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The founders created a representative government with a limited franchise and express protections for private property and economic liberty, precisely because o

The founders created a representative government with a limited franchise and express protections for private property and economic liberty, precisely because of the concerns over populist democracy. That's why they provided for an electoral college rather than direct election of the president, and for senators to be selected by state legislatures. The push towards making that republican system more democratic started half a century later with Jacksonian democracy and expansion of the franchise, culminating in the early 1900s with direct election of senators and extending the franchise to women. None of this is new or edgy. Just read the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist papers and you'll see more or less the same debate play out. Hell, here in 2024 we're still having a debate about political control over the central bank, which started in the founding era!

miltonlost 1y ago
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- rayiner 1y ago
  > That's still voting, which is the portion Thiel wants to remove. The founders themselves provided for a narrow franchise! > But based on other comments where you call Republican dismantling of the US government right now just "Orwellian doublespeak", you're just couching a bunch of your right-wing tendencies What is being dismantled? Executive agencies and ancillary entities that are 90% controlled by democrats regardless of who wins the election. There's nothing anti-democratic about that! I'm not "couching" anything. I'm quite openly right wing! But the right-wing guy won the election, promising to do right-wing things! The entities that are preventing him from doing right-wing things definitionally are anti-democratic. Put differently, what some people really mean when they say "democracy" is "liberal democracy." A system of government where the people are allowed to vote for massive taxes to pay for universal healthcare, but not for mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    > Executive agencies and ancillary entities that are 90% controlled by democrats regardless of who wins the election Yeah, uhh, citation needed. Tell us about the 90% of executive agencies that are headed by democrats today.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      It's not just about who is the "head" of the agency. In practice, the career civil service has tremendous power and discretion to run the agency; political appointees can't do much without their cooperation. And the career civil service overwhelmingly is Democrats. 85% of federal employee donations went to Kamala Harris, 90% of you exclude the DOD: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-donate-42m-presidential-race-mostly-harris/400760 https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-.... The proportion of republicans in AOC's district in the Bronx and Queens is more than twice as high as in the federal government outside the DOD. And given that federal workers tend to be highly educated, and more educated people tend to be more politically ideological, you get a federal government that's a true monoculture. Certainly, we can debate about the degree to which the career civil service zealously carries out the agenda of the current elected administration. I suspect it depends on the agency. What's disturbing to me is the people who think the career civil service should serve as a "check" on the elected administration. These are the people who cite political appointees overruling career civil servants as itself an example of "dismantling democracy." They are the ones who cheered on civil servants who declared their "resistance" to Trump in 2017 at the start of his term. This view--which I think is fairly widespread--nakedly embraces the idea that "democracy" is where one party always runs the government, and that electing a President from the other party simply means that he gets to cajole and try to persuade civil servants into carrying out some of his agenda.
  - CHUCKZZZ 1y ago
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- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
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  - estearum 1y ago
    What's great about voting is that it gives the government a mandate from and therefore legitimacy to the electorate. It has nothing to do with little kids' aspirations to be a leader.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
      Even theoretically that's not true. But if we stoop to the pragmatic, sometimes they win without even a majority of those still not disillusioned enough to stop voting. >It has nothing to do with little kids' aspirations to be a leader. If not that, then there's nothing about voting that I give much of a shit about. Nor do tens of millions of others. And if he helps to rain destruction upon such systems as you would create, then more power to him.
      - estearum 1y ago
        You don't think it's theoretically or pragmatically true that elected leaders are constrained/guided/informed by the feedback generated by elections? It seems like maybe you read my "it has nothing to do with X" as meaning "it is not desirable if X." Otherwise not sure what warranted that hysterical response.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >You don't think it's theoretically or pragmatically true that elected leaders are constrained/guided/informed by the feedback generated by elections? A "mandate" isn't what you just described above. It's always true that those who weasel their way into office have been influenced by someone or someones, but to call that a "mandate" when it amounts to some tiny non-majority fraction of the (even voting age) population is bizarre. Is this some meme joke that I'm just clueless about, because it's difficult to take you seriously. >not sure what warranted that hysterical response. An even hand typed the words with a calm heart, and no other emotion other than exasperation. Your takes are pretty far from reality.
CHUCKEESH 1y ago
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miltonlost 1y ago

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rayiner 1y ago
> That's still voting, which is the portion Thiel wants to remove. The founders themselves provided for a narrow franchise! > But based on other comments where you call Republican dismantling of the US government right now just "Orwellian doublespeak", you're just couching a bunch of your right-wing tendencies What is being dismantled? Executive agencies and ancillary entities that are 90% controlled by democrats regardless of who wins the election. There's nothing anti-democratic about that! I'm not "couching" anything. I'm quite openly right wing! But the right-wing guy won the election, promising to do right-wing things! The entities that are preventing him from doing right-wing things definitionally are anti-democratic. Put differently, what some people really mean when they say "democracy" is "liberal democracy." A system of government where the people are allowed to vote for massive taxes to pay for universal healthcare, but not for mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  > Executive agencies and ancillary entities that are 90% controlled by democrats regardless of who wins the election Yeah, uhh, citation needed. Tell us about the 90% of executive agencies that are headed by democrats today.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    It's not just about who is the "head" of the agency. In practice, the career civil service has tremendous power and discretion to run the agency; political appointees can't do much without their cooperation. And the career civil service overwhelmingly is Democrats. 85% of federal employee donations went to Kamala Harris, 90% of you exclude the DOD: https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-donate-42m-presidential-race-mostly-harris/400760 https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/11/federal-employees-.... The proportion of republicans in AOC's district in the Bronx and Queens is more than twice as high as in the federal government outside the DOD. And given that federal workers tend to be highly educated, and more educated people tend to be more politically ideological, you get a federal government that's a true monoculture. Certainly, we can debate about the degree to which the career civil service zealously carries out the agenda of the current elected administration. I suspect it depends on the agency. What's disturbing to me is the people who think the career civil service should serve as a "check" on the elected administration. These are the people who cite political appointees overruling career civil servants as itself an example of "dismantling democracy." They are the ones who cheered on civil servants who declared their "resistance" to Trump in 2017 at the start of his term. This view--which I think is fairly widespread--nakedly embraces the idea that "democracy" is where one party always runs the government, and that electing a President from the other party simply means that he gets to cajole and try to persuade civil servants into carrying out some of his agenda.
- CHUCKZZZ 1y ago
  [dead]
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
[flagged]
- estearum 1y ago
  What's great about voting is that it gives the government a mandate from and therefore legitimacy to the electorate. It has nothing to do with little kids' aspirations to be a leader.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
    Even theoretically that's not true. But if we stoop to the pragmatic, sometimes they win without even a majority of those still not disillusioned enough to stop voting. >It has nothing to do with little kids' aspirations to be a leader. If not that, then there's nothing about voting that I give much of a shit about. Nor do tens of millions of others. And if he helps to rain destruction upon such systems as you would create, then more power to him.
    - estearum 1y ago
      You don't think it's theoretically or pragmatically true that elected leaders are constrained/guided/informed by the feedback generated by elections? It seems like maybe you read my "it has nothing to do with X" as meaning "it is not desirable if X." Otherwise not sure what warranted that hysterical response.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
        >You don't think it's theoretically or pragmatically true that elected leaders are constrained/guided/informed by the feedback generated by elections? A "mandate" isn't what you just described above. It's always true that those who weasel their way into office have been influenced by someone or someones, but to call that a "mandate" when it amounts to some tiny non-majority fraction of the (even voting age) population is bizarre. Is this some meme joke that I'm just clueless about, because it's difficult to take you seriously. >not sure what warranted that hysterical response. An even hand typed the words with a calm heart, and no other emotion other than exasperation. Your takes are pretty far from reality.

CHUCKEESH 1y ago

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