4 ms·

My TLD answering to the democratic government on which I have 1 of 10 million votes - and most of it not going the way I'd like - is my worst fear.

WindyMiller 3y ago
Still, if that's your worst fear, at least you must have a pretty good government.
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  No, it's just the only thing left where they can touch me.
Macha 3y ago
Better it answers to a board of directors where you have 0 votes?
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  Yes, that board of directors is motivated to keep their revenue stream. A state doesn't care, it can just steal more (not saying all taxes are stealing, but it is in my home country).
Gormo 3y ago
...especially if 9.9 million of those votes are being cast by people on the basis of questions completely unrelated to TLD governance, and who may not even be aware that such a thing exists. I've never understood the model of having a single democratic process be the arbiter of every issue. It just allows gamesmanship where factions can play up issue X to win votes, then use the political power they obtain to push their agenda on completely unrelated issue Y. I suspect this is a major motivation for a lot of the exaggerated political polarization around symbolic "culture war" issues.
- palata 3y ago
  In a functioning democracy, the government does indeed represent the people. Not every country is lucky enough to have a functioning democracy of course, and the people only gets to vote once every few years for a president that by design does not represent them. I trust the ccTLD of my country more than the gTLDs that are private entities.
  - Gormo 3y ago
    >In a functioning democracy, the government does indeed represent the people. I don't even consider it logically possible for a singular government advancing a singular policy to represent "the people", because that concept represents an aggregation of many distinct individuals and communities, and all controversies and conflicts of interests that are addressed via politics emerge from within that aggregation. Politics is a tool for mitigating disputes arising from divergences of values or conflicts of interests within "the people", so the idea of treating it as something that expresses a singular set of values or interests applicable to the whole is incorrect. > I trust the ccTLD of my country more than the gTLDs that are private entities. The point is that everything is a private entity, even the government-run ones. All institutions are groups of specific people inhabiting a bounded context, and there's no mechanism for effectively making any particular institution accountable to a speculative aggregation of millions, so the distinction of between "public" and "private" is largely meaningless.
    - palata 3y ago
      We seem to be living in pretty different countries :-). > so the distinction of between "public" and "private" is largely meaningless In my country, what's "public" is owned by the government, and the government is elected by the people. There is an obvious difference between what is public and what is private, to the point where it is actually hard for me to imagine that someone living in my country may believe that the distinction is meaningless. > I don't even consider it logically possible for a singular government advancing a singular policy to represent "the people" Imagine that the people elects the government. Not one president, but the whole government. You will end up with elected officials ranging from the left to the right. If more people vote for the right, then there are more officials on the right, but there are still others that are elected on the left/center. For important matters, you have a referendum, where the people can directly vote on the topic at hand. The result of that is that if you always disagree with everything the government does, it means that you are part of a pretty small minority in your country. So you, individually, are not represented by the government, but most of the citizen are. That's the whole point. If you believe that everyone should have a government with which they agree 100% of the time, then that's not possible. But if you believe that, you need to learn how to compromise, for your own sake.

WindyMiller 3y ago

Still, if that's your worst fear, at least you must have a pretty good government.

throwaway11460 3y ago
No, it's just the only thing left where they can touch me.

Macha 3y ago

Better it answers to a board of directors where you have 0 votes?

throwaway11460 3y ago
Yes, that board of directors is motivated to keep their revenue stream. A state doesn't care, it can just steal more (not saying all taxes are stealing, but it is in my home country).

Gormo 3y ago

...especially if 9.9 million of those votes are being cast by people on the basis of questions completely unrelated to TLD governance, and who may not even be aware that such a thing exists. I've never understood the model of having a single democratic process be the arbiter of every issue. It just allows gamesmanship where factions can play up issue X to win votes, then use the political power they obtain to push their agenda on completely unrelated issue Y. I suspect this is a major motivation for a lot of the exaggerated political polarization around symbolic "culture war" issues.

palata 3y ago
In a functioning democracy, the government does indeed represent the people. Not every country is lucky enough to have a functioning democracy of course, and the people only gets to vote once every few years for a president that by design does not represent them. I trust the ccTLD of my country more than the gTLDs that are private entities.
- Gormo 3y ago
  >In a functioning democracy, the government does indeed represent the people. I don't even consider it logically possible for a singular government advancing a singular policy to represent "the people", because that concept represents an aggregation of many distinct individuals and communities, and all controversies and conflicts of interests that are addressed via politics emerge from within that aggregation. Politics is a tool for mitigating disputes arising from divergences of values or conflicts of interests within "the people", so the idea of treating it as something that expresses a singular set of values or interests applicable to the whole is incorrect. > I trust the ccTLD of my country more than the gTLDs that are private entities. The point is that everything is a private entity, even the government-run ones. All institutions are groups of specific people inhabiting a bounded context, and there's no mechanism for effectively making any particular institution accountable to a speculative aggregation of millions, so the distinction of between "public" and "private" is largely meaningless.
  - palata 3y ago
    We seem to be living in pretty different countries :-). > so the distinction of between "public" and "private" is largely meaningless In my country, what's "public" is owned by the government, and the government is elected by the people. There is an obvious difference between what is public and what is private, to the point where it is actually hard for me to imagine that someone living in my country may believe that the distinction is meaningless. > I don't even consider it logically possible for a singular government advancing a singular policy to represent "the people" Imagine that the people elects the government. Not one president, but the whole government. You will end up with elected officials ranging from the left to the right. If more people vote for the right, then there are more officials on the right, but there are still others that are elected on the left/center. For important matters, you have a referendum, where the people can directly vote on the topic at hand. The result of that is that if you always disagree with everything the government does, it means that you are part of a pretty small minority in your country. So you, individually, are not represented by the government, but most of the citizen are. That's the whole point. If you believe that everyone should have a government with which they agree 100% of the time, then that's not possible. But if you believe that, you need to learn how to compromise, for your own sake.