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> People fight wars so they can align voting with location. This is a needless digression, and it's clear you won't change your mind. But FWIW, this is 100% b

by ajross 3y ago

> People fight wars so they can align voting with location. This is a needless digression, and it's clear you won't change your mind. But FWIW, this is 100% backwards. Wars are over "location" because by definition it's not possible to fight a war to win voting share or opinions[1]. War can win territory, period. That's all it does. So we've traditionally aligned our political boundaries with whatever lines were drawn up by the last conqueror to come through the region. That's a bug! Democracy is the fix for this disaster. You're claiming the disaster is a feature! [1] It is possible, however, to use the tools of war to affect demographic distributions. We call that "genocide", and I really don't think you want to be aligning your logic in this direction.

rayiner 3y ago
> This is a needless digression, and it's clear you won't change your mind. It’s not a digression. “Democracy” isn’t just about voting mechanisms. People all over the world care about self determination—governing whatever they consider to be their own society. > Wars are over "location" because by definition it's not possible to fight a war to win voting share or opinions “Opinions” aren’t what glue people together. And the things that do glue people together are locational, for the same reason wars are. As long as humans exist primarily in meat space, geographic boundaries will also naturally reflect people’s families, neighbors, workplaces, recreational places, etc. Particular boundaries might be redrawn, etc., but the relevant boundaries will be geographic. The average American lives only 18 miles from their mother. 58% of Americans live in the state where they were born. 1 in 6 have never left their home stage. > Democracy is the fix for this disaster. You're claiming the disaster is a feature! Democracy doesn’t fix the problem, because democracy presupposes that a particular group of people have consented to being part of a body politic on certain terms. “I trust you enough to participate in joint decision making with you” is a threshold issue, before you get to “what is the mathematical technique for making a decision jointly.”

by ajross 3y ago

rayiner 3y ago

> This is a needless digression, and it's clear you won't change your mind. It’s not a digression. “Democracy” isn’t just about voting mechanisms. People all over the world care about self determination—governing whatever they consider to be their own society. > Wars are over "location" because by definition it's not possible to fight a war to win voting share or opinions “Opinions” aren’t what glue people together. And the things that do glue people together are locational, for the same reason wars are. As long as humans exist primarily in meat space, geographic boundaries will also naturally reflect people’s families, neighbors, workplaces, recreational places, etc. Particular boundaries might be redrawn, etc., but the relevant boundaries will be geographic. The average American lives only 18 miles from their mother. 58% of Americans live in the state where they were born. 1 in 6 have never left their home stage. > Democracy is the fix for this disaster. You're claiming the disaster is a feature! Democracy doesn’t fix the problem, because democracy presupposes that a particular group of people have consented to being part of a body politic on certain terms. “I trust you enough to participate in joint decision making with you” is a threshold issue, before you get to “what is the mathematical technique for making a decision jointly.”