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Democracy that we knew from 60s to 00s is effectively dead everywhere. I would like to think that social media and surveillance technology both played roles in

by lvl155 10mo ago

Democracy that we knew from 60s to 00s is effectively dead everywhere. I would like to think that social media and surveillance technology both played roles in accomplishing that so quickly and without public outcry/protests. All that blood spilled in 1900s to spread democracy wiped out in a matter of couple of years.

guerrilla 10mo ago
> both played roles in accomplishing that so quickly and without public outcry/protests. Bread and circuses. Everyone is comfortable and entertained to the point of drooling. They won't be leaving their cozy warm houses with TV and video games to do anything. Brain isn't built that way. If it were, there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic. It'll always be short-term rewards over long-term most of the time for most people. On the other hand, none of this is sustainable in the long-run, so it'll all come crashing down and things will work out. We'll probably be dead long before then though. Gotta go through some rough shit first.
throwaw12 10mo ago
"Democracy that we knew from 60s to 00s is effectively dead everywhere." What if it was a fake all along and was just a facade and social media exposed it?
- guerrilla 10mo ago
  It was, but what we have no is also much worse. Both can be true.
- throwaway29812 10mo ago
  [dead]
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
tokai 10mo ago
The anglosphere is not the entire democratic world.
- lvl155 10mo ago
  Agreed but even in places like South Korea where they staged national weekend strikes to remove a sitting president, it’s withering away. People are tired of politics and politicians. It’s death by apathy.
  - tokai 10mo ago
    >even in places like South Korea South Korea was a dictatorship just 35 something years ago. And its been run by criminals and oligarchs even as a democracy. SK is not an example you can use to say anything about democracy globally.
css_apologist 10mo ago
no, social media did not kill it :facepalm: mass de-regulation, tax avoidance, effective end of anti-trust killed it social media was just the tool-of-the-day to break democracy
- fwsgonzo 10mo ago
  I agree. I also challenge readers to watch TV broadcasts from politicians speaking in 70s, 80s and even 90s. You won't even believe your ears. But, the slow takeover of the world by international conglomerates buying up everything else, merging and bankrupting competition just doesn't seem to be on anyones mind with any power to deal with it. An acquaintance works at one of these Frankensteins monsters and there is a hodge podge of internal systems. It's hard to believe how many companies they have bought up over the decades.
  - echelon_musk 10mo ago
    "There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime." - Network (1976)
leftouterjoins 10mo ago
It never existed in the first place. You just were unable to see the machinations behind the scenes when all of media was a newspaper and 3 TV stations.
- mothballed 10mo ago
  I've found the most freedom on the fringes of the earth. Rural South America and Kurdish Syria to name a couple. Anywhere with any real government though, it's dead. My theory is the period of classical liberalism in the world was largely a result of the brief period where firearms were the main form of warfare, which represented a short period in history where violence was most decentralized and the government had the least leverage. Before that it was years to train archers or swordsman, after that fighter jets/ missiles / technology tilted back in power of government. In the golden era of the age of the firearm one person was basically one vote of violence (giving the populace the greater leverage); whereas before/after that time each vote was heavily weighted by a government actor.
  - cblum 10mo ago
    Can you elaborate on that? Sounds really interesting. I grew up in a place you could call “rural South America” (specifically in a rural border town between Brazil and Uruguay) and at the time didn’t feel free there, but these days there’s a lot I think I could appreciate about the place if I were to go back (I’ve been living in the US for the past 13 years).
    - camel_Snake 10mo ago
      Reading the parent comment, I assume their use of 'freedom' more closely aligns with being undisturbed by a government. It's a very common usage in America, focusing on "Freedom from X" rather than "Freedom to do Y", the latter of which often needs some sort of societal protection, most often provided by said government.
erxam 10mo ago
Democracy died in 1989-1991. We've been riding on the fumes since then.
- hashstring 10mo ago
  Why do you say it is at that time?
  - erxam 10mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
    - dh2022 10mo ago
      How did what you linked to (i.e. the fall of Communism) contribute to decline of democracy anywhere?
      - throw-the-towel 10mo ago
        I tend to believe that Communism provided enough of a threat to the Western elites that they felt forced to keep their countries visibly better. Not ready to defend this argument right now, I just think it does hold water.
      - nick486 10mo ago
        when evil dies, the need to pretend to be good in the face of it, dies as well.
      - kiliantics 10mo ago
        Most left wing movements and organisations in the West drew strength from the existence of strong socialist states, both materially and ideologically. These kinds of groups were a balancing force against the right wing/capitalist direction, which is inherently undemocratic, having as its logical endpoint the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. I think the true decline begun earlier though, around the Thatcher-Reagan era, with the erosion of all kinds of state ownership and control of our economy and broad attacks on organised labour.
HumblyTossed 10mo ago
The Heritage Foundation has been operating since 70s. They've played the long game, and it's only now that we are, en masse, looking at the culmination of decades of work by them and thinking, "wow, that was quick!".
mrtksn 10mo ago
Interestingly, places that used to be shit holes are becoming better or at least show a desire for becoming better. For example in eastern Europe, there are movements that demands democracy and destruction of the establishment. So if all the world is against the establishment, it only makes sense that shit holes become better places and better place become shit holes. That's it I suspect that these moments can be quite fragile. Turkey was crashed, Georgia was crashed, Belarus was crashed, Russia was crashed, Ukraine is fighting generational war, Serbia is teetering, Bulgaria is on to something but its only a spark ATM. However, the crashed ones also did not stabilize, they just become brutal and visibly oppressed and IMHO anything still can happen.

by lvl155 10mo ago

guerrilla 10mo ago

> both played roles in accomplishing that so quickly and without public outcry/protests. Bread and circuses. Everyone is comfortable and entertained to the point of drooling. They won't be leaving their cozy warm houses with TV and video games to do anything. Brain isn't built that way. If it were, there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic. It'll always be short-term rewards over long-term most of the time for most people. On the other hand, none of this is sustainable in the long-run, so it'll all come crashing down and things will work out. We'll probably be dead long before then though. Gotta go through some rough shit first.

throwaw12 10mo ago

"Democracy that we knew from 60s to 00s is effectively dead everywhere." What if it was a fake all along and was just a facade and social media exposed it?

guerrilla 10mo ago
It was, but what we have no is also much worse. Both can be true.
throwaway29812 10mo ago
[dead]

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

tokai 10mo ago

The anglosphere is not the entire democratic world.

lvl155 10mo ago
Agreed but even in places like South Korea where they staged national weekend strikes to remove a sitting president, it’s withering away. People are tired of politics and politicians. It’s death by apathy.
- tokai 10mo ago
  >even in places like South Korea South Korea was a dictatorship just 35 something years ago. And its been run by criminals and oligarchs even as a democracy. SK is not an example you can use to say anything about democracy globally.

css_apologist 10mo ago

no, social media did not kill it :facepalm: mass de-regulation, tax avoidance, effective end of anti-trust killed it social media was just the tool-of-the-day to break democracy

fwsgonzo 10mo ago
I agree. I also challenge readers to watch TV broadcasts from politicians speaking in 70s, 80s and even 90s. You won't even believe your ears. But, the slow takeover of the world by international conglomerates buying up everything else, merging and bankrupting competition just doesn't seem to be on anyones mind with any power to deal with it. An acquaintance works at one of these Frankensteins monsters and there is a hodge podge of internal systems. It's hard to believe how many companies they have bought up over the decades.
- echelon_musk 10mo ago
  "There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime." - Network (1976)

leftouterjoins 10mo ago

It never existed in the first place. You just were unable to see the machinations behind the scenes when all of media was a newspaper and 3 TV stations.

mothballed 10mo ago
I've found the most freedom on the fringes of the earth. Rural South America and Kurdish Syria to name a couple. Anywhere with any real government though, it's dead. My theory is the period of classical liberalism in the world was largely a result of the brief period where firearms were the main form of warfare, which represented a short period in history where violence was most decentralized and the government had the least leverage. Before that it was years to train archers or swordsman, after that fighter jets/ missiles / technology tilted back in power of government. In the golden era of the age of the firearm one person was basically one vote of violence (giving the populace the greater leverage); whereas before/after that time each vote was heavily weighted by a government actor.
- cblum 10mo ago
  Can you elaborate on that? Sounds really interesting. I grew up in a place you could call “rural South America” (specifically in a rural border town between Brazil and Uruguay) and at the time didn’t feel free there, but these days there’s a lot I think I could appreciate about the place if I were to go back (I’ve been living in the US for the past 13 years).
  - camel_Snake 10mo ago
    Reading the parent comment, I assume their use of 'freedom' more closely aligns with being undisturbed by a government. It's a very common usage in America, focusing on "Freedom from X" rather than "Freedom to do Y", the latter of which often needs some sort of societal protection, most often provided by said government.

erxam 10mo ago

Democracy died in 1989-1991. We've been riding on the fumes since then.

hashstring 10mo ago
Why do you say it is at that time?
- erxam 10mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
  - dh2022 10mo ago
    How did what you linked to (i.e. the fall of Communism) contribute to decline of democracy anywhere?
    - throw-the-towel 10mo ago
      I tend to believe that Communism provided enough of a threat to the Western elites that they felt forced to keep their countries visibly better. Not ready to defend this argument right now, I just think it does hold water.
    - nick486 10mo ago
      when evil dies, the need to pretend to be good in the face of it, dies as well.
    - kiliantics 10mo ago
      Most left wing movements and organisations in the West drew strength from the existence of strong socialist states, both materially and ideologically. These kinds of groups were a balancing force against the right wing/capitalist direction, which is inherently undemocratic, having as its logical endpoint the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few. I think the true decline begun earlier though, around the Thatcher-Reagan era, with the erosion of all kinds of state ownership and control of our economy and broad attacks on organised labour.

HumblyTossed 10mo ago

The Heritage Foundation has been operating since 70s. They've played the long game, and it's only now that we are, en masse, looking at the culmination of decades of work by them and thinking, "wow, that was quick!".

mrtksn 10mo ago

Interestingly, places that used to be shit holes are becoming better or at least show a desire for becoming better. For example in eastern Europe, there are movements that demands democracy and destruction of the establishment. So if all the world is against the establishment, it only makes sense that shit holes become better places and better place become shit holes. That's it I suspect that these moments can be quite fragile. Turkey was crashed, Georgia was crashed, Belarus was crashed, Russia was crashed, Ukraine is fighting generational war, Serbia is teetering, Bulgaria is on to something but its only a spark ATM. However, the crashed ones also did not stabilize, they just become brutal and visibly oppressed and IMHO anything still can happen.