stacking the deck from the start; democracy and other forms of governance don’t get such a privilege, as they are supposed to be evaluated on its empirical merits. So you don’t have to worry about an evil and selfish dictator by definition. How nice! > Democracy only works when you have an educated population, otherwise you get what's happening in the US. First of all, democracy working cannot be judged on whether people make “educated” decisions: it works if people have the power to choose. Similarily freedom does not work if only people do good things; it works if they have the power to be free. I cannot walk into a grown person’s home and judge whether they should be free to make choices based on the choices they make unless I am so arrogant as to consider myself an adult and them a child (relatively speaking). Yet this “democracy only works” line of thinking reeks of this attitude. But this is an old-as-the-hills false goal, popular among the educated for painfully obvious reasons; the relatively educated can use their elite-adjacent power to systematically de facto disenfranchise regular people by depriving them of whatever their goalpost for “educated” is, over the span of decades. That then becomes a self-reinforcing and (in their eyes) virtuous cycle; more and more disenfranchisement leads to a more and more apolitical and “stupid” people, which in turn “proves” the point! And in the end the educated and the elites get what they want: more power for themselves, less interference from the general populace. Politics is almost always about self- and group-interest. This is not an exception; the “educated” will wax poetic about the virtues of an “informed public”, but most of them just want more power for themselves.

i2cmaster 3y ago
We got democracy from Britain, Rome, and Greece. All of these places had what were essentially dictators from time to time, often to overcome crises. Yes some of them were bad, but the illusion of consent democratic governments can create is IMO even worse when they go bad.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  Do you think I am making an argument for the sham-democracies that we have in the world today? Did you even read what I wrote?
  - i2cmaster 3y ago
    I think making that distinction is the same mistake you were pointing out.
- atoav 3y ago
  I think you misunderstand whas democracy is. You probably think it is about being able to vote something you like, and because there are people with differing opinions you won't get a good outcome — or something among those lines. This is not what democracy is. Democracy is mainly about one thing: Being able to remove people from office you dislike. As soon as you get a dictator, benevolent or not, you cease the power to remove them, their heirs or sucessors from office without civil war and/or revolution. This is why dictatorships will always have a sense of insecurity, because on top of not being able to rely on a fair system of law, you are not even able to rely on the character of the dictatorship. Even a single dictator might change their style drastically throughout their career etc. So if you wish for that, you probably didn't read a lot of history.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > This is not what democracy is. Democracy is mainly about one thing: Being able to remove people from office you dislike. This is absurd and wrong on its face if you take the word “democracy” even a little literally, which you should even if only for the theoretical exercise. Democracy roughly means that the people govern. But now you’ve said that it is “mainly” about removing someone else from governance. Huh? Something doesn’t seem right here. This is of course “representative democracy”, or roughly “elite(-driven) democracy”; a sort of governance where the elites jocky for power (as per usual), present to the rest of the population who they may vote for (every two years or so), and then the general population goes back to their private (non-political) affairs. And this according to some people is something that we are supposed to be grateful for. What a sham.