12 ms·

Brian Eno's Theory of Democracy

176 points by akkartik 1y ago

brazzy 1y ago
> Democracy, then, will be stable so long as the expectation of costs and the uncertainty of the future give the losers sufficient incentive to accept that they have lost. Brilliant, and provides a foundation for an idea that I've seen elsewhere: that the true test of a new democracy is not the first democratic elections, but the first transition of power, i.e. the first subsequent election where the incumbent loses.
deleted 1y ago
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James_K 1y ago
The degeneration of American democracy seems an obvious conclusion to the basic premise set out there. Both parties in America are bad, they know they cannot be replaced because of the two party system, and therefore when they lose power, they can be assured they will gain it back again in a few years once people become dissatisfied with the alternative. There is no incentive for parties to better themselves because being bad at their job nets them valuable and necessary private donations from lobbyists with an interest in disabling the proper function of government.
- mettamage 1y ago
  How come it's just a 2 party system and not a multi party system like in some European countries?
  - bazoom42 1y ago
    First-past-the-post tend to lead to two-party systems while proportional representation tend to lead to multi-party systems. But you can’t have proportional representation in presidental elections since only one candidate can win. Countries with multi-party systems tend to have parlimentary systems.
    - Propelloni 1y ago
      And yet the French somehow manage to have a multi-party system while citizens directly vote for the president. And they also have a parliament, as does the USA.
      - crucialfelix 1y ago
        Because they can have two rounds of voting: the first time you vote for who you really want, the second time you choose the lesser evil
        deleted 1y ago
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      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        > And they also have a parliament, as does the USA. A "parliamentary system" is not about just having a parliament (an elected legislature), it is a name for a system where the elected parliament is the paramount power in government, including choosing the head of government. The French have something close to that, the US does not. The French have a semi-presidential system where, as in a parliamentary system, the head of government is the PM elected by the parliament and formally appointed by the President who is the head of state, the US has a (very strong) Presidential system, where the President is head of government (as well as having a Presidential election system that, even ignoring the role of the President, inherently favors duopoly more than the two-round French system.)
    - kubb 1y ago
      The executive body in Switzerland has members from 5 different parties, but it's elected by the federal assembly, not directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)
      - mamonster 1y ago
        Its not really an "election" since they have to stick to the Zauberformel and reproduce the results of the parliament. The only elective part is which "faction" of the party the person will be coming from, i.e "Zürich"/"Bern for UDC/SVP.
  - kybernetikos 1y ago
    Most countries with multi party systems use different methods for selecting their representatives. When you do a straight aggregation of geographical areas in which you take whomever gets the most votes in each area (sometimes called first past the post) it becomes possible for the most disliked party in a country to win, widely geographical distributed concerns (like ecological concerns) become underrepresented, and most relevant to this conversation, having multiple parties that are close to each other is a huge disadvantage compared to having a single party attracting more people. Because of this, countries with this system will usually see smaller parties merge and stabilise on a 2 party government / opposition set up. The study of how different kinds of voting systems work and their advantages, disadvantages and consequences is called social choice theory. There's an interesting theorem called Arrow's theorem that proves that given a certain set of assumptions, there can be no voting system that works exactly as we would like. Sometimes this is used to argue that all systems are equally bad, but I think this is not true at all - even while imperfect, some systems are much better than others.
    - mettamage 1y ago
      You remind me of Veritasium's video [1]. I should rewatch it and pay actual attention. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk
  - mettamage 1y ago
    That question got a downvote? I wonder why. It's a genuine question. Why can't good faith be assumed? Edit: I get that people downvote this comment since it's always controversial to ask. I personally always ask when I am more curious about the answer and am willing to burn any potential karma over it. Asking for feedback is more important. I'm just genuinely surprised about the other one.
    - meristohm 1y ago
      I appreciated your question. I don't really know the answer, and I grew up in the USA. Maybe someone took it as a rhetorical question?
      - fuzzfactor 1y ago
        The early USA gave rise to a party known as the Democratic-Republicans which had the critical mass of officials and candidates to rival the Federalists and eventually dominate them so badly that by 1824 no opposing party even had a candidate for President. There were actually 4 candidates on the ballot though, but they were all from the same Democratic-Republican party. In that case none had enough electoral votes, so Jackson won that one when it was decided by the House. He had a total nationwide popular vote of 151,271, so you have to figure that each vote had so much of a stronger voice back then under a system quite similar to today. Unless you were there I don't think the difference in scale would be easy to fully comprehend. The party was supposedly doing well in lesser races across the growing US too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic-Republican_Party_presidential_tickets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic-Republican_... Then apparently the party just kind of split up and re-organized into the "two-party" system that has continued to dominate ever since. There was no threat until decades later when the Free Silver parties arose based strongly on reversing the trend where increasing economic opportunity was being systematically pushed further beyond reach of average citizens, in the face of bonanza precious metal discoveries that would have been able to pull the whole population ahead of Europe decades sooner if the Free Silvers would have had their way. Bipartisan effort was resurrected as if from a single party again, and the third party was crushed by a well-maintained machine which was bigger than either one of the major parties on their own. Before the citizens could be allowed to get a little taste, the Silvers were assimilated by the Democrats in a platform expansion that was over-dramatized but badly diluted their objectives. It does seem to be the first real big platform deviation between the Democrats & Republicans to start off the 20th century with, but the Silver supporters continued to be systematically disadvantaged for decades to come. No third party movement has presented that level of threat to include such economic clout, but if so, deeply rooted underhanded countermeasures would be deployed, it would apparently take more than anyone could imagine, so no third party for you.
  - ronnieboy493 1y ago
    Not a direct cause but popped into my head: Previous to 1988 the League of Women Voters[0] handled presidential debates. A fully independent outside organization. Since then, the Commission on Presidential Debates[1] set rules for admittance to president debates. The CPD was founded jointly by Republicans and Democrats and is controlled solely by both parties. At best, there _appears_ to be a large, gaping conflict of interest when it comes to admitting candidates to presidential debates. In 1992 Ross Perot was invited to the debates as a third option. In 1996 Clinton and Dole successfully argued for Perot to be excluded from the debates as he had no "realistic chance to win" [2]. Perot aside, what happened was downright anti-democratic and further enforced the two party system. Now that I'm on this...I'll do another example of this abuse of power. Candidates from third parties have been arrested for protesting outside presidential debates [3,4]. Even if the protests broke the law, arresting opponents for asking to be given a podium to speak at feels bad. --- [0] https://www.lwv.org https://www.lwv.org [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Debates# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Deb... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/18/perot-is-rejected-by-debates-panel/73752026-ca60-4e61-90e2-453e6adf038d/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/18/p... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jill-stein-arrest-green-party-presidential-debate https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jill-s... [4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm
    - notahacker 1y ago
      Beyond that, a quirk of the American system in many states is registering your party affiliation at the time you register votes so that you can participate in primaries. When you've got >45% of registered voters identifying as being a supporter of one of the major two parties closely enough to add it to their name on the electoral roll, it's not exactly an encouraging environment to break that status quo Other majoritarian democratic systems often also converge into two party (or two and a bit party, or two parties per region systems) but few seem to normalise voting for the same party every time in quite the same way.
      - ronnieboy493 1y ago
  - isaacremuant 1y ago
    The European systems, I'd argue are absolutely worse than many of the "direct republic" systems in the US and other American countries because in the European systems there's a pretense of "consensus" reaching and it mostly ends up preserving an elite status quo and hiding any problems. That's why there's such a big tendency of nanny stating and censorship. It's entrenched in a bureocratic way. The direct vote gets a better chance at subverting the system radically and that's a good thing. Regardless of criticism from the losers about "populism". The end result is great for democracy and actual change.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Because the legislature uses single member districts with essentially either majority, plurality, or some form of two-round runoff elections, and the executive uses indirect elections where the electors are (for the largest part) elected as statewide at-large slates by winner-take-all plurality. This makes, outside of very unusual circumstances, voting for other than one of the two leading parties ineffective in the normal case, and where it has any effect most likely it will shift the result from the least-unacceptable of the major parties to the most. Many European countries use varieties of proportional representation (most commonly either party list proportional or mixed member proportional), and have a parliamentary system (so that there is not a separately-elected executive administration -- there may be an elected President but they tend to be a head of state and not head of government -- whereas in the US the executive election is even more heavily tilted to support two-party dominance than the legislative system, though the legislative election system is still the more important piece of the problem.)
  - existencebox 1y ago
    While I normally keep the political threads at arms length, this is an interesting enough game/voting-theory question that I'm honestly surprised no one has linked the fact that this is a well-studied effect, to the point that it has a specific name: Duverger's Law. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Both parties in America are bad, they know they cannot be replaced because of the two party system Yes, the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists know that they cannot be replaced because of the two party system. (Likewise, neither faces the threat of, if it fails to be replaced, being completely re-oriented in a political realignment.) It's not as if, currently, scholars disagree about whether the US is in its Sixth or Seventh Party system -- the two major parties are dominant, stable, and forever unchanging.
  - James_K 1y ago
    Do you think "political parties in America never change" is a steel man interpretation of my comment? I would suggest there is material difference between my statement "the parties have little electoral incentive to change" and your interpretation "they do not change". In my view, the latter is hyperbolic but reasonable, and the former is outright true. The parties would clearly not act as they do if people had other options to vote for.
whatever1 1y ago
Democracy & separation of powers stand for something simple: Over long horizons, everyone is wrong. Take any governance system that is in power for too long. It becomes rotten and it serves its own purposes. Democracy breaks that downwards spiral. It is not a stable system, it is not predictable, it is not cheap to operate, heck it’s not even guaranteed that it will work. But it prevents the certain path to self-destruction.
- mtsr 1y ago
  And there are actually more flavors of democracy that have been used to break this death spiral: - ostracism, where the people voted to ban a person who was too mighty or dangerous from the city of Athens for a period of 10 years; - random selection of (some kind of) representatives. This has predictable downsides, but ensures fair representation and prevents the existence of a political class.
  - noduerme 1y ago
    Does the Roman republic's tradition of appointing a dictator count? Do "illiberal democracies" with quasi-kings like Orban, Erdogan, Maduro, et al, still count as something comparable, or are these the downside of that spiral? Obviously everything that works, works until it doesn't.
    - whatever1 1y ago
      The longer a regime’s power is aligned with the establishment, the less democratic it becomes. There’s no clear-cut distinction between democracy or not democracy. However, if a leader remains in power for decades, it’s highly probable that the establishment has a firm grip on the reins and is unlikely to relinquish control.
    - cjfd 1y ago
      Appointing a dictator for a period of a year in case of emergency is compatible with democracy. Appointing a dictator for life is not. Mainly because the dictator for the period of a year is, after that year, still accountable. Orban, Erdogan, and Maduro are on various stages of the road from democracy to non-democracy. Regarding the Romans another matter is of course that only a small part of the population has any influence on the senate, so it is in fact clearly not a democracy. If I have to judge what is a democracy, I am going back quite a while to what I learned in high school as the definition of a democracy. "A democracy is a form of government where the three branches of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial branch are separated and the legislative branch is in the hands of representatives elected by the people."
selecsosi 1y ago
I'm a fan of Joseph Tainter's analysis around organization of societies and issues around collapse being related to diminishing marginal returns. I think there's a lot to that position when you look at the general political party agendas. Technocratic solutions trying to squeeze more blood from the stone while providing less and less to participants (I have less of a theory on effectiveness for any given action, this is more of an observation). https://risk.princeton.edu/img/Historical_Collapse_Resources/Tainter_The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies_ch_1_2_5_6.pdf https://risk.princeton.edu/img/Historical_Collapse_Resources...
- prox 1y ago
  What is your theory, if you are willing to share?
- svilen_dobrev 1y ago
  you might be onto something here. some time ago i discovered Wardley maps [1] (about company's "landscape" and strategy there), and one thing that stick with me was this: there are 4 levels/stages of development there - genesis, custom-built, product, commodity. With three transitions, made by different kind of people - Pioneers, Settlers, Town-planners. And the last one, mass-production, is about "ruthless removal of deviation". i guess these "diminishing returns" in keeping long-time same-thing (democracy?) have something in common with the removal of deviations/variety.. [1] https://feststelltaste.github.io/wardley-maps-book/#_the_first_map https://feststelltaste.github.io/wardley-maps-book/#_the_fir...
derelicta 1y ago
[flagged]
- foo42 1y ago
  what the heck has skin pigment to do with anything?
- lurk2 1y ago
  If dialectics could predict the future, you would have earned enough money to finance the revolution by now.
  - derelicta 1y ago
    That's not how it works. However you can see its success in China, Vietnam and Laos, countries that happen to now significantly cripple the world hegemon's economic foundation. Maybe if they studied it, westerners would find a way to reverse the century of humiliation they are about to face.
    - lurk2 1y ago
      > That's not how it works. If that’s not how it works then the framework isn’t useful which is why it isn’t taken seriously. > However you can see its success in China, Vietnam and Laos, countries that happen to now significantly cripple the world hegemon's economic foundation. What do you think these countries are doing that has significantly crippled the American economy?
vintermann 1y ago
> This post’s title is a little cheeky. Brian Eno does not have an explicit theory of democracy that I know of Well I do know he's politically active and worked with Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky. So it's more than a little cheeky.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  Plus Eno is brilliant, which is a far cry from most politicians. In music his works can sometimes be considered way different than most, because of even further distance from the familiar composer/songwriter/conductor/bandleader paradigm. Even more so than things like pure jazz improvisation which can be one of the most "democratic" combos where each person has equal creative input and a wider-than-average freedom of expression. Sometimes the bandleader here is actually voted into position as the one most qualified to do the unavoidable "guidance" tasks of leading even free-form musicians. As "opposed" to classical orchestral works where each musician's part is well-prescribed, they may have an equal voice among themselves but this is art intended to express the composer's efforts, overwhelmingly more than each individual musician's talent. The conductor here can be more like a dictator and get away with it more often because this tradition has much closer roots to medieval practices. All these ways, it's the resulting sound that counts to the most significant degree, and it can be a wonder to behold across the spectrum. Now if there's one type of conductor or bandleader who would be most suitable under all conditions, I would have to describe their most valuable quality as being "magnanimous". Otherwise you can not expect the music to be as satisfying as it could be from the same talented underlying musicians.
kstenerud 1y ago
Unfortunately, this is a little too simplistic. A democracy doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are competing nations that are at work to undo or subjugate yours, and this never stops. We've lived a charmed life these past 80 years that are unlike any in the history of the planet. American wealth and power are what brought this unprecedented stability to the western world, but it has been eroding. As it erodes, the flaws in the American system begin to show, and then fray. The very means by which Americans elect automatically pushes it into a two party system, which is by nature polarizing, especially when external pressures come to bear. It's also incredibly difficult to change course safely when so many people are involved (this affects all organizations, which is why startups can eat their lunch). Assuming that you can dynamically rise to the challenge is naive at best. Federation only amplifies the problem, as you simply add more uneven competitors to the national riches.
- jemmyw 1y ago
  I don't know, it doesn't seem simplistic in conclusion. The article describes a dynamic environment and you're just postulating further variation than described there. That doesn't mean the ideas don't agree or that the general formula isn't sufficiently complex to incorporate more nuance than the article lays out. The linked solution isn't as interesting, mainly because the idea of there being a solution seems the simplistic part. It is a system and it will play out.
- HappMacDonald 1y ago
  I could cite dozens of times a society has gone 80 years (4-5 generations) without serious threat from foreign parties. How is our case unlike those? The entire world has seen greater technical advances in the past 80 years than any time before, but zero percent of that is related to the politics of any one nation: either causally or effectually.
  - ultrasandwich 1y ago
    Is the last sentence satire? I can't really tell. Literally entire fields of study are dedicated to this, including one at Harvard. https://sts.hks.harvard.edu/about/whatissts.html https://sts.hks.harvard.edu/about/whatissts.html
thom 1y ago
Ah, so it turns out the solution to the centre not holding is to create as many falconry schools as possible, hoping to yield a dynamic system of falcons in a variety of overlapping gyres, so that at least some remain in hearing distance of a falconer? Big if true.
notepad0x90 1y ago
For a democracy to make sense, the people need to be educated enough to understand policy that affects them and they need access to accurate and timely information (a functioning 4th estate). If either of those two are false, then full democracy becomes a force of destruction and harm. Partial democracy where local governance is democratic but provincial and national level governance cannot be directed by the voice of the people is more tenable. Contrary to common sentiment, there is nothing about democracy that makes it inherently correct. democracy isn't a religion and the form of governance a nation chooses should be adjusted and tuned over time. I won't comment on current matters, but I will say that education and press should have been fundamental institutions of the American republic, the same way the supreme court and the house of reps are. It isn't enough that the freedom (and responsibility!) of the press is a right, an organization to manage and protect it should have been established, as should have an organization to maintain and police education.
- RhysU 1y ago
  > Contrary to common sentiment, there is nothing about democracy that makes it inherently correct. "Least bad" is all anyone claims.
  - Swenrekcah 1y ago
    True, but even “least bad” is not correct unless the public is well informed [as in not being fed misinformation] and in a rational state of mind [as in not scared of or trained to despise the jews, immigrants, woke etc.]. The difference in election outcomes around the 1930s, 1990s and 2020s can be mostly explained by these factors.
    - harimau777 1y ago
      Perhaps it would be more useful to consider "least bad" over a reasonable period of time. That is to say, there are probably times when, due to the factors you mention, the people steer democracy to do something bad that a strong dictator or group of elders would not have done. However, over a given period of time, it's likely that a democracy does less bad things then the alternatives.
chaosprint 1y ago
reading about Eno's ideas on organization and variety makes me want to share some perspectives directly from my experience with music performance practice, specifically in live coding. For a long time, the common practice in live coding, which you might see on platforms like Flok.cc (https://flok.cc https://flok.cc) supporting various interesting languages, has been like this: Everyone gets their own 'space' or editor. From there, they send messages to a central audio server to control their own sound synthesis. This is heavily influenced by architectures like SuperCollider's client-server model, where the server is seen as a neutral entity. Crucially, this relies a lot on social rules, not system guarantees. You could technically control someone else's track, or even mute everything. People generally restrain themselves. A downside is that one person's error can sometimes crash the entire server for everyone. Later, while developing my own live coding language, Glicol (https://glicol.org https://glicol.org), I started exploring a different approach, beginning with a very naive version: I implemented a shared editor, much like Google Docs. Everyone types in the same space, and what you see is (ideally) what you hear, a direct code-to-sound mapping. The problems with this naive system were significant. You couldn't even reliably re-run the code, because you couldn't guarantee if a teammate was halfway through typing 0.1 (maybe they only typed 0.) or had only typed part of a keyword. So, I improved the Glicol system: We still use a shared interface for coding, but there's a kind of consensus mechanism. When you press Cmd+Enter (or equivalent), the code doesn't execute instantly. Instead, it's like raising your hand – it signals "I'm ready". The code only updates after everyone involved has signaled they are ready. This gives the last person to signal 'ready' a bit more responsibility to ensure the musical code change makes sense. I'm just sharing these experiences from the music-making side, without judgment on which approach is better.
emsign 1y ago
And the method by which autocrats and fascists destroy democracy is make people believe, that when a party loses and it's being replaced by another party, that the ruling "elite" isn't really replaced. They know what part of democracy they have to discredit. This is what the AfD in Germany is doing: they say EVERY party except the AfD belongs to the "block" of "Altparteien" meaning "old parties". There's only two parties really in Germany left, according to the AfD, the "real opposition party" namely the AfD, and then there's the other party, a hegemonial woke block of "Altparteien". Politicians who cast such doubt into the democratic principle that a government can lose its power, those politicians are up to destroying democracy and the very principle that they have to step down.
- jack_h 1y ago
  > And the method by which autocrats and fascists destroy democracy is make people believe, that when a party loses and it's being replaced by another party, that the ruling "elite" isn't really replaced. I think this line of argument requires some self-scrutiny. If you're suggesting that people are being manipulated into believing there's a ruling class of elites that span the traditional parties then you have to be willing to examine the possibility that you have been manipulated into dismissing that concern prematurely yourself. Propaganda absolutely exists, but assuming that it is the driving force behind opposing views in a democratic system turns valid concerns into illegitimate concerns which leads to disaffection by those who legitimately hold it. > There's only two parties really in Germany left, according to the AfD, the "real opposition party" namely the AfD, and then there's the other party, a hegemonial woke block of "Altparteien". This isn't unique to Germany. In the US, many call it the "uniparty" which consists of establishment/neocon Republicans and Democrats. In the UK the Reform party portrays both Labour and the Conservatives as indistinguishable. France's National Rally makes similar arguments from what I understand. It seems to be a recurring pattern. The rise of these alternative parties across Western democracies suggests that a significant portion of the electorate feels under-represented politically. From their perspective the political establishment dismisses their concerns while simultaneously labeling the alternative parties that address these concerns as being anti-democratic. I think this is a very dangerous place for any sort of democracy to be in.
keiferski 1y ago
As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. Not so long ago there was a common distinction between capital-D Democracy the political system and small-d democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses. You don’t see this idea expressed much anymore, and even the expression “making something more democratic” almost always implies a reference to the political system, not the the second sense. This distinction is useful, because one of the biggest trends of the technological age is the capital-D version supplanting and erasing the small-d version. Almost all of the institutional “defenders of democracy” have essentially no interest in small-d democratization processes, because they are themselves in the driver’s seat in the political democratic system. This leads them to ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people, which leads to populism, which is of course the biggest global political trend of the last decade. This is kind of a shame for tech in particular, because for the most part technology has been a democratizing (small-d sense) force throughout history. Phones, computers, cars, on and on: all examples of expensive exclusive technologies that became democratized and accessible to everyone. And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself.
- atmosx 1y ago
  > democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses […] Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it’s the opposite.
- rayiner 1y ago
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  - fifticon 1y ago
    as I understand it, populism is when you exploit 'popular' causes to get a mass backing to bring yourself into, and to stay in, power. It is opportunistic, 'goal justifies means' philosophy. So, you don't really have orinciples or a cause, apart from 'I should be in charge'. It also means voters, if they are capable of judging that, cant really trust you, because you will switch causes whenever it suits you. In my own country, I could name politicians who always carried the same color as the reigning political movement, and who would switch when the winds change, because their real principle was 'be on the winning side'.
smitty1e 1y ago
> Przeworski’s theory starts from a simple seeming claim: that “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” I like this, but a more general point is that at all scales, we need to resolve the tension tension between the singular and the plural, the individual and the group, the `int` and `[int]`. Results vary between Milton Friedman's famous pencil to the devastation of war.
t0bia_s 1y ago
Cardew's score expect singers able to recognize tones, sing them and hear harmony. Im not sure if this analogy could work for general society. Probably most people don't even know if they are able to sing a tone they hear.
metalman 1y ago
without a constitution that is the absolute definition of peoples rights and government power in an easily understood and brief document, you have nothing to govern, there is no law, just deciders, chosen in a popularity contest, each hopeing for a chance at dynastic power. the current situation highlights exactly what you get with an "amended" constitution the fundamental question is do we want a world where indivuals have very strong personal rights to themselves and there property, or do we want to meddle, pick, and choose, deciding this way and that....since the answer is very, very , clearly that most wish to meddle and decide about every little thing, then they can only complain about what they,have done, can do, will do again. It is impossible to meddle ,choose and decide our way into a prosperous, sustainable, just, and happy civilisation. pick a lane......
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  > It is impossible to meddle ,choose and decide our way into a prosperous, sustainable, just, and happy civilisation Asserted without evidence. > the answer is very, very , clearly that most wish to meddle and decide about every little thing Asserted without evidence. Most people don't want to be involved in decision making at all - witness participation in civic institutions and groups. Most people simply want a working system which gives them the right amount and the right kinds of liberty (in all possible senses) and safety. They may choose to "meddle" when they perceive these goals as not being met.
deleted 1y ago
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gsky 1y ago
I came to a conclusion that democracy is not as good as I thought initially. It has be replaced with a better system quickly or else we are going to loose all advancements humanity made so far
- Hashex129542 1y ago
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- pstuart 1y ago
  And what is that better system? To date, it appears to be the "least worst" option. Regardless, the two-party system has to go.
  - gsky 1y ago
    Ask yourself whether society is flourishing or crumbling?
    - pstuart 1y ago
      It's doing both, depending on one's station in life. Look at what's happening now in the US as it's democracy is getting snuffed out: it's not looking good.
  - Hashex129542 1y ago
    Democracy isn't better system either least worst. It's top most worst system. It's giving power to criminals only. 2 peoples saying 1+1 = 10 and a human saying 1+1 = 2 In democracy theory 10 is very correct answer. They don't consider the answer 2 even as experiment. Now you will argue for the answer 10 only. That's crime in general. But technically you can use the loop hole to argue for Democracy. Democracy = Demo Crazy!
    - pstuart 1y ago
      All those words and yet you did not answer my question: what is the better alternative?
rayiner 1y ago
[flagged]
- notahacker 1y ago
  This obviously depends significantly on the social scientist, but in general, a damn sight more than the people that were convinced they knew better than the social scientists...
  - rayiner 1y ago
    Such as?
thrance 1y ago
I'd argue that the instability of our democracies and their tendency to break down into fascism isn't an intrinsic property of theirs. Rather, this instability is fueled by growing power imbalances among the economic classes. Unless we ever address the issue of rampant capital accumulation in the hands of the few, we are condemned to suffer fascism, propped-up by an all-powerful oligarchical class, every 80 years or so. Economic disparities were at their lowest after WWII, and have been steadily rising ever since. They have now surpassed what they were at their worst, before FDR and his New Deal. Discontent is rising, and neither party is addressing the real issue. Not the weakly neoliberal democrats, and certainly not the republicans, too busy scapegoating migrants and LGBT people.
Hashex129542 1y ago
[flagged]
antics9 1y ago
I really like his talk about basic income and communities role in fostering ideas: ”Although great new ideas are articulated by individuals they are nearly always generated by communities.” https://archive.org/details/brian-eno-on-basic-income https://archive.org/details/brian-eno-on-basic-income
dzink 1y ago
Feedback accepted and acted upon by those in power is what any country really needs. Uncertainty for those in power means they would take feedack. Democracy give each person over a certain age a vote and a stake in the outcome. Populism promises anything, including the impossible to draw in votes. Fascism herds the voters by scaring them away from the opposition - an easy benchmark is to check if you know anyone directly who has been impacted by the "scares" they promote. Autocrats accept feedback by only those who pay them with political or financial favors. They may use any of the above methods to gain power and then use violence and complete control of media to retain it.
codr7 1y ago
We need a new game, this one is so full of loop holes by now that practical implementations are the opposite of the idea. Same with Agile in the form of Scrum. Humans are very good at playing games.
srhtftw 1y ago
> This post’s title is a little cheeky. Brian Eno does not have an explicit theory of democracy that I know of, although he is visibly and emphatically committed to its practice. But Eno’s arguments about the arts tell us important things about how democracy ought work, and what kinds of democratic stability and variety we ought aspire to. So... clickbait.
keybored 1y ago
Democracy is complicated in practice and has a complicated history. But the theory is simple. Most of my own studies into the subject was learning and conceptualizing the wrong-headed mainstream conceptions of democracy. No useful theory of democracy involves game theory. As a democrat the idea of social scientists maintaining a quasi-mechanical machine offends me. Politics needs less eggheads. Then there’s the part about humility about Trump coming to power. Well by your own admission then your theories were just bad. People ranging from Richard Rorty to Noam Chomsky had predicted that someone like Trump could come to power if the current trajectory of the time kept on going. That was in the 90’s. The quote about parties losing power isn’t true. America has an undemocratic duopoly. But I guess “fear” might be the keyword. Since neither party seem to truly fear it.
Hashex129542 1y ago
Democracy is Regional-Majority-Chauvinism!
hoseja 1y ago
Democracy: process of arbitrage of elite interests via contest to capture the mass media propaganda machine.

176 points by akkartik 1y ago

> Democracy, then, will be stable so long as the expectation of costs and the uncertainty of the future give the losers sufficient incentive to accept that they have lost. Brilliant, and provides a foundation for an idea that I've seen elsewhere: that the true test of a new democracy is not the first democratic elections, but the first transition of power, i.e. the first subsequent election where the incumbent loses.

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James_K 1y ago

The degeneration of American democracy seems an obvious conclusion to the basic premise set out there. Both parties in America are bad, they know they cannot be replaced because of the two party system, and therefore when they lose power, they can be assured they will gain it back again in a few years once people become dissatisfied with the alternative. There is no incentive for parties to better themselves because being bad at their job nets them valuable and necessary private donations from lobbyists with an interest in disabling the proper function of government.

mettamage 1y ago
How come it's just a 2 party system and not a multi party system like in some European countries?
- bazoom42 1y ago
  First-past-the-post tend to lead to two-party systems while proportional representation tend to lead to multi-party systems. But you can’t have proportional representation in presidental elections since only one candidate can win. Countries with multi-party systems tend to have parlimentary systems.
  - Propelloni 1y ago
    And yet the French somehow manage to have a multi-party system while citizens directly vote for the president. And they also have a parliament, as does the USA.
    - crucialfelix 1y ago
      Because they can have two rounds of voting: the first time you vote for who you really want, the second time you choose the lesser evil
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > And they also have a parliament, as does the USA. A "parliamentary system" is not about just having a parliament (an elected legislature), it is a name for a system where the elected parliament is the paramount power in government, including choosing the head of government. The French have something close to that, the US does not. The French have a semi-presidential system where, as in a parliamentary system, the head of government is the PM elected by the parliament and formally appointed by the President who is the head of state, the US has a (very strong) Presidential system, where the President is head of government (as well as having a Presidential election system that, even ignoring the role of the President, inherently favors duopoly more than the two-round French system.)
  - kubb 1y ago
    The executive body in Switzerland has members from 5 different parties, but it's elected by the federal assembly, not directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)
    - mamonster 1y ago
      Its not really an "election" since they have to stick to the Zauberformel and reproduce the results of the parliament. The only elective part is which "faction" of the party the person will be coming from, i.e "Zürich"/"Bern for UDC/SVP.
- kybernetikos 1y ago
  Most countries with multi party systems use different methods for selecting their representatives. When you do a straight aggregation of geographical areas in which you take whomever gets the most votes in each area (sometimes called first past the post) it becomes possible for the most disliked party in a country to win, widely geographical distributed concerns (like ecological concerns) become underrepresented, and most relevant to this conversation, having multiple parties that are close to each other is a huge disadvantage compared to having a single party attracting more people. Because of this, countries with this system will usually see smaller parties merge and stabilise on a 2 party government / opposition set up. The study of how different kinds of voting systems work and their advantages, disadvantages and consequences is called social choice theory. There's an interesting theorem called Arrow's theorem that proves that given a certain set of assumptions, there can be no voting system that works exactly as we would like. Sometimes this is used to argue that all systems are equally bad, but I think this is not true at all - even while imperfect, some systems are much better than others.
  - mettamage 1y ago
    You remind me of Veritasium's video [1]. I should rewatch it and pay actual attention. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk
- mettamage 1y ago
  That question got a downvote? I wonder why. It's a genuine question. Why can't good faith be assumed? Edit: I get that people downvote this comment since it's always controversial to ask. I personally always ask when I am more curious about the answer and am willing to burn any potential karma over it. Asking for feedback is more important. I'm just genuinely surprised about the other one.
  - meristohm 1y ago
    I appreciated your question. I don't really know the answer, and I grew up in the USA. Maybe someone took it as a rhetorical question?
    - fuzzfactor 1y ago
      The early USA gave rise to a party known as the Democratic-Republicans which had the critical mass of officials and candidates to rival the Federalists and eventually dominate them so badly that by 1824 no opposing party even had a candidate for President. There were actually 4 candidates on the ballot though, but they were all from the same Democratic-Republican party. In that case none had enough electoral votes, so Jackson won that one when it was decided by the House. He had a total nationwide popular vote of 151,271, so you have to figure that each vote had so much of a stronger voice back then under a system quite similar to today. Unless you were there I don't think the difference in scale would be easy to fully comprehend. The party was supposedly doing well in lesser races across the growing US too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic-Republican_Party_presidential_tickets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Democratic-Republican_... Then apparently the party just kind of split up and re-organized into the "two-party" system that has continued to dominate ever since. There was no threat until decades later when the Free Silver parties arose based strongly on reversing the trend where increasing economic opportunity was being systematically pushed further beyond reach of average citizens, in the face of bonanza precious metal discoveries that would have been able to pull the whole population ahead of Europe decades sooner if the Free Silvers would have had their way. Bipartisan effort was resurrected as if from a single party again, and the third party was crushed by a well-maintained machine which was bigger than either one of the major parties on their own. Before the citizens could be allowed to get a little taste, the Silvers were assimilated by the Democrats in a platform expansion that was over-dramatized but badly diluted their objectives. It does seem to be the first real big platform deviation between the Democrats & Republicans to start off the 20th century with, but the Silver supporters continued to be systematically disadvantaged for decades to come. No third party movement has presented that level of threat to include such economic clout, but if so, deeply rooted underhanded countermeasures would be deployed, it would apparently take more than anyone could imagine, so no third party for you.
- ronnieboy493 1y ago
  Not a direct cause but popped into my head: Previous to 1988 the League of Women Voters[0] handled presidential debates. A fully independent outside organization. Since then, the Commission on Presidential Debates[1] set rules for admittance to president debates. The CPD was founded jointly by Republicans and Democrats and is controlled solely by both parties. At best, there _appears_ to be a large, gaping conflict of interest when it comes to admitting candidates to presidential debates. In 1992 Ross Perot was invited to the debates as a third option. In 1996 Clinton and Dole successfully argued for Perot to be excluded from the debates as he had no "realistic chance to win" [2]. Perot aside, what happened was downright anti-democratic and further enforced the two party system. Now that I'm on this...I'll do another example of this abuse of power. Candidates from third parties have been arrested for protesting outside presidential debates [3,4]. Even if the protests broke the law, arresting opponents for asking to be given a podium to speak at feels bad. --- [0] https://www.lwv.org https://www.lwv.org [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Debates# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Deb... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/18/perot-is-rejected-by-debates-panel/73752026-ca60-4e61-90e2-453e6adf038d/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/18/p... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jill-stein-arrest-green-party-presidential-debate https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jill-s... [4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm
  - notahacker 1y ago
    Beyond that, a quirk of the American system in many states is registering your party affiliation at the time you register votes so that you can participate in primaries. When you've got >45% of registered voters identifying as being a supporter of one of the major two parties closely enough to add it to their name on the electoral roll, it's not exactly an encouraging environment to break that status quo Other majoritarian democratic systems often also converge into two party (or two and a bit party, or two parties per region systems) but few seem to normalise voting for the same party every time in quite the same way.
    - ronnieboy493 1y ago
- isaacremuant 1y ago
  The European systems, I'd argue are absolutely worse than many of the "direct republic" systems in the US and other American countries because in the European systems there's a pretense of "consensus" reaching and it mostly ends up preserving an elite status quo and hiding any problems. That's why there's such a big tendency of nanny stating and censorship. It's entrenched in a bureocratic way. The direct vote gets a better chance at subverting the system radically and that's a good thing. Regardless of criticism from the losers about "populism". The end result is great for democracy and actual change.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  Because the legislature uses single member districts with essentially either majority, plurality, or some form of two-round runoff elections, and the executive uses indirect elections where the electors are (for the largest part) elected as statewide at-large slates by winner-take-all plurality. This makes, outside of very unusual circumstances, voting for other than one of the two leading parties ineffective in the normal case, and where it has any effect most likely it will shift the result from the least-unacceptable of the major parties to the most. Many European countries use varieties of proportional representation (most commonly either party list proportional or mixed member proportional), and have a parliamentary system (so that there is not a separately-elected executive administration -- there may be an elected President but they tend to be a head of state and not head of government -- whereas in the US the executive election is even more heavily tilted to support two-party dominance than the legislative system, though the legislative election system is still the more important piece of the problem.)
- existencebox 1y ago
  While I normally keep the political threads at arms length, this is an interesting enough game/voting-theory question that I'm honestly surprised no one has linked the fact that this is a well-studied effect, to the point that it has a specific name: Duverger's Law. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
dragonwriter 1y ago
> Both parties in America are bad, they know they cannot be replaced because of the two party system Yes, the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists know that they cannot be replaced because of the two party system. (Likewise, neither faces the threat of, if it fails to be replaced, being completely re-oriented in a political realignment.) It's not as if, currently, scholars disagree about whether the US is in its Sixth or Seventh Party system -- the two major parties are dominant, stable, and forever unchanging.
- James_K 1y ago
  Do you think "political parties in America never change" is a steel man interpretation of my comment? I would suggest there is material difference between my statement "the parties have little electoral incentive to change" and your interpretation "they do not change". In my view, the latter is hyperbolic but reasonable, and the former is outright true. The parties would clearly not act as they do if people had other options to vote for.

whatever1 1y ago

Democracy & separation of powers stand for something simple: Over long horizons, everyone is wrong. Take any governance system that is in power for too long. It becomes rotten and it serves its own purposes. Democracy breaks that downwards spiral. It is not a stable system, it is not predictable, it is not cheap to operate, heck it’s not even guaranteed that it will work. But it prevents the certain path to self-destruction.

mtsr 1y ago
And there are actually more flavors of democracy that have been used to break this death spiral: - ostracism, where the people voted to ban a person who was too mighty or dangerous from the city of Athens for a period of 10 years; - random selection of (some kind of) representatives. This has predictable downsides, but ensures fair representation and prevents the existence of a political class.
- noduerme 1y ago
  Does the Roman republic's tradition of appointing a dictator count? Do "illiberal democracies" with quasi-kings like Orban, Erdogan, Maduro, et al, still count as something comparable, or are these the downside of that spiral? Obviously everything that works, works until it doesn't.
  - whatever1 1y ago
    The longer a regime’s power is aligned with the establishment, the less democratic it becomes. There’s no clear-cut distinction between democracy or not democracy. However, if a leader remains in power for decades, it’s highly probable that the establishment has a firm grip on the reins and is unlikely to relinquish control.
  - cjfd 1y ago
    Appointing a dictator for a period of a year in case of emergency is compatible with democracy. Appointing a dictator for life is not. Mainly because the dictator for the period of a year is, after that year, still accountable. Orban, Erdogan, and Maduro are on various stages of the road from democracy to non-democracy. Regarding the Romans another matter is of course that only a small part of the population has any influence on the senate, so it is in fact clearly not a democracy. If I have to judge what is a democracy, I am going back quite a while to what I learned in high school as the definition of a democracy. "A democracy is a form of government where the three branches of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial branch are separated and the legislative branch is in the hands of representatives elected by the people."

selecsosi 1y ago

I'm a fan of Joseph Tainter's analysis around organization of societies and issues around collapse being related to diminishing marginal returns. I think there's a lot to that position when you look at the general political party agendas. Technocratic solutions trying to squeeze more blood from the stone while providing less and less to participants (I have less of a theory on effectiveness for any given action, this is more of an observation). https://risk.princeton.edu/img/Historical_Collapse_Resources/Tainter_The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies_ch_1_2_5_6.pdf https://risk.princeton.edu/img/Historical_Collapse_Resources...

prox 1y ago
What is your theory, if you are willing to share?
svilen_dobrev 1y ago
you might be onto something here. some time ago i discovered Wardley maps [1] (about company's "landscape" and strategy there), and one thing that stick with me was this: there are 4 levels/stages of development there - genesis, custom-built, product, commodity. With three transitions, made by different kind of people - Pioneers, Settlers, Town-planners. And the last one, mass-production, is about "ruthless removal of deviation". i guess these "diminishing returns" in keeping long-time same-thing (democracy?) have something in common with the removal of deviations/variety.. [1] https://feststelltaste.github.io/wardley-maps-book/#_the_first_map https://feststelltaste.github.io/wardley-maps-book/#_the_fir...

derelicta 1y ago

[flagged]

foo42 1y ago
what the heck has skin pigment to do with anything?
lurk2 1y ago
If dialectics could predict the future, you would have earned enough money to finance the revolution by now.
- derelicta 1y ago
  That's not how it works. However you can see its success in China, Vietnam and Laos, countries that happen to now significantly cripple the world hegemon's economic foundation. Maybe if they studied it, westerners would find a way to reverse the century of humiliation they are about to face.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    > That's not how it works. If that’s not how it works then the framework isn’t useful which is why it isn’t taken seriously. > However you can see its success in China, Vietnam and Laos, countries that happen to now significantly cripple the world hegemon's economic foundation. What do you think these countries are doing that has significantly crippled the American economy?

vintermann 1y ago

> This post’s title is a little cheeky. Brian Eno does not have an explicit theory of democracy that I know of Well I do know he's politically active and worked with Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky. So it's more than a little cheeky.

fuzzfactor 1y ago
Plus Eno is brilliant, which is a far cry from most politicians. In music his works can sometimes be considered way different than most, because of even further distance from the familiar composer/songwriter/conductor/bandleader paradigm. Even more so than things like pure jazz improvisation which can be one of the most "democratic" combos where each person has equal creative input and a wider-than-average freedom of expression. Sometimes the bandleader here is actually voted into position as the one most qualified to do the unavoidable "guidance" tasks of leading even free-form musicians. As "opposed" to classical orchestral works where each musician's part is well-prescribed, they may have an equal voice among themselves but this is art intended to express the composer's efforts, overwhelmingly more than each individual musician's talent. The conductor here can be more like a dictator and get away with it more often because this tradition has much closer roots to medieval practices. All these ways, it's the resulting sound that counts to the most significant degree, and it can be a wonder to behold across the spectrum. Now if there's one type of conductor or bandleader who would be most suitable under all conditions, I would have to describe their most valuable quality as being "magnanimous". Otherwise you can not expect the music to be as satisfying as it could be from the same talented underlying musicians.

kstenerud 1y ago

Unfortunately, this is a little too simplistic. A democracy doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are competing nations that are at work to undo or subjugate yours, and this never stops. We've lived a charmed life these past 80 years that are unlike any in the history of the planet. American wealth and power are what brought this unprecedented stability to the western world, but it has been eroding. As it erodes, the flaws in the American system begin to show, and then fray. The very means by which Americans elect automatically pushes it into a two party system, which is by nature polarizing, especially when external pressures come to bear. It's also incredibly difficult to change course safely when so many people are involved (this affects all organizations, which is why startups can eat their lunch). Assuming that you can dynamically rise to the challenge is naive at best. Federation only amplifies the problem, as you simply add more uneven competitors to the national riches.

jemmyw 1y ago
I don't know, it doesn't seem simplistic in conclusion. The article describes a dynamic environment and you're just postulating further variation than described there. That doesn't mean the ideas don't agree or that the general formula isn't sufficiently complex to incorporate more nuance than the article lays out. The linked solution isn't as interesting, mainly because the idea of there being a solution seems the simplistic part. It is a system and it will play out.
HappMacDonald 1y ago
I could cite dozens of times a society has gone 80 years (4-5 generations) without serious threat from foreign parties. How is our case unlike those? The entire world has seen greater technical advances in the past 80 years than any time before, but zero percent of that is related to the politics of any one nation: either causally or effectually.
- ultrasandwich 1y ago
  Is the last sentence satire? I can't really tell. Literally entire fields of study are dedicated to this, including one at Harvard. https://sts.hks.harvard.edu/about/whatissts.html https://sts.hks.harvard.edu/about/whatissts.html

thom 1y ago

Ah, so it turns out the solution to the centre not holding is to create as many falconry schools as possible, hoping to yield a dynamic system of falcons in a variety of overlapping gyres, so that at least some remain in hearing distance of a falconer? Big if true.

notepad0x90 1y ago

For a democracy to make sense, the people need to be educated enough to understand policy that affects them and they need access to accurate and timely information (a functioning 4th estate). If either of those two are false, then full democracy becomes a force of destruction and harm. Partial democracy where local governance is democratic but provincial and national level governance cannot be directed by the voice of the people is more tenable. Contrary to common sentiment, there is nothing about democracy that makes it inherently correct. democracy isn't a religion and the form of governance a nation chooses should be adjusted and tuned over time. I won't comment on current matters, but I will say that education and press should have been fundamental institutions of the American republic, the same way the supreme court and the house of reps are. It isn't enough that the freedom (and responsibility!) of the press is a right, an organization to manage and protect it should have been established, as should have an organization to maintain and police education.

RhysU 1y ago
> Contrary to common sentiment, there is nothing about democracy that makes it inherently correct. "Least bad" is all anyone claims.
- Swenrekcah 1y ago
  True, but even “least bad” is not correct unless the public is well informed [as in not being fed misinformation] and in a rational state of mind [as in not scared of or trained to despise the jews, immigrants, woke etc.]. The difference in election outcomes around the 1930s, 1990s and 2020s can be mostly explained by these factors.
  - harimau777 1y ago
    Perhaps it would be more useful to consider "least bad" over a reasonable period of time. That is to say, there are probably times when, due to the factors you mention, the people steer democracy to do something bad that a strong dictator or group of elders would not have done. However, over a given period of time, it's likely that a democracy does less bad things then the alternatives.

chaosprint 1y ago

reading about Eno's ideas on organization and variety makes me want to share some perspectives directly from my experience with music performance practice, specifically in live coding. For a long time, the common practice in live coding, which you might see on platforms like Flok.cc (https://flok.cc https://flok.cc) supporting various interesting languages, has been like this: Everyone gets their own 'space' or editor. From there, they send messages to a central audio server to control their own sound synthesis. This is heavily influenced by architectures like SuperCollider's client-server model, where the server is seen as a neutral entity. Crucially, this relies a lot on social rules, not system guarantees. You could technically control someone else's track, or even mute everything. People generally restrain themselves. A downside is that one person's error can sometimes crash the entire server for everyone. Later, while developing my own live coding language, Glicol (https://glicol.org https://glicol.org), I started exploring a different approach, beginning with a very naive version: I implemented a shared editor, much like Google Docs. Everyone types in the same space, and what you see is (ideally) what you hear, a direct code-to-sound mapping. The problems with this naive system were significant. You couldn't even reliably re-run the code, because you couldn't guarantee if a teammate was halfway through typing 0.1 (maybe they only typed 0.) or had only typed part of a keyword. So, I improved the Glicol system: We still use a shared interface for coding, but there's a kind of consensus mechanism. When you press Cmd+Enter (or equivalent), the code doesn't execute instantly. Instead, it's like raising your hand – it signals "I'm ready". The code only updates after everyone involved has signaled they are ready. This gives the last person to signal 'ready' a bit more responsibility to ensure the musical code change makes sense. I'm just sharing these experiences from the music-making side, without judgment on which approach is better.

emsign 1y ago

And the method by which autocrats and fascists destroy democracy is make people believe, that when a party loses and it's being replaced by another party, that the ruling "elite" isn't really replaced. They know what part of democracy they have to discredit. This is what the AfD in Germany is doing: they say EVERY party except the AfD belongs to the "block" of "Altparteien" meaning "old parties". There's only two parties really in Germany left, according to the AfD, the "real opposition party" namely the AfD, and then there's the other party, a hegemonial woke block of "Altparteien". Politicians who cast such doubt into the democratic principle that a government can lose its power, those politicians are up to destroying democracy and the very principle that they have to step down.

jack_h 1y ago
> And the method by which autocrats and fascists destroy democracy is make people believe, that when a party loses and it's being replaced by another party, that the ruling "elite" isn't really replaced. I think this line of argument requires some self-scrutiny. If you're suggesting that people are being manipulated into believing there's a ruling class of elites that span the traditional parties then you have to be willing to examine the possibility that you have been manipulated into dismissing that concern prematurely yourself. Propaganda absolutely exists, but assuming that it is the driving force behind opposing views in a democratic system turns valid concerns into illegitimate concerns which leads to disaffection by those who legitimately hold it. > There's only two parties really in Germany left, according to the AfD, the "real opposition party" namely the AfD, and then there's the other party, a hegemonial woke block of "Altparteien". This isn't unique to Germany. In the US, many call it the "uniparty" which consists of establishment/neocon Republicans and Democrats. In the UK the Reform party portrays both Labour and the Conservatives as indistinguishable. France's National Rally makes similar arguments from what I understand. It seems to be a recurring pattern. The rise of these alternative parties across Western democracies suggests that a significant portion of the electorate feels under-represented politically. From their perspective the political establishment dismisses their concerns while simultaneously labeling the alternative parties that address these concerns as being anti-democratic. I think this is a very dangerous place for any sort of democracy to be in.

keiferski 1y ago

As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. Not so long ago there was a common distinction between capital-D Democracy the political system and small-d democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses. You don’t see this idea expressed much anymore, and even the expression “making something more democratic” almost always implies a reference to the political system, not the the second sense. This distinction is useful, because one of the biggest trends of the technological age is the capital-D version supplanting and erasing the small-d version. Almost all of the institutional “defenders of democracy” have essentially no interest in small-d democratization processes, because they are themselves in the driver’s seat in the political democratic system. This leads them to ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people, which leads to populism, which is of course the biggest global political trend of the last decade. This is kind of a shame for tech in particular, because for the most part technology has been a democratizing (small-d sense) force throughout history. Phones, computers, cars, on and on: all examples of expensive exclusive technologies that became democratized and accessible to everyone. And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself.

atmosx 1y ago
> democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses […] Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it’s the opposite.
rayiner 1y ago
[flagged]
- fifticon 1y ago
  as I understand it, populism is when you exploit 'popular' causes to get a mass backing to bring yourself into, and to stay in, power. It is opportunistic, 'goal justifies means' philosophy. So, you don't really have orinciples or a cause, apart from 'I should be in charge'. It also means voters, if they are capable of judging that, cant really trust you, because you will switch causes whenever it suits you. In my own country, I could name politicians who always carried the same color as the reigning political movement, and who would switch when the winds change, because their real principle was 'be on the winning side'.

smitty1e 1y ago

> Przeworski’s theory starts from a simple seeming claim: that “democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.” I like this, but a more general point is that at all scales, we need to resolve the tension tension between the singular and the plural, the individual and the group, the `int` and `[int]`. Results vary between Milton Friedman's famous pencil to the devastation of war.

t0bia_s 1y ago

Cardew's score expect singers able to recognize tones, sing them and hear harmony. Im not sure if this analogy could work for general society. Probably most people don't even know if they are able to sing a tone they hear.

metalman 1y ago

without a constitution that is the absolute definition of peoples rights and government power in an easily understood and brief document, you have nothing to govern, there is no law, just deciders, chosen in a popularity contest, each hopeing for a chance at dynastic power. the current situation highlights exactly what you get with an "amended" constitution the fundamental question is do we want a world where indivuals have very strong personal rights to themselves and there property, or do we want to meddle, pick, and choose, deciding this way and that....since the answer is very, very , clearly that most wish to meddle and decide about every little thing, then they can only complain about what they,have done, can do, will do again. It is impossible to meddle ,choose and decide our way into a prosperous, sustainable, just, and happy civilisation. pick a lane......

PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
> It is impossible to meddle ,choose and decide our way into a prosperous, sustainable, just, and happy civilisation Asserted without evidence. > the answer is very, very , clearly that most wish to meddle and decide about every little thing Asserted without evidence. Most people don't want to be involved in decision making at all - witness participation in civic institutions and groups. Most people simply want a working system which gives them the right amount and the right kinds of liberty (in all possible senses) and safety. They may choose to "meddle" when they perceive these goals as not being met.

deleted 1y ago

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gsky 1y ago

I came to a conclusion that democracy is not as good as I thought initially. It has be replaced with a better system quickly or else we are going to loose all advancements humanity made so far

Hashex129542 1y ago
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pstuart 1y ago
And what is that better system? To date, it appears to be the "least worst" option. Regardless, the two-party system has to go.
- gsky 1y ago
  Ask yourself whether society is flourishing or crumbling?
  - pstuart 1y ago
    It's doing both, depending on one's station in life. Look at what's happening now in the US as it's democracy is getting snuffed out: it's not looking good.
- Hashex129542 1y ago
  Democracy isn't better system either least worst. It's top most worst system. It's giving power to criminals only. 2 peoples saying 1+1 = 10 and a human saying 1+1 = 2 In democracy theory 10 is very correct answer. They don't consider the answer 2 even as experiment. Now you will argue for the answer 10 only. That's crime in general. But technically you can use the loop hole to argue for Democracy. Democracy = Demo Crazy!
  - pstuart 1y ago
    All those words and yet you did not answer my question: what is the better alternative?

rayiner 1y ago

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notahacker 1y ago
This obviously depends significantly on the social scientist, but in general, a damn sight more than the people that were convinced they knew better than the social scientists...
- rayiner 1y ago
  Such as?

thrance 1y ago

I'd argue that the instability of our democracies and their tendency to break down into fascism isn't an intrinsic property of theirs. Rather, this instability is fueled by growing power imbalances among the economic classes. Unless we ever address the issue of rampant capital accumulation in the hands of the few, we are condemned to suffer fascism, propped-up by an all-powerful oligarchical class, every 80 years or so. Economic disparities were at their lowest after WWII, and have been steadily rising ever since. They have now surpassed what they were at their worst, before FDR and his New Deal. Discontent is rising, and neither party is addressing the real issue. Not the weakly neoliberal democrats, and certainly not the republicans, too busy scapegoating migrants and LGBT people.

Hashex129542 1y ago

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antics9 1y ago

I really like his talk about basic income and communities role in fostering ideas: ”Although great new ideas are articulated by individuals they are nearly always generated by communities.” https://archive.org/details/brian-eno-on-basic-income https://archive.org/details/brian-eno-on-basic-income

dzink 1y ago

Feedback accepted and acted upon by those in power is what any country really needs. Uncertainty for those in power means they would take feedack. Democracy give each person over a certain age a vote and a stake in the outcome. Populism promises anything, including the impossible to draw in votes. Fascism herds the voters by scaring them away from the opposition - an easy benchmark is to check if you know anyone directly who has been impacted by the "scares" they promote. Autocrats accept feedback by only those who pay them with political or financial favors. They may use any of the above methods to gain power and then use violence and complete control of media to retain it.

codr7 1y ago

We need a new game, this one is so full of loop holes by now that practical implementations are the opposite of the idea. Same with Agile in the form of Scrum. Humans are very good at playing games.

srhtftw 1y ago

> This post’s title is a little cheeky. Brian Eno does not have an explicit theory of democracy that I know of, although he is visibly and emphatically committed to its practice. But Eno’s arguments about the arts tell us important things about how democracy ought work, and what kinds of democratic stability and variety we ought aspire to. So... clickbait.

keybored 1y ago

Democracy is complicated in practice and has a complicated history. But the theory is simple. Most of my own studies into the subject was learning and conceptualizing the wrong-headed mainstream conceptions of democracy. No useful theory of democracy involves game theory. As a democrat the idea of social scientists maintaining a quasi-mechanical machine offends me. Politics needs less eggheads. Then there’s the part about humility about Trump coming to power. Well by your own admission then your theories were just bad. People ranging from Richard Rorty to Noam Chomsky had predicted that someone like Trump could come to power if the current trajectory of the time kept on going. That was in the 90’s. The quote about parties losing power isn’t true. America has an undemocratic duopoly. But I guess “fear” might be the keyword. Since neither party seem to truly fear it.

Hashex129542 1y ago

Democracy is Regional-Majority-Chauvinism!

hoseja 1y ago

Democracy: process of arbitrage of elite interests via contest to capture the mass media propaganda machine.