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> I don't think that participating in electoral politics is an effective means in reaching my desired ends. And then I read from Peter Thiel: > Most important

> I don't think that participating in electoral politics is an effective means in reaching my desired ends. And then I read from Peter Thiel: > Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. And then I think that there are waaaay too many people in the tech industry who have gone completely out of their minds. The anti-democratic rhetoric seems to be growing louder and it is starting to get pretty worrisome.

praxeologist 13y ago
Why are you worried? Don't you think it is even possible that some other form of societal organization will upend democratic majoritarianism? Have you actually read any books on the subject like Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter or Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed? There's real arguments behind being anti-democracy, so rather than just complaining about me like a bother, insta-downvoting, and declaring it "simply wrong", maybe you should tackle the issue in a substantive way. It's very "anti-hacker" to just accept democracy as the pinnacle of perfection and think it will last forever.
- williamcotton 13y ago
  I'm worried because there is nothing in your voice that speaks to love, art, or beauty. All I'm hearing is hate, distrust, and of failure. If you and your technocratic visionaries really want to build a new future you're going to have to do it with love in your hearts. We need a system that expresses compassion and acceptance of all walks of life. The rhetoric of Thiel and Page if of escapism. Of leaving the system behind. Well, guess what dude, the only system in the known universe capable of supporting life is Earth. Any sort of idealized community in the desert or floating around on a barge is going to need an umbilical chord to the rest of us. You can't leave and start your own brand new world. It is also "anti-hacker" to not engage with the system in place. An important quality of hacking is to learn the system and how to work within its constraints.
  - jpadkins 13y ago
    We will start with the oceans.. http://www.seasteading.org/ http://www.seasteading.org/ And we will gladly conduct free trade with the rest of the world. But I don't think that means we have to accept the status quo in governance or social systems.
  - praxeologist 13y ago
    >I'm worried because there is nothing in your voice that speaks to love, art, or beauty. Give me a break. Nobody talks about such things during a crime in progress. All political programs promise to be the best way of bringing about what its adherents want. I'm not even talking about A or B or C being better. I'm saying it is undemocratic to be forced to choose option A, "democracy". >Any sort of idealized community in the desert or floating around on a barge is going to need an umbilical chord to the rest of us. You can't leave and start your own brand new world. This could have been said by an 18th century British bureaucrat too. The US was a noble experiment but it has failed, and, no, it's existence today doesn't contradict what I am saying. Tyranny was supposed to be kept at bay by a unique system of checks and balances + democratic representation. History shows that the US political elite has continually aggrandized itself instead. It's like a piece of software that is going to have terrible memory leaks no matter what. If you want a blazing fast app, you can't keep working with this setup. Hacking can certainly be making the best with what you have but totally ignoring the possibility of the best option being to scrap it all and start over. I'd think that the startup world would be comfortable with at least considering such ideas.
    - redblacktree 13y ago
      > undemocratic to be forced to choose option A, "democracy". oh?
      - praxeologist 13y ago
        Yes exactly. I mentioned that true democracy includes the ability to secede down to the level of the individual. What happens at our local knitting club? We take a vote on whatever and if I don't like it I can leave. I don't have to uproot my family and really leave because the knitting club has influence over only a very limited sphere. The "democracy" option besides moving to an authoritarian country is what I actually call "democratic majoritarian rule", so yes this contradicts what I really believe democracy is. There's no options besides this except taking another step backwards to some dictatorship or whatever.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  The question is whether the arguments behind "anti-democracy" (bad terminology: not all non-democratic forms of government have anything in common with each-other other than their lack of democracy) are value arguments or effectiveness arguments. There's a huge difference in saying, "We have a system that serves the people's values and interests better than democracy does", and "You proles don't deserve a voice." Unfortunately, the vast majority of anti-democratic rhetoric right now is of the latter kind.
  - crassus 13y ago
    If a system works well, how does having a voice add anything? If a system is broken, how does having a voice matter? In the United States, "Voice" is just rhetoric used to make people accept the status quo.
    - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      >If a system works well, how does having a voice add anything? It's entirely possible for the system to work well at doing something people hate. Hence why the people need a voice.
narag 13y ago
The sentiment that democracy is perverted by economic interests seems legitimate. I don't think the solution is throwing out democracy with the bath water, but I can understand where they're coming from.
declan 13y ago
If you think of democracy as being majoritarian, the U.S. Bill of Rights is explicitly designed to be anti-democratic. Just read the language: “Congress shall make no law.” “Shall not be infringed.” “Shall not be violated.” “Nor shall be compelled.” “Shall be preserved.” “Shall not be required.” These are rights that individuals — not societies or governments — possess. Even if a majority of the population wants to infringe them through the democratic process, that’s not permitted under the BoR. (You could also say that these rights are natural rights that predated and were merely recognized by the BoR, but that’s not necessary to make my point.) We’ve already recognized that some aspects of life, including free speech, torture, and so on are too important to be left to the democratic process. We’ve explicitly blocked, or at least tried to block, the democratic process from interfering with those rights. That’s because the democratic process is imperfect: it’s subject to the day’s political whims and foibles. Given that we already have a fine example of one anti-democratic mechanism at work, it’s hardly ridiculous to contemplate others. This is supposedly HN, not Status Quo Anti-Innovation Political Curmudgeonly News. Right?
- rmc 13y ago
  That's, er, the point of constituational democracy. It's not 100% pure democracy.
  - declan 13y ago
    Yep (though it's a constitutional republic, not a constitutional democracy). My point is that discussions about moving the slider even more away from 100% pure democracy should be within the realm of reasonable discourse.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >If you think of democracy as being majoritarian, the U.S. Bill of Rights is explicitly designed to be anti-democratic. Yes, and look how well that turned out! (Spoilers: Not very well. The USA has thrived when it has been more democratic and stagnated when less. We are currently in a 40-year period of less and less democracy. Strangely enough, stagnation and crisis have become more and more common during this time.)
crassus 13y ago
Tianming. If some other system governs better than democracy, then we should use it. As Moldbug points out, the current US Govcorp is structured as an employee collective[1][2], which no competitive corporation chooses as a system of organization in the free market. As Mancur Olson points out, bureaucracies tend to get more inefficient over time[3]. I know we've all been raised to believe that democracy is love and rainbows, but maybe it's time to rethink that. [1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-when-and-how-to-abolish-united.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-whe... [2] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employment/ http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employm... [3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation/dp/0300030797 http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation/d...
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  >As Moldbug points out, the current US Govcorp is structured as an employee collective, which no competitive corporation chooses as a system of organization in the free market. That's doubly inaccurate. * Worker cooperatives don't give membership votes to non-workers, and the vast majority of American voters are not government employees. * Many firms choose worker cooperative organization and thrive on it. The fact that many districts don't have laws for chartering cooperatives is what holds them back, not some innate untenability of the form itself.
  - crassus 13y ago
    I edited my comment with a Moldbug link. From the essay: "So Fedco, while it still has a bit of the cooperative flavor, is mainly organized around the other model of bad corporate governance: control by contractors (essentially, employees). To be exact, most of Fedco's decisions are made by its civil service. As a general rule, an employee-controlled enterprise will never, ever be profitable. In fact, even its bondholders are lucky if they see any payments. The primary interest of contractors is, first, if they can get away with it, in distributing profits to their own pockets; and second, if they can't, in expanding or at least protecting their own power bases. They will make as much work for themselves as they can get away with. Of course, even the CEO of a company is a contractor. This is why corporations have boards, who work for the shareholders. (In my opinion, it's an abuse to have any corporate employees, even the CEO, on the board.) If you combine a shareholderless governance model with an enormous revenue stream, you have the perfect recipe for massive and permanent inefficiency and incompetence, and an enormous overgrowth of pointless, self-serving tasks. This is exactly what we see in Fedco. Of course, it could just be a coincidence."
Houshalter 13y ago
I don't think there is any question that democracy is an absolutely awful system of government. You might that it's the best system we have, like I do, but it is terribly inefficient and full of problems. There are incentive problems, like people having no incentive to do in depth research on all the political issues before they vote. There is the problem of respecting minority rights since only the majority has any control. And psychologically it's a terrible system since it creates "Blues vs Greens" type situations and needlessly polarizes everything. Any kind of rational discussion gets drowned out over a thousand voices cheering on their "team" against their hated rivals.

praxeologist 13y ago

Why are you worried? Don't you think it is even possible that some other form of societal organization will upend democratic majoritarianism? Have you actually read any books on the subject like Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter or Hoppe's Democracy: The God that Failed? There's real arguments behind being anti-democracy, so rather than just complaining about me like a bother, insta-downvoting, and declaring it "simply wrong", maybe you should tackle the issue in a substantive way. It's very "anti-hacker" to just accept democracy as the pinnacle of perfection and think it will last forever.

williamcotton 13y ago
I'm worried because there is nothing in your voice that speaks to love, art, or beauty. All I'm hearing is hate, distrust, and of failure. If you and your technocratic visionaries really want to build a new future you're going to have to do it with love in your hearts. We need a system that expresses compassion and acceptance of all walks of life. The rhetoric of Thiel and Page if of escapism. Of leaving the system behind. Well, guess what dude, the only system in the known universe capable of supporting life is Earth. Any sort of idealized community in the desert or floating around on a barge is going to need an umbilical chord to the rest of us. You can't leave and start your own brand new world. It is also "anti-hacker" to not engage with the system in place. An important quality of hacking is to learn the system and how to work within its constraints.
- jpadkins 13y ago
  We will start with the oceans.. http://www.seasteading.org/ http://www.seasteading.org/ And we will gladly conduct free trade with the rest of the world. But I don't think that means we have to accept the status quo in governance or social systems.
- praxeologist 13y ago
  >I'm worried because there is nothing in your voice that speaks to love, art, or beauty. Give me a break. Nobody talks about such things during a crime in progress. All political programs promise to be the best way of bringing about what its adherents want. I'm not even talking about A or B or C being better. I'm saying it is undemocratic to be forced to choose option A, "democracy". >Any sort of idealized community in the desert or floating around on a barge is going to need an umbilical chord to the rest of us. You can't leave and start your own brand new world. This could have been said by an 18th century British bureaucrat too. The US was a noble experiment but it has failed, and, no, it's existence today doesn't contradict what I am saying. Tyranny was supposed to be kept at bay by a unique system of checks and balances + democratic representation. History shows that the US political elite has continually aggrandized itself instead. It's like a piece of software that is going to have terrible memory leaks no matter what. If you want a blazing fast app, you can't keep working with this setup. Hacking can certainly be making the best with what you have but totally ignoring the possibility of the best option being to scrap it all and start over. I'd think that the startup world would be comfortable with at least considering such ideas.
  - redblacktree 13y ago
    > undemocratic to be forced to choose option A, "democracy". oh?
    - praxeologist 13y ago
      Yes exactly. I mentioned that true democracy includes the ability to secede down to the level of the individual. What happens at our local knitting club? We take a vote on whatever and if I don't like it I can leave. I don't have to uproot my family and really leave because the knitting club has influence over only a very limited sphere. The "democracy" option besides moving to an authoritarian country is what I actually call "democratic majoritarian rule", so yes this contradicts what I really believe democracy is. There's no options besides this except taking another step backwards to some dictatorship or whatever.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
The question is whether the arguments behind "anti-democracy" (bad terminology: not all non-democratic forms of government have anything in common with each-other other than their lack of democracy) are value arguments or effectiveness arguments. There's a huge difference in saying, "We have a system that serves the people's values and interests better than democracy does", and "You proles don't deserve a voice." Unfortunately, the vast majority of anti-democratic rhetoric right now is of the latter kind.
- crassus 13y ago
  If a system works well, how does having a voice add anything? If a system is broken, how does having a voice matter? In the United States, "Voice" is just rhetoric used to make people accept the status quo.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    >If a system works well, how does having a voice add anything? It's entirely possible for the system to work well at doing something people hate. Hence why the people need a voice.

narag 13y ago

The sentiment that democracy is perverted by economic interests seems legitimate. I don't think the solution is throwing out democracy with the bath water, but I can understand where they're coming from.

declan 13y ago

If you think of democracy as being majoritarian, the U.S. Bill of Rights is explicitly designed to be anti-democratic. Just read the language: “Congress shall make no law.” “Shall not be infringed.” “Shall not be violated.” “Nor shall be compelled.” “Shall be preserved.” “Shall not be required.” These are rights that individuals — not societies or governments — possess. Even if a majority of the population wants to infringe them through the democratic process, that’s not permitted under the BoR. (You could also say that these rights are natural rights that predated and were merely recognized by the BoR, but that’s not necessary to make my point.) We’ve already recognized that some aspects of life, including free speech, torture, and so on are too important to be left to the democratic process. We’ve explicitly blocked, or at least tried to block, the democratic process from interfering with those rights. That’s because the democratic process is imperfect: it’s subject to the day’s political whims and foibles. Given that we already have a fine example of one anti-democratic mechanism at work, it’s hardly ridiculous to contemplate others. This is supposedly HN, not Status Quo Anti-Innovation Political Curmudgeonly News. Right?

rmc 13y ago
That's, er, the point of constituational democracy. It's not 100% pure democracy.
- declan 13y ago
  Yep (though it's a constitutional republic, not a constitutional democracy). My point is that discussions about moving the slider even more away from 100% pure democracy should be within the realm of reasonable discourse.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>If you think of democracy as being majoritarian, the U.S. Bill of Rights is explicitly designed to be anti-democratic. Yes, and look how well that turned out! (Spoilers: Not very well. The USA has thrived when it has been more democratic and stagnated when less. We are currently in a 40-year period of less and less democracy. Strangely enough, stagnation and crisis have become more and more common during this time.)

crassus 13y ago

Tianming. If some other system governs better than democracy, then we should use it. As Moldbug points out, the current US Govcorp is structured as an employee collective[1][2], which no competitive corporation chooses as a system of organization in the free market. As Mancur Olson points out, bureaucracies tend to get more inefficient over time[3]. I know we've all been raised to believe that democracy is love and rainbows, but maybe it's time to rethink that. [1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-when-and-how-to-abolish-united.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-whe... [2] http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employment/ http://foseti.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/on-government-employm... [3] http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation/dp/0300030797 http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation/d...

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>As Moldbug points out, the current US Govcorp is structured as an employee collective, which no competitive corporation chooses as a system of organization in the free market. That's doubly inaccurate. * Worker cooperatives don't give membership votes to non-workers, and the vast majority of American voters are not government employees. * Many firms choose worker cooperative organization and thrive on it. The fact that many districts don't have laws for chartering cooperatives is what holds them back, not some innate untenability of the form itself.
- crassus 13y ago
  I edited my comment with a Moldbug link. From the essay: "So Fedco, while it still has a bit of the cooperative flavor, is mainly organized around the other model of bad corporate governance: control by contractors (essentially, employees). To be exact, most of Fedco's decisions are made by its civil service. As a general rule, an employee-controlled enterprise will never, ever be profitable. In fact, even its bondholders are lucky if they see any payments. The primary interest of contractors is, first, if they can get away with it, in distributing profits to their own pockets; and second, if they can't, in expanding or at least protecting their own power bases. They will make as much work for themselves as they can get away with. Of course, even the CEO of a company is a contractor. This is why corporations have boards, who work for the shareholders. (In my opinion, it's an abuse to have any corporate employees, even the CEO, on the board.) If you combine a shareholderless governance model with an enormous revenue stream, you have the perfect recipe for massive and permanent inefficiency and incompetence, and an enormous overgrowth of pointless, self-serving tasks. This is exactly what we see in Fedco. Of course, it could just be a coincidence."

Houshalter 13y ago

I don't think there is any question that democracy is an absolutely awful system of government. You might that it's the best system we have, like I do, but it is terribly inefficient and full of problems. There are incentive problems, like people having no incentive to do in depth research on all the political issues before they vote. There is the problem of respecting minority rights since only the majority has any control. And psychologically it's a terrible system since it creates "Blues vs Greens" type situations and needlessly polarizes everything. Any kind of rational discussion gets drowned out over a thousand voices cheering on their "team" against their hated rivals.