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Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad d

Plato's "republic" (one of the worst books in human history) and every justification in that book and every book citing it is trotted out to argue for how bad direct democracy is. Now we act like it's not good because Athens got its shit pushed in by Sparta during the Peloponnesian war. Direct democracy is good. One person one vote, on all legislation, actually could work. We haven't even tried at scale in thousands of years. It's telling that my boy Smedly Butler (ask your US marine friends who he is and they will recite his story perfectly or else their bootcamp will have smoked them for it) advocated for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war.

maldonad0 1y ago
The average person (and more if younger) is illiterate these days and unfit to hold any position of significant power. Source: I work with them.
Arainach 1y ago
It's impossible for people to know about every topic. That was true in Plato's day and is dramatically more true now. People defer to what someone on TV or Tiktok told them and have no time to look into facts or primary sources. Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. That or gridlock where you can't get 50% to agree on anything. If you ask people "do you want A, B, C, or D" a majority may well say to do each. If you only have budget for one, getting them to come to consensus is impossible at the scale of direct democracy.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  People don't bother looking into stuff because they know their opinion, and their vote, doesn't really matter. Treat people like children and they start acting like children. For some contrast Switzerland has a sort of defacto direct democracy in that citizens that obtain a relatively small number of votes can bring any issue they desire up for vote. And they have indeed brought issues like Basic Income with the suggested proposal of every single Swiss adult getting around $1700/month. That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it, but it would likely pass by an overwhelming margin in the current state of the United States. But in Switzerland where people actually do have real power, and responsibility, to determine the future of their country, it was rejected by 77%. Instead, back in the states we can look forward to our true political power of getting to choose between Dumbo and Dingbat for our completely unrepresentative representatives.
  - Timwi 1y ago
    > That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it What makes you say that?
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency. In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your family? Probably quite a lot to say the least. Or for a single young guy, how much would you need to pay him to work instead of him being able to play video games and chase tail all day, every day, if he wanted to? And if we're being honest - you can probably remove young as an adjective. I did add "likely" because I used to be a huge advocate for basic income, but my view shifted on it overtime as I gained a greater appreciation for how economies, and even societies in general, function. Or that the large number of billionaires we have are largely due to accounting and speculation (read: total on-paper capitalization of stock market vastly exceeding the amount of money in existence), rather than them actually just making obscene amounts of money.
      - wizzwizz4 1y ago
        > how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets If my needs were otherwise met, and there were clear instructions allowing me to do this in confidence that I wasn't inconveniencing any users of the toilet, I'd do it free. (Cleaning a toilet is less messy than changing a baby, and that's not hard either.) Given proper PPE, I'd do even more "disgusting" jobs, if they were jobs that needed doing: I draw my line at cleaning up sharps, but that's only because I'm not trained. Maintaining communal infrastructure is not a thankless task: you can know that everyone who uses the infrastructure until next maintenance time benefits from your work, which is more than most people can say about their jobs. There are people who take pride in their work, even if you consider that work low-status, and beneath you. Do different work, then! Do you really think most people would live lives of idleness, if not compelled to behave otherwise? If you saw something that needed doing, and you had the means to do it, would you just… walk by? If I may, that says more about you than it does about anyone else.
- aesh2Xa1 1y ago
  Representative systems vest political power into concentrated points of influence. The reps are often as uninformed as the citizens. The US just had some infamous legislation pass that representatives didn't even read, and publicly stated so. The system also makes reps uniquely vulnerable to targeted lobbying, corruption, regulatory capture, and threats. I find much to be faulty with opaque dealings with a few key individuals. Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will.
  - Arainach 1y ago
    >Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will. Have you paid attention to any US or global election since 2016? The special interests stay hidden and their influence works wonders. If direct democracy could have ever worked, that opportunity died the moment social media became popular.
    - aesh2Xa1 1y ago
      You are correct that mass manipulation is a critical issue. However, this vulnerability is shared by any system reliant on voters, including the representative one. It is not a unique flaw of direct democracy. So there are three issues we're talking about in this context: 1. Reps are also uninformed. 2. Social media manipulation of the populace (or, generally, propaganda). 3. Concentrated influence on a handful of legislators. Direct democracy eliminates the third vector. Furthermore, the stakes and incentives for corruption are vastly different. A lobbyist gains far more from corrupting one senator who decides for millions than from swaying individual voters. The return on investment for corrupting concentrated power is orders of magnitude higher. Even if propaganda shapes opinion, the resulting decisions still represent the people's will at that moment. Representatives can betray even that will for personal gain, adding another layer of distortion between what people want and what they get.
  - 1y ago
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. We have those now.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    Direct democracy would replace politicians being vaguely influenced by social media driven trends with government policies decided directly by the social media outrage cycle. I've got no end of complaints about the current system but that doesn't incline me to go for a swim in a manure pit.
lupusreal 1y ago
I say only the patriarchal heads of households should get votes. Isn't that pretty much how Athens did it? No votes for slaves, women, anybody with mixed non-Athenian ancestry, no poors allowed to hold a political office... Anyway, I'm all for putting the sons of politicians on the front line, but don't think that will stop wars. The British Empire was infamous for putting nobleborn men directly in harms way, they would proudly stand up right in the thick of combat making themselves tempting targets and were routinely cut down. In a society with a strong martial tradition this doesn't turn people into peaceniks, if anything it gets people even more excited for wars.
- int_19h 1y ago
  The Brits had this as a custom back when it was viable on the battlefield. They tried to stick to it during WW1 with quite disastrous consequences, which is why they stopped. Well, some brave souls still tried it occasionally in WW2, but any British officer who'd try to do that kind of thing today would be considered an idiot endangering his unit. Strong martial tradition or not, whether combat is seen as desirable depends a lot on the level of personal risk for those involved. Which, by the by, is why feudal nobility was much more enthusiastic about warfare than the peasants - having good armor significantly reduced risks, and chances were good you'd get ransomed if captured. When applied to modern warfare, it pretty much depends on whom you're fighting. If it's a modern army (in the sense of military doctrine first and foremost) against premodern one, whether the latter is guerrilla or state, and you're in the modern army, your chances of survival are pretty good - look at casualty figures for Battle of Mogadishu or Desert Storm. But if you're on the other side, the casualty rate is so high that people need some other motivation to keep fighting (ideology, religion etc); very few would fight for loot or glory under such conditions. And judging by how things are going in Ukraine, two modern armies going at each other isn't much better. Again, hard to be excited about being blown to pieces by an FPV drone the moment you poke your head out of the camo netting.
mrnotcrazy 1y ago
If you think the republic is one of the worst books in human history I would ask what makes a good book? When there are plenty of implementation issues for direct democracy it feels strange to blame Plato... Particularly when the world has benefited from the republic in so many ways.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
staunton 1y ago
Have you ever read the (full) text of any bill that has been passed during the last couple of decades? How about reading all of them? So are you proposing people vote on them without reading them? Or that we write very short bills aimed at a non-lawyer audience, effectively leaving most decisions up to the interpretation by courts? Or something else?
Ray20 1y ago
>advocated for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war. I really like this position from an ethical point of view. But in reality you will be conquered by a neighboring country with different principles in about 3 days.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Voting yes on a war implies you're the one invading.
  - Ray20 1y ago
    So you can just say that the war is defensive - and send those who voted against it to fight anyway? Or how does that work in your head?
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      In a defensive war - there is no vote whether or not to go to war. You are immediately at war because you have been invaded.
      - Ray20 1y ago
        No, that's not how invasions work. Or rather, the defense against invasions does not work that way, unless you plan to lose in about three days.
        somenameforme 1y ago
        Yes it's exactly how it works. You're just looking at things from an American perspective where, owing to geography, we have a negligible chance of having to fight a defensive war. When we do get attacked eventually it's just going to be getting nuked en masse. So instead all we have is 'defensive' rhetoric for the naive. Notable the Department of 'Defense' was literally called the Department of War in more honest times. War, real war - and not just bombing random countries with little to no anti-air defense and then huddling up in microscopic and ultra-defended zones while waving a 'victory' banner while having undisputed control over near 0% of the country, is a slow grueling, and bloody thing. This is how you end up with things like both the USSR and USA losing to Afghanistan, Russia losing to Chechnya, USA losing to Vietnam, and so on endlessly.
p1dda 1y ago
I completely agree about the excellence of Direct Democracy (DD). One of the most common arguments against DD is that: "people aren't smart enough or knowledgeable enough to make important decisions". My reply to this is: and current politicians are? Politicians obviously aren't smarter or more knowledgeable than the average citizen, they are more inclined to act in their own best interest rather than the public's best interest though. We get rid of the middlemen and we get rid of: corruption and the abuse of power. The Swiss are doing excellent with DD!

maldonad0 1y ago

The average person (and more if younger) is illiterate these days and unfit to hold any position of significant power. Source: I work with them.

Arainach 1y ago

It's impossible for people to know about every topic. That was true in Plato's day and is dramatically more true now. People defer to what someone on TV or Tiktok told them and have no time to look into facts or primary sources. Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. That or gridlock where you can't get 50% to agree on anything. If you ask people "do you want A, B, C, or D" a majority may well say to do each. If you only have budget for one, getting them to come to consensus is impossible at the scale of direct democracy.

somenameforme 1y ago
People don't bother looking into stuff because they know their opinion, and their vote, doesn't really matter. Treat people like children and they start acting like children. For some contrast Switzerland has a sort of defacto direct democracy in that citizens that obtain a relatively small number of votes can bring any issue they desire up for vote. And they have indeed brought issues like Basic Income with the suggested proposal of every single Swiss adult getting around $1700/month. That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it, but it would likely pass by an overwhelming margin in the current state of the United States. But in Switzerland where people actually do have real power, and responsibility, to determine the future of their country, it was rejected by 77%. Instead, back in the states we can look forward to our true political power of getting to choose between Dumbo and Dingbat for our completely unrepresentative representatives.
- Timwi 1y ago
  > That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it What makes you say that?
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency. In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your family? Probably quite a lot to say the least. Or for a single young guy, how much would you need to pay him to work instead of him being able to play video games and chase tail all day, every day, if he wanted to? And if we're being honest - you can probably remove young as an adjective. I did add "likely" because I used to be a huge advocate for basic income, but my view shifted on it overtime as I gained a greater appreciation for how economies, and even societies in general, function. Or that the large number of billionaires we have are largely due to accounting and speculation (read: total on-paper capitalization of stock market vastly exceeding the amount of money in existence), rather than them actually just making obscene amounts of money.
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      > how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets If my needs were otherwise met, and there were clear instructions allowing me to do this in confidence that I wasn't inconveniencing any users of the toilet, I'd do it free. (Cleaning a toilet is less messy than changing a baby, and that's not hard either.) Given proper PPE, I'd do even more "disgusting" jobs, if they were jobs that needed doing: I draw my line at cleaning up sharps, but that's only because I'm not trained. Maintaining communal infrastructure is not a thankless task: you can know that everyone who uses the infrastructure until next maintenance time benefits from your work, which is more than most people can say about their jobs. There are people who take pride in their work, even if you consider that work low-status, and beneath you. Do different work, then! Do you really think most people would live lives of idleness, if not compelled to behave otherwise? If you saw something that needed doing, and you had the means to do it, would you just… walk by? If I may, that says more about you than it does about anyone else.
aesh2Xa1 1y ago
Representative systems vest political power into concentrated points of influence. The reps are often as uninformed as the citizens. The US just had some infamous legislation pass that representatives didn't even read, and publicly stated so. The system also makes reps uniquely vulnerable to targeted lobbying, corruption, regulatory capture, and threats. I find much to be faulty with opaque dealings with a few key individuals. Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will.
- Arainach 1y ago
  >Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will. Have you paid attention to any US or global election since 2016? The special interests stay hidden and their influence works wonders. If direct democracy could have ever worked, that opportunity died the moment social media became popular.
  - aesh2Xa1 1y ago
    You are correct that mass manipulation is a critical issue. However, this vulnerability is shared by any system reliant on voters, including the representative one. It is not a unique flaw of direct democracy. So there are three issues we're talking about in this context: 1. Reps are also uninformed. 2. Social media manipulation of the populace (or, generally, propaganda). 3. Concentrated influence on a handful of legislators. Direct democracy eliminates the third vector. Furthermore, the stakes and incentives for corruption are vastly different. A lobbyist gains far more from corrupting one senator who decides for millions than from swaying individual voters. The return on investment for corrupting concentrated power is orders of magnitude higher. Even if propaganda shapes opinion, the resulting decisions still represent the people's will at that moment. Representatives can betray even that will for personal gain, adding another layer of distortion between what people want and what they get.
- 1y ago
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. We have those now.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  Direct democracy would replace politicians being vaguely influenced by social media driven trends with government policies decided directly by the social media outrage cycle. I've got no end of complaints about the current system but that doesn't incline me to go for a swim in a manure pit.

lupusreal 1y ago

I say only the patriarchal heads of households should get votes. Isn't that pretty much how Athens did it? No votes for slaves, women, anybody with mixed non-Athenian ancestry, no poors allowed to hold a political office... Anyway, I'm all for putting the sons of politicians on the front line, but don't think that will stop wars. The British Empire was infamous for putting nobleborn men directly in harms way, they would proudly stand up right in the thick of combat making themselves tempting targets and were routinely cut down. In a society with a strong martial tradition this doesn't turn people into peaceniks, if anything it gets people even more excited for wars.

int_19h 1y ago
The Brits had this as a custom back when it was viable on the battlefield. They tried to stick to it during WW1 with quite disastrous consequences, which is why they stopped. Well, some brave souls still tried it occasionally in WW2, but any British officer who'd try to do that kind of thing today would be considered an idiot endangering his unit. Strong martial tradition or not, whether combat is seen as desirable depends a lot on the level of personal risk for those involved. Which, by the by, is why feudal nobility was much more enthusiastic about warfare than the peasants - having good armor significantly reduced risks, and chances were good you'd get ransomed if captured. When applied to modern warfare, it pretty much depends on whom you're fighting. If it's a modern army (in the sense of military doctrine first and foremost) against premodern one, whether the latter is guerrilla or state, and you're in the modern army, your chances of survival are pretty good - look at casualty figures for Battle of Mogadishu or Desert Storm. But if you're on the other side, the casualty rate is so high that people need some other motivation to keep fighting (ideology, religion etc); very few would fight for loot or glory under such conditions. And judging by how things are going in Ukraine, two modern armies going at each other isn't much better. Again, hard to be excited about being blown to pieces by an FPV drone the moment you poke your head out of the camo netting.

mrnotcrazy 1y ago

If you think the republic is one of the worst books in human history I would ask what makes a good book? When there are plenty of implementation issues for direct democracy it feels strange to blame Plato... Particularly when the world has benefited from the republic in so many ways.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

staunton 1y ago

Have you ever read the (full) text of any bill that has been passed during the last couple of decades? How about reading all of them? So are you proposing people vote on them without reading them? Or that we write very short bills aimed at a non-lawyer audience, effectively leaving most decisions up to the interpretation by courts? Or something else?

Ray20 1y ago

>advocated for a military draft where the draft eligible are only drawn up from the list of folks who voted yes on the war. I really like this position from an ethical point of view. But in reality you will be conquered by a neighboring country with different principles in about 3 days.

somenameforme 1y ago
Voting yes on a war implies you're the one invading.
- Ray20 1y ago
  So you can just say that the war is defensive - and send those who voted against it to fight anyway? Or how does that work in your head?
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    In a defensive war - there is no vote whether or not to go to war. You are immediately at war because you have been invaded.
    - Ray20 1y ago
      No, that's not how invasions work. Or rather, the defense against invasions does not work that way, unless you plan to lose in about three days.
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        Yes it's exactly how it works. You're just looking at things from an American perspective where, owing to geography, we have a negligible chance of having to fight a defensive war. When we do get attacked eventually it's just going to be getting nuked en masse. So instead all we have is 'defensive' rhetoric for the naive. Notable the Department of 'Defense' was literally called the Department of War in more honest times. War, real war - and not just bombing random countries with little to no anti-air defense and then huddling up in microscopic and ultra-defended zones while waving a 'victory' banner while having undisputed control over near 0% of the country, is a slow grueling, and bloody thing. This is how you end up with things like both the USSR and USA losing to Afghanistan, Russia losing to Chechnya, USA losing to Vietnam, and so on endlessly.

p1dda 1y ago

I completely agree about the excellence of Direct Democracy (DD). One of the most common arguments against DD is that: "people aren't smart enough or knowledgeable enough to make important decisions". My reply to this is: and current politicians are? Politicians obviously aren't smarter or more knowledgeable than the average citizen, they are more inclined to act in their own best interest rather than the public's best interest though. We get rid of the middlemen and we get rid of: corruption and the abuse of power. The Swiss are doing excellent with DD!