Brian Eno's Theory of Democracy(programmablemutter.com)
programmablemutter.com
Brian Eno's Theory of Democracy
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/brian-enos-theory-of-democracy
252 comments
"almost all controversy would be removed from among Philosophers, if they were always to agree as to the meaning of words" (c)
One could say it was always the case, you can cut through bs and have a productive dialogue if you define the meaning of words before the message, i.e. scientific papers do that. The problem with that is that most people won't do it because its hard and on the other end you will get ostracized most of the time if you try doing that in casual conversations. This problem is even bigger in politics which is a game of large numbers and you have to be as stupid as possible for your message to reach the masses.
One could say it was always the case, you can cut through bs and have a productive dialogue if you define the meaning of words before the message, i.e. scientific papers do that. The problem with that is that most people won't do it because its hard and on the other end you will get ostracized most of the time if you try doing that in casual conversations. This problem is even bigger in politics which is a game of large numbers and you have to be as stupid as possible for your message to reach the masses.
On "reduced linguistic precision":
Another example (this is a hard one imo) "discrimination". It is used in the US in an important legal document, a part of a powerful legal social right.
It's both the NEGATIVE and unjust social process of dividing minorities, often segregating them away from the resource-plenty enjoyed by majorities -- basic 'good favor', low prices, neighborhoods with food oases.
And it's also the POSITIVE or NEUTRAL term of "making a fine distinction and discerning". Such as, "The experienced journalist listened intently to the politician's statement, applying a keen sense of intellectual discrimination. She was able to quickly discern the subtle ways in which key facts were being selectively highlighted and crucial context was being omitted, allowing her to call out the misrepresentation rather than accepting the narrative at face value." (gen'd by ai <3)
It was once an efficient term for identifying careful critical thinking. I speculate we do less of this as we have fewer words to do this with, nowadays.
I suppose "bigot" and "bigotry" ought to have been used by the US when it made its civil rights advancements.
Another example (this is a hard one imo) "discrimination". It is used in the US in an important legal document, a part of a powerful legal social right.
It's both the NEGATIVE and unjust social process of dividing minorities, often segregating them away from the resource-plenty enjoyed by majorities -- basic 'good favor', low prices, neighborhoods with food oases.
And it's also the POSITIVE or NEUTRAL term of "making a fine distinction and discerning". Such as, "The experienced journalist listened intently to the politician's statement, applying a keen sense of intellectual discrimination. She was able to quickly discern the subtle ways in which key facts were being selectively highlighted and crucial context was being omitted, allowing her to call out the misrepresentation rather than accepting the narrative at face value." (gen'd by ai <3)
It was once an efficient term for identifying careful critical thinking. I speculate we do less of this as we have fewer words to do this with, nowadays.
I suppose "bigot" and "bigotry" ought to have been used by the US when it made its civil rights advancements.
We designed the civil rights code so as to be least unacceptable to bigots. They feel that bigotry is an unalienable right, and to be honest, it took some serious rereading of the Constitution to not make it so.
Even now they are finding that the Constitution does not in fact allow civil rights, and the Civil Rights Act is being pared away.
You can call it out by whatever name you want, but in the end a lot of Americans want that and you don't have the overwhelming political force required to override them.
The one small upside: they'll tell you that you're only making it worse by name calling. That's not actually true. It may not make things better, but it is not the cause of it. Arguing about words is just a common tactic to get you to stop talking about the actual subject.
Even now they are finding that the Constitution does not in fact allow civil rights, and the Civil Rights Act is being pared away.
You can call it out by whatever name you want, but in the end a lot of Americans want that and you don't have the overwhelming political force required to override them.
The one small upside: they'll tell you that you're only making it worse by name calling. That's not actually true. It may not make things better, but it is not the cause of it. Arguing about words is just a common tactic to get you to stop talking about the actual subject.
It’s important for sanity’s sake to remember that the bigots are a minority of Americans. They’re just a more reliable vote than the rest of us (and you can thank the Koch Brothers and John Birch Society for the multi-decade conspiracy that made this so.)
I believe that only a minority actively think of themselves as bigots.
But in addition to that extremely reliable and enthusiastic vote are a lot of allies who say things like "I'm not racist but...". Often followed by "I just happen to have totally non bigoted reasons to always vote with the bigots".
But in addition to that extremely reliable and enthusiastic vote are a lot of allies who say things like "I'm not racist but...". Often followed by "I just happen to have totally non bigoted reasons to always vote with the bigots".
[deleted]
Similar with many (not all!) libertarians.
Funny how they're always espousing Republicans as the way to go. Once upon a time, that may have made (some) sense, but the modern Republican party is ... "not very close" ... to libertarianism.
Funny how they're always espousing Republicans as the way to go. Once upon a time, that may have made (some) sense, but the modern Republican party is ... "not very close" ... to libertarianism.
If agents of the state expend most of their of their energy fighting against each other, they will have little time left to spend on attacking the people.
Therefore in a two party rule, libertarians should do what they can to pit one arm of the government against the other. Sometimes this will mean voting D, and sometimes R, whichever better disrupts single party rule.
Therefore in a two party rule, libertarians should do what they can to pit one arm of the government against the other. Sometimes this will mean voting D, and sometimes R, whichever better disrupts single party rule.
> Therefore in a two party rule, libertarians should do what they can to pit one arm of the government against the other. Sometimes this will mean voting D, and sometimes R, whichever better disrupts single party rule.
They "should", but somehow they always seem to find themselves voting R...
They "should", but somehow they always seem to find themselves voting R...
Which document, and why vague? It's not in the constitution.
I checked ngram viewer, and it showed this document from 1937 that first used it in that context:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jews_Jobs_and_Discrimin...
I checked ngram viewer, and it showed this document from 1937 that first used it in that context:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jews_Jobs_and_Discrimin...
[deleted]
IMO, that's the sign of a different process.
When the state cannot get rid of a popular idea that benefits the people, the state puts on a mask with that idea and then hollows it out. The most cartoonish example is the "democratic" republic of north korea.
When the state cannot get rid of a popular idea that benefits the people, the state puts on a mask with that idea and then hollows it out. The most cartoonish example is the "democratic" republic of north korea.
> 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.
Words don't have objective meanings. Words are indirect references to ideas in your head. They are like named memory addresses that can be de-referenced. That's why "woke" can have different meanings to different groups of people who speak together. Words are sociologically derived, not objectively meaningful. Eventually these words can even become shibboleths which can be used to determine whether you are part of a group or not.
People deeply underestimate the power of linguistics, especially in the hands of those who wish to exploit it. Control/influence over language and it's mapping is political power.
Words don't have objective meanings. Words are indirect references to ideas in your head. They are like named memory addresses that can be de-referenced. That's why "woke" can have different meanings to different groups of people who speak together. Words are sociologically derived, not objectively meaningful. Eventually these words can even become shibboleths which can be used to determine whether you are part of a group or not.
People deeply underestimate the power of linguistics, especially in the hands of those who wish to exploit it. Control/influence over language and it's mapping is political power.
> democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses […]
Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it’s the opposite.
Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it’s the opposite.
> 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.
I don’t know for who the literacy is declining. But the people who yap about democracy are the educated intelligentsia.[1] So it’s the educated that narrow and widen definitions.
> 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.
That’s not true. When people talk about “democratizing X” where X is distant from the political process they mean people participation and power. Like “democratizing social media” could mean user-controlled and driven social media as opposed to everything being controlled a by corporation or something.
> 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.
Pretty much true.
> 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.
Pretty much. That there are a group of people who can ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people means (by its very premise) that there is no democracy.[2]
People who then might have tolerated that then have enough and turn to the correct political theory: elites rule the commoners. Again the premise proves the theory correct.
> 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.
This is a bit of a vulgar[3] conception of democratization. Democracy is about power, not access to X. If a car indirectly gives you political power by being able to travel and organize then it indirectly has that effect. But if it only gives you the opportunity to commute one hour each way to your workplace then it has got nothing to do with democratization.
And if your phone just makes you addicted to social media—as the technologists on this board so smugly like to point out—then it doesn’t give you power.
> And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself.
Democracy is about governing your own life in harmony with the rest of the people under that democracy. The political system is a big deal there. But there are other spheres of life the workplace.[4]
[1] Parochial way of referring to relatively wealthy people who set the intellectual agenda
[2] Although people can call it “liberal democracy” if they want since the Liberal in that is much more important to the system (according to its defenders) than the Democracy part
[3] Tongue in cheek!
[4] Referring to socialism
I don’t know for who the literacy is declining. But the people who yap about democracy are the educated intelligentsia.[1] So it’s the educated that narrow and widen definitions.
> 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.
That’s not true. When people talk about “democratizing X” where X is distant from the political process they mean people participation and power. Like “democratizing social media” could mean user-controlled and driven social media as opposed to everything being controlled a by corporation or something.
> 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.
Pretty much true.
> 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.
Pretty much. That there are a group of people who can ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people means (by its very premise) that there is no democracy.[2]
People who then might have tolerated that then have enough and turn to the correct political theory: elites rule the commoners. Again the premise proves the theory correct.
> 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.
This is a bit of a vulgar[3] conception of democratization. Democracy is about power, not access to X. If a car indirectly gives you political power by being able to travel and organize then it indirectly has that effect. But if it only gives you the opportunity to commute one hour each way to your workplace then it has got nothing to do with democratization.
And if your phone just makes you addicted to social media—as the technologists on this board so smugly like to point out—then it doesn’t give you power.
> And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself.
Democracy is about governing your own life in harmony with the rest of the people under that democracy. The political system is a big deal there. But there are other spheres of life the workplace.[4]
[1] Parochial way of referring to relatively wealthy people who set the intellectual agenda
[2] Although people can call it “liberal democracy” if they want since the Liberal in that is much more important to the system (according to its defenders) than the Democracy part
[3] Tongue in cheek!
[4] Referring to socialism
> "But the people who yap about democracy are the educated intelligentsia."
Are you a time-traveler or something? Nowadays the language is shaped by privately owned bot farms and media - be it social or legacy. They work for pay, the truth is social or not for pay, etc. "The educated intelligentsia" is being defunded and investigated to help them shut up sooner.
Are you a time-traveler or something? Nowadays the language is shaped by privately owned bot farms and media - be it social or legacy. They work for pay, the truth is social or not for pay, etc. "The educated intelligentsia" is being defunded and investigated to help them shut up sooner.
I don’t know what this is about. The indoctrination line about democracy is long-form and was set by real, educated humans. Bot or not.
> But there are other spheres of life the workplace.
* But there are other spheres of life like the workplace.
* But there are other spheres of life like the workplace.
rayiner(8)
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...
https://risk.princeton.edu/img/Historical_Collapse_Resources...
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_fir...
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_fir...
What is your theory, if you are willing to share?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
How come it's just a 2 party system and not a multi party system like in some European countries?
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.
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.
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
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk
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
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Deb...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/18/p...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jill-s...
[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm
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
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_on_Presidential_Deb...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/09/18/p...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jill-s...
[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm
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.
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.
To further add to that, many states do closed primaries. If a voter isn't registered with one of the two ordained parties, they realistically cannot participate in primaries at all.
If there would six parties to choose from, for example, I think it would be hard to argue that closed primaries are harmful. But since we have a duopoly, they exclude a significant portion of the voting population from participating until late in the process.
If there would six parties to choose from, for example, I think it would be hard to argue that closed primaries are harmful. But since we have a duopoly, they exclude a significant portion of the voting population from participating until late in the process.
> If there would six parties to choose from, for example, I think it would be hard to argue that closed primaries are harmful.
Six is a not-uncommon number of parties qualified for ballot access in a US state, though some have fewer and some have more.
https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_political_parties_in_the_Uni...
Six is a not-uncommon number of parties qualified for ballot access in a US state, though some have fewer and some have more.
https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_political_parties_in_the_Uni...
there is roughly 0.000087% of US population who can name more than two
The debates are a distraction, the issue is the electoral system (and, at that, mainly the electoral system used for state and federal legislative elections), not the system of admitting candidates to Presidential debates.
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.
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)
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.
The only elective part is which "faction" of the party the person will be coming from, i.e "Zürich"/"Bern for UDC/SVP.
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.
> 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.)
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.)
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]
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.)
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.)
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
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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_...
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.
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.
> 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
The Democratic-Republicans formed before the Federalists, actually.
> There were actually 4 candidates on the ballot though
Unlike the modern system, there weren't even ballots in a quarter of the states (a popuar election for electors is not a Constitutional mandate, and it wasn't a statutory requirement to have such an election for a states' electoral votes to be considered regularly-given until much more recently.)
And the candidates weren't on the ballots that existed, party electors were (unlike modern ballots, where the Presidential candidate is listed and you get the associated electors if they win, the actual electors -- and not usually the candidate they were pledged to -- were listed on the ballots, where they existed.)
And in most states, there were not electors for all four candidates on the ballot, the four are just the candidates that received electoral votes from somewhere in the country.
> In that case none had enough electoral votes, so Jackson won that one when it was decided by the House.
Jackson won a plurality—but not the required majority to win outright—of the electoral vote, but the House elected John Quincy Adams in the contingent election required to resolve the absence of an electoral vote winner, not Jackson.
> 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.
As discussed above, the system was not "quite similar to today".
> Then apparently the party just kind of split up and re-organized into the "two-party" system that has continued to dominate ever since.
The new Whig Party which was its initial main opponent did form in part from dissident offshoots of the Democratic-Republican Party, but a lot of its strength was from bringing in existing regional parties that were never competitive national parties (like the Anti-Masonic Party) as well.
> There was no threat until decades later when the Free Silver parties arose
Kind of leaving out the entire rise of the Republican Party and the displacement of the Whigs...I could go on with responding to the blend of oddly selected facts and complete distortions, but I'll just note that it doesn't get better.
The Democratic-Republicans formed before the Federalists, actually.
> There were actually 4 candidates on the ballot though
Unlike the modern system, there weren't even ballots in a quarter of the states (a popuar election for electors is not a Constitutional mandate, and it wasn't a statutory requirement to have such an election for a states' electoral votes to be considered regularly-given until much more recently.)
And the candidates weren't on the ballots that existed, party electors were (unlike modern ballots, where the Presidential candidate is listed and you get the associated electors if they win, the actual electors -- and not usually the candidate they were pledged to -- were listed on the ballots, where they existed.)
And in most states, there were not electors for all four candidates on the ballot, the four are just the candidates that received electoral votes from somewhere in the country.
> In that case none had enough electoral votes, so Jackson won that one when it was decided by the House.
Jackson won a plurality—but not the required majority to win outright—of the electoral vote, but the House elected John Quincy Adams in the contingent election required to resolve the absence of an electoral vote winner, not Jackson.
> 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.
As discussed above, the system was not "quite similar to today".
> Then apparently the party just kind of split up and re-organized into the "two-party" system that has continued to dominate ever since.
The new Whig Party which was its initial main opponent did form in part from dissident offshoots of the Democratic-Republican Party, but a lot of its strength was from bringing in existing regional parties that were never competitive national parties (like the Anti-Masonic Party) as well.
> There was no threat until decades later when the Free Silver parties arose
Kind of leaving out the entire rise of the Republican Party and the displacement of the Whigs...I could go on with responding to the blend of oddly selected facts and complete distortions, but I'll just note that it doesn't get better.
Good to see more details giving insight into how things got to be the way they are.
What do you think it would take for a third party to become viable over the short term, and what would inhibit or enable them to become a contender?
What do you think it would take for a third party to become viable over the short term, and what would inhibit or enable them to become a contender?
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) 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), 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.
For a long time, the common practice in live coding, which you might see on platforms like 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), 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I enjoyed the article but it could be clearer and more concise.
In TFA, the author wrote:
Democracy works within the tolerances of reliable information, demonstrable co-operation, and the rule of law.
The US implosion is not yet irreparable, but it is a societal failure.
In TFA, the author wrote:
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.
Democracy works within the tolerances of reliable information, demonstrable co-operation, and the rule of law.
The US implosion is not yet irreparable, but it is a societal failure.
Respect for minorities also needs to happen in democracies.
Even if democracy in some strict sense means that majority decides, you still need to care about the minorities to keep the system credible.
Otherwise any minority will soon realize that they will never win and break out of the system.
Even if democracy in some strict sense means that majority decides, you still need to care about the minorities to keep the system credible.
Otherwise any minority will soon realize that they will never win and break out of the system.
I guess that’s called tyranny of the majority?
David Graeber wrote how in Sparta everyone carrying weapons meant that they couldn’t afford to displease even a small fraction of them. So they had to resort to 100% consent and not majoritarian voting.
And then goes on to assert that the majoritarian voting process works only in a system where the state apparatus has an absolute control over violence with which the disgruntled minority opinions are suppressed. I think it sort of helped to resolve some of my internal contradictions around democracy as it exists today.
David Graeber wrote how in Sparta everyone carrying weapons meant that they couldn’t afford to displease even a small fraction of them. So they had to resort to 100% consent and not majoritarian voting.
And then goes on to assert that the majoritarian voting process works only in a system where the state apparatus has an absolute control over violence with which the disgruntled minority opinions are suppressed. I think it sort of helped to resolve some of my internal contradictions around democracy as it exists today.
That's the point of a constitution: you take certain matters out of the hands of any (normal) majority.
Of course, one can bicker about what the constitutional amendment process actually is, and obviously about the actual content of the constitution. But the central point remains: minority (and majority) rights are protected by a constitution that cannot be altered by a (simple) majority vote.
.... the problem comes, however, when the minority decides it wants more than the constitution provides.
Of course, one can bicker about what the constitutional amendment process actually is, and obviously about the actual content of the constitution. But the central point remains: minority (and majority) rights are protected by a constitution that cannot be altered by a (simple) majority vote.
.... the problem comes, however, when the minority decides it wants more than the constitution provides.
> the problem comes, however, when the minority decides it wants more than the constitution provides
Or when the majority decides this? If the system is defined to put checks on the majority power as well as the minority, there's no reason that the majority might not decide to try to push the boundaries of the system with similar incentives. I think there's a reasonable argument that this sort of boundary pushing is more responsible for the erosion of constitutional norms historically compared to when the minority wants more rights; we have headlines literally from this morning talking about how the American president claimed that he doesn't know if he needs to follow the constitution due to the mandate of his election[0]:
> WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump, asked during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution during his presidency, responded, “I don’t know.”
> The comment came as Trump remained adamant that he wanted to ship undocumented immigrants out of the country and said it was inconceivable to hear millions of cases in court, insisting he needed the power to quickly remove people he said were murderers and drug dealers.
> “I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said.
> Pressed on whether he still needs to abide by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.”
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/04/trump-nbc...
Or when the majority decides this? If the system is defined to put checks on the majority power as well as the minority, there's no reason that the majority might not decide to try to push the boundaries of the system with similar incentives. I think there's a reasonable argument that this sort of boundary pushing is more responsible for the erosion of constitutional norms historically compared to when the minority wants more rights; we have headlines literally from this morning talking about how the American president claimed that he doesn't know if he needs to follow the constitution due to the mandate of his election[0]:
> WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump, asked during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution during his presidency, responded, “I don’t know.”
> The comment came as Trump remained adamant that he wanted to ship undocumented immigrants out of the country and said it was inconceivable to hear millions of cases in court, insisting he needed the power to quickly remove people he said were murderers and drug dealers.
> “I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said.
> Pressed on whether he still needs to abide by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.”
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/04/trump-nbc...
If a suitably-sized majority wants to amend the constitution (where "suitably sized" is defined by the constitutional amendment process), they can go ahead, always. That's why to some degree this is just pushing the issue of "tyranny of the majority" out one level - but that doesn't mean it is not worthwhile.
On the other hand, electing leaders who simply decide to not follow the constitution (perhaps because they believe they have "a majority" at their backs, or perhaps not) is something entirely different.
On the other hand, electing leaders who simply decide to not follow the constitution (perhaps because they believe they have "a majority" at their backs, or perhaps not) is something entirely different.
My point is that having a majority that isn't large enough to amend the constitution is far more common than having a supermajority aligned on an issue at any given time, and there's still plenty of danger from that majority trying to erode the protections in the constitution without amending it. There hasn't really been any serious attempt at writing a new amendment to the constitution at least since the ERA was sent to the states from Congress over half a century ago despite a fairly noticeable trend of increased executive power in the same time period (after a brief dip in the immediate aftermath of Nixon). In fact Nixon getting elected in 1972 (the same year as the ERA getting passed in Congress) is the last time any presidential candidate got even 60% of the popular vote, which is still below the threshold that would be needed for a constitutional amendment, and no one has gotten even 54% percent of the vote in the past four decades. If you're trying to argue that no majority-elected president since Reagan has had any incentive at all to try to push their power beyond that specified in the constitution, then I guess that this wouldn't be a concern to you, but I don't think it's a particularly controversial take for me to argue that there has been ample incentive for at least some of these presidents to try to increase their power.
I don't disagree with anything you've written there.
But I also don't see the US constitutional amendment process as anything particularly praiseworthy either, and do not think it is capable of being used as a way to rise to the occasion of, for example, the current president.
Of course, it goes beyond the amendment process to the wider US political and social culture, and we are currently living in the midst of an experiment to see just how much power can be simply taken by a president who wants to do so. As the line goes: it's not about who is going to let me, it's about who is going to stop me. The USA does not appear to have particularly robust mechanisms in place to stop a power grab by the administration when there's something roughly approximating a majority in Congress who do no oppose it.
But I also don't see the US constitutional amendment process as anything particularly praiseworthy either, and do not think it is capable of being used as a way to rise to the occasion of, for example, the current president.
Of course, it goes beyond the amendment process to the wider US political and social culture, and we are currently living in the midst of an experiment to see just how much power can be simply taken by a president who wants to do so. As the line goes: it's not about who is going to let me, it's about who is going to stop me. The USA does not appear to have particularly robust mechanisms in place to stop a power grab by the administration when there's something roughly approximating a majority in Congress who do no oppose it.
I don't disagree with your views on the amendment process either, honestly. In a lot of ways, it feels like the inertia in the amendment process is responsible for why the envelope has gotten pushed so much in other ways; when the system is too rigid to be able to provide changes that people have a desire for, the motivation for finding ways outside the system increases. It's hard not to worry whether we're approaching a point we can't come back from, and while there have undoubtedly been crises before that the US constitutional system has weathered, the only reason we can even have a conversation about these concerns is survivorship bias; a system only needs to break down once to stop being around to worry about anymore.
Entrenched clauses effectively set "suitably sized" to infinity.
But at some point, if enough people believe the constitution doesn't do what they want it to do, they can always replace it altogether.
But at some point, if enough people believe the constitution doesn't do what they want it to do, they can always replace it altogether.
It also explicitly requires the parties and candidates to think beyond the current election cycle. That behavior is not in evidence for at least one major party in the U.S.
A candidate's personal expectation of costs must also be factored in. When a candidate faces criminal charges (to pick an example totally out of the blue) if they lose but can eliminate those if they win, the calculus changes for them.
A candidate's personal expectation of costs must also be factored in. When a candidate faces criminal charges (to pick an example totally out of the blue) if they lose but can eliminate those if they win, the calculus changes for them.
we would not have this narrow vision of losers/winners IF the inequalities were reduced, it would not be as strong as it is today in our world view if this parameter was adjusted.
In turns, "winners" would not feel like they are at the verge of loosing it all, constantly, because the wealth they generate would be stored into a living organism (a nation, or else). like having multiple bank accounts, with multiple currencies, that one being .... bio-economic i guess.
democracy does not work. Or first, we should clarify the meaning of "it works". IMO, it did not prevented us from burning the world, this is sufficient to say that in a parallel universe i would bet differently.
democracy does not work. Or first, we should clarify the meaning of "it works". IMO, it did not prevented us from burning the world, this is sufficient to say that in a parallel universe i would bet differently.
Capitalism (control of land, labor, and money) has been on the rise since the 1600s[0]; to what degree has this economic model shaped Democracy?
[0] according to Invisible Doctrine, a history of capitalism by Monbiot and Hutchison (2024)
[0] according to Invisible Doctrine, a history of capitalism by Monbiot and Hutchison (2024)
I have not read the book, i only read a short at editionsdufaubourg[.]fr/livre/la-doctrine-invisible
it definitely speaks out to me.
though, it looks likes another of those illusions to entertain you, us. You may want to consider that possibility some day, at least out of curiosity.
it definitely speaks out to me.
though, it looks likes another of those illusions to entertain you, us. You may want to consider that possibility some day, at least out of curiosity.
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.
- 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.
Big fan of the second, which is called “Sortition.” Seems powerful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
A lot of people really kick back on sortition. I think a good compromise is this: everyone votes like normal. We then take the top K candidates who got more than some fraction of the votes. (Say: greater than 1/9th of the total votes.) The winner is selected, at random, proportional to the number of votes they received. Such a system would really really on having a large number of candidates on the ballot; my preference would be (in party ballots): top 2 (or 3!) candidates from each party, and any person who can get more than T signatures. (Where T is some number like “20000” or “5% VAP”.)
That compromise has all the downsides of both systems without preserving the upsides - it creates a pool of candidates that will be biased towards narcissistic lunatics but no democratic checks so they can get in to office even if there is a consensus that their policies will be destructive.
It isn't a terrible idea; I've long liked that sort of plan as a fallback in very tight elections to randomly decide between the candidates. But it isn't really a compromise with the sortition folk because it doesn't have the properties they're looking for.
It isn't a terrible idea; I've long liked that sort of plan as a fallback in very tight elections to randomly decide between the candidates. But it isn't really a compromise with the sortition folk because it doesn't have the properties they're looking for.
“Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic.
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.”
https://www.theballotboy.com/electing-the-doge
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.”
https://www.theballotboy.com/electing-the-doge
The compromise is to defeat gerrymandering. It has the nice quality of being constitutional. Most policies I've seen for defeating gerrymandering don't pass constitutional muster. I say this as someone who worked in the antigerrymandering & redistricting space for 15 years.
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.
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.
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.
Dr. Devereaux of A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has a really nice overview of the position of Roman dictator over at his blog. [1]
The very short version is that 'dictator' refers to two different things. One version is the dictator appointed by the Senate in the early Republic to solve a particular crisis, who had absolute power within their sphere of responsibility and who uniformly relinquished power when their job was done.
The later dictators towards the end of the Republic were Sulla and Caesar. They seized Rome by force, then claimed the long-disused title of 'dictator' to give their actions an appearance of legitimacy.
1. https://acoup.blog/2022/03/18/collections-the-roman-dictator...
The very short version is that 'dictator' refers to two different things. One version is the dictator appointed by the Senate in the early Republic to solve a particular crisis, who had absolute power within their sphere of responsibility and who uniformly relinquished power when their job was done.
The later dictators towards the end of the Republic were Sulla and Caesar. They seized Rome by force, then claimed the long-disused title of 'dictator' to give their actions an appearance of legitimacy.
1. https://acoup.blog/2022/03/18/collections-the-roman-dictator...
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."
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."
> "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."
This seems like it's overfitting quite a bit to the American political system; I've never heard of a definition of a democracy that required exactly these branches before, and it's hard for me to agree with the idea that something with two our four branches (or the division between the branches being slightly different) is somehow impossible to be a democracy by definition.
This seems like it's overfitting quite a bit to the American political system; I've never heard of a definition of a democracy that required exactly these branches before, and it's hard for me to agree with the idea that something with two our four branches (or the division between the branches being slightly different) is somehow impossible to be a democracy by definition.
Democracy is more fundamental than that. It simply means rule by the people. The three branches of government was a later invention, and not all democracies feature it. Political theory surrounding the definition of democracy is more concerned with who has power and how they have it, and has less to do with how it is structured, as much as a US-centric definition may take it to be. Eg parliamentary systems are considered democratic despite a different structure.
That sounds very American though. For example how does the Westminster style system fit into it? While the Prime Minister might be described as the executive, they're actually just the leader of the majority Legislative party.
[deleted]
I think random selection would be really cool. Imagine if some fraction of our representatives were chosen at random. Not enough to be the majority, maybe something like 1/3, but enough to have a real effect.
The more I think about it, the more I like it. This would allow a sampling of all groups in a country to have access to power and decision making without the need to be exceptional in some way. It would also remove the self-selection bias of all elected officials.
The more I think about it, the more I like it. This would allow a sampling of all groups in a country to have access to power and decision making without the need to be exceptional in some way. It would also remove the self-selection bias of all elected officials.
> This has predictable downsides, but ensures fair representation and prevents the existence of a political class.
This depends one whether you consider the existence of a political class to be purely negative.
Seems like random selection of candidates who have no influence over what happens after their term selects for all the negative aspects of a political class (ability to enrich themselves and their friends at others expense, tendency to be ignorant of and ambivalent about issues that don't really affect them) and against the [at least arguably] positive aspects (institutional knowledge of how things operate, some sort of political philosophy which has some public support, some level of skill and drive to get things done, and the motivation to try to keep the public happy enough to reelect them or their compatriots)
This depends one whether you consider the existence of a political class to be purely negative.
Seems like random selection of candidates who have no influence over what happens after their term selects for all the negative aspects of a political class (ability to enrich themselves and their friends at others expense, tendency to be ignorant of and ambivalent about issues that don't really affect them) and against the [at least arguably] positive aspects (institutional knowledge of how things operate, some sort of political philosophy which has some public support, some level of skill and drive to get things done, and the motivation to try to keep the public happy enough to reelect them or their compatriots)
My understanding has always been that one of the "killer apps" of democracy as a system of government is peaceful transfer of power. It seems like one of those "nobody asks what the old software did well" questions; so many people (i.e. Americans) are so used to the idea of peaceful transfer of power that we don't ever think about what a major achievement it is, and how dependent on it everything we take for granted is.
Another advantage of democracy is a source of popular legitimacy for the government, which helps prevent coups. Dictatorships struggle with this, and have to apply other countermeasures to prevent coups.
Unless a dictator is some kind of super-popular national hero or has managed to convince everyone that they have a divine right to rule, they depend on the support of a group of elites to maintain their power, and have no choice but to prevent other ambitious people from concentrating power themselves. This means that even in cases where the dictator happens to be wise, skillful, and benevolent, their regime will suffer from corruption and fragility, because they have to keep doing favors for their support group to keep them loyal or else risk a coup.
Being a dictator is a position that tends to invite well-grounded paranoia and suspicion, because you know that ambitious and bloodthirsty people want your job. So you need to keep files on people.
They can't defer too much independent authority to talented bureaucrats or military generals or private business leaders, at least not without some guarantees on their loyalty, or else they run the risk of those people attempting to seize power. They can mitigate this by developing a cult of personality, but that makes it impossible to gracefully admit mistakes, and in conflict with maintaining a free press.
Unless a dictator is some kind of super-popular national hero or has managed to convince everyone that they have a divine right to rule, they depend on the support of a group of elites to maintain their power, and have no choice but to prevent other ambitious people from concentrating power themselves. This means that even in cases where the dictator happens to be wise, skillful, and benevolent, their regime will suffer from corruption and fragility, because they have to keep doing favors for their support group to keep them loyal or else risk a coup.
Being a dictator is a position that tends to invite well-grounded paranoia and suspicion, because you know that ambitious and bloodthirsty people want your job. So you need to keep files on people.
They can't defer too much independent authority to talented bureaucrats or military generals or private business leaders, at least not without some guarantees on their loyalty, or else they run the risk of those people attempting to seize power. They can mitigate this by developing a cult of personality, but that makes it impossible to gracefully admit mistakes, and in conflict with maintaining a free press.
And the benefits derived from that. When the consequence for the elites of losing the fight for political power is being targeted personally, imprisoned, or even killed, it makes them cling to power using much more brutal and violent means to avoid this fate, which means more repression for the average folk as well - no dissent can be tolerated. In a modern liberal democracy, they know that they can lose an election cycle without losing their head.
This is why things are so concerning in US - we've already lost this benefit, even though the elections are still genuinely free for now. I don't think they will remain so for long now that the stakes for their losers are so high.
This is why things are so concerning in US - we've already lost this benefit, even though the elections are still genuinely free for now. I don't think they will remain so for long now that the stakes for their losers are so high.
> Democracy & separation of powers stand for something simple: Over long horizons, everyone is wrong.
You could look at it that way if you believe that there is a unique right policy answer and government is the solution to finding it, but that's not what democracy and separation of powers are about, in terms og why they have historically been adopted. It can certainly be viewed as a reason to prefer democracy and separation of powers.
But, really, democracy is about people having the right to make their own decisions and how to incorporate that into a collective government (or, more cynically, about people rebelling when they feel they have been deprived of that right and how to prevent it for the sake of domestic peace), and separation of powers is about protecting democracy by preventing the concentration of power in a particular institution within a representative democacy being leveraged to make a dictatorship.
You could look at it that way if you believe that there is a unique right policy answer and government is the solution to finding it, but that's not what democracy and separation of powers are about, in terms og why they have historically been adopted. It can certainly be viewed as a reason to prefer democracy and separation of powers.
But, really, democracy is about people having the right to make their own decisions and how to incorporate that into a collective government (or, more cynically, about people rebelling when they feel they have been deprived of that right and how to prevent it for the sake of domestic peace), and separation of powers is about protecting democracy by preventing the concentration of power in a particular institution within a representative democacy being leveraged to make a dictatorship.
This assumes ruling parties start out as “good” but becomes “bad” over time. A more pragmatic view is that different people and different interests have different ideas about what is good and what is bad, and politics is the stuggle between these viewpoints.
It prevents more than one path to destruction.
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become the villain". Stay in power long enough and you are likely to become the villain, because power corrupts many people.
So people who stay in power may have the wrong policy (because their approach quit working), or they may just become corrupt. Either way, there needs to be a way to get rid of them that is more peaceful than assassination or civil war.
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become the villain". Stay in power long enough and you are likely to become the villain, because power corrupts many people.
So people who stay in power may have the wrong policy (because their approach quit working), or they may just become corrupt. Either way, there needs to be a way to get rid of them that is more peaceful than assassination or civil war.
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> But it prevents the certain path to self-destruction.
History presents us with far more examples of successful autocracies.
History presents us with far more examples of successful autocracies.
Factually true, but this is like saying that history presents more examples of rotten teeth.
No it isn’t.
What is successful?
I think a form of governance is successful when it manages to serve the interests of the ones who are outside the establishment circle.
A royal family can rule for millennia a kingdom that grows smaller and smaller.
A royal family can rule for millennia a kingdom that grows smaller and smaller.
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.
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
”Although great new ideas are articulated by individuals they are nearly always generated by communities.”
https://archive.org/details/brian-eno-on-basic-income
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also, democracy let vote for dictatorship that killed most people in human history. It's harder to implement ideologies in decentralised society.
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
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> 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.
Well I do know he's politically active and worked with Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky. So it's more than a little cheeky.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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......
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
Same with Agile in the form of Scrum.
Humans are very good at playing games.
Democracy: process of arbitrage of elite interests via contest to capture the mass media propaganda machine.
> 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.
So... clickbait.
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.
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.
Democracy is Regional-Majority-Chauvinism!
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.
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.
Democracy is not about policy or institutions. Those are downstream of what democracy is really about, which is the Demos. The community. The people themselves who recognize each other as being like themselves in some fundamental, exclusive way. This is beyond reason or rationality. It is a matter of arbitrary culture, history and identity.
Policy in a complex system like society is infinitely debatable and no amount of education will ever find a "right" or optimal answer to the hard questions a society faces. Division and partisanship is guaranteed in a democracy that allows free debate and expression, regardless of the level of education among the people. The most acrimonious debates often take place among the most educated of the citizenry. Therefore something else must sustain the people as a community and bind them together.
Policy in a complex system like society is infinitely debatable and no amount of education will ever find a "right" or optimal answer to the hard questions a society faces. Division and partisanship is guaranteed in a democracy that allows free debate and expression, regardless of the level of education among the people. The most acrimonious debates often take place among the most educated of the citizenry. Therefore something else must sustain the people as a community and bind them together.
I wasn't talking about the meaning of democracy but its practical implementation. In practice, all systems of governance are built upon institutions.
> Policy in a complex system like society is infinitely debatable and no amount of education will ever find a "right" or optimal answer to the hard questions a society faces.
You are right on the first part, which is why voters need to understand policy that affect them and vote for the people they want. I didn't mention anything about the policy or their vote being correct, just that they should understand it when voting.
> Division and partisanship is guaranteed in a democracy that allows free debate and expression, regardless of the level of education among the people.
The purpose of education is not to avoid those things you mentioned but so that debates and disagreements happen between well informed voters, not deceived voters that vote and disagree based on vibes and manipulation by malicious forces and deceptive demagogues. More debates and disagreements between actual well informed voters is a sign of a very healthy democracy. Hatred, treason and violence are not.
> Therefore something else must sustain the people as a community and bind them together.
Yeah, actually liking their country and educating themselves enough about the policy and choices being made on their behalf, that's what. Education here doesn't mean a phd in chemistry, it means reading,writing, critical thinking skills and being able to consume news and information and discerning facts from fiction.
> Policy in a complex system like society is infinitely debatable and no amount of education will ever find a "right" or optimal answer to the hard questions a society faces.
You are right on the first part, which is why voters need to understand policy that affect them and vote for the people they want. I didn't mention anything about the policy or their vote being correct, just that they should understand it when voting.
> Division and partisanship is guaranteed in a democracy that allows free debate and expression, regardless of the level of education among the people.
The purpose of education is not to avoid those things you mentioned but so that debates and disagreements happen between well informed voters, not deceived voters that vote and disagree based on vibes and manipulation by malicious forces and deceptive demagogues. More debates and disagreements between actual well informed voters is a sign of a very healthy democracy. Hatred, treason and violence are not.
> Therefore something else must sustain the people as a community and bind them together.
Yeah, actually liking their country and educating themselves enough about the policy and choices being made on their behalf, that's what. Education here doesn't mean a phd in chemistry, it means reading,writing, critical thinking skills and being able to consume news and information and discerning facts from fiction.
> Contrary to common sentiment, there is nothing about democracy that makes it inherently correct.
"Least bad" is all anyone claims.
"Least bad" is all anyone claims.
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.
The difference in election outcomes around the 1930s, 1990s and 2020s can be mostly explained by these factors.
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.
> well informed
That's a hell of a dangerous phrase. Usually, it means that the speaker is frustrated that the broader public is not curatedly informed in a way that makes them vote how the speaker wants them to vote.
The great, and terrifying, thing about democracy is that everyone can be informed however they're informed and usually we don't literally burn everything all the way to the ground.
That's a hell of a dangerous phrase. Usually, it means that the speaker is frustrated that the broader public is not curatedly informed in a way that makes them vote how the speaker wants them to vote.
The great, and terrifying, thing about democracy is that everyone can be informed however they're informed and usually we don't literally burn everything all the way to the ground.
You can relax, I specifically mentioned misinformation.
That is what is dangerous. People can get their news from different outlets with different priorities and that is all well and good.
What has happened at a large scale more recently is that bad actors actively feed people factually wrong stories and those are increasingly the only stories they get.
There were always those who sought to do this but the vaccine was that they could never monopolise people’s attentions the way that has become possible lately.
It is perfectly fine for people to have different opinions and vote differently, it is just very important that it is based on factual representation of the world.
That is what is dangerous. People can get their news from different outlets with different priorities and that is all well and good.
What has happened at a large scale more recently is that bad actors actively feed people factually wrong stories and those are increasingly the only stories they get.
There were always those who sought to do this but the vaccine was that they could never monopolise people’s attentions the way that has become possible lately.
It is perfectly fine for people to have different opinions and vote differently, it is just very important that it is based on factual representation of the world.
> What has happened at a large scale more recently is that bad actors actively feed people factually wrong stories and those are increasingly the only stories they get.
Powerful actors spreading incorrect information to serve their own ends is nothing new. Remember when the consensus was that the Earth was the center of the solar system? And when Galileo was prosecuted for spreading misinformation? That was about 400 years ago.
"Misinformation" implies "It is inconvenient for someone to hold the perspective because it threatens my power". Otherwise, we just call such notions wrong, incorrect, lies, falsehoods, invalid, etc.
"Misinformation" is just as dangerous as "well informed". What we now collectively know as a species was not infrequently once wrong according to some powerful historical consensus.
Powerful actors spreading incorrect information to serve their own ends is nothing new. Remember when the consensus was that the Earth was the center of the solar system? And when Galileo was prosecuted for spreading misinformation? That was about 400 years ago.
"Misinformation" implies "It is inconvenient for someone to hold the perspective because it threatens my power". Otherwise, we just call such notions wrong, incorrect, lies, falsehoods, invalid, etc.
"Misinformation" is just as dangerous as "well informed". What we now collectively know as a species was not infrequently once wrong according to some powerful historical consensus.
I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. I said it is not new but the scale and pervasiveness and especially the personal targeting is new.
And yes, that is what misinformation is, lies and falsehoods presented as news.
Remember, honest reporting of events can emphasise different aspects. That is well and good. It’s the dishonesty and disregard for truth that makes misinformation.
> "Misinformation" is just as dangerous as "well informed". Much of what we now collectively know as a species was once wrong according to some powerful historical consensus.
This is just like saying that ignorance is just as good as education because sometimes theories are invalidated when better information comes along. So why bother at all then, kind of mindset.
And yes, that is what misinformation is, lies and falsehoods presented as news.
Remember, honest reporting of events can emphasise different aspects. That is well and good. It’s the dishonesty and disregard for truth that makes misinformation.
> "Misinformation" is just as dangerous as "well informed". Much of what we now collectively know as a species was once wrong according to some powerful historical consensus.
This is just like saying that ignorance is just as good as education because sometimes theories are invalidated when better information comes along. So why bother at all then, kind of mindset.
My point is that "well informed" and "misinformation" are dog whistles implying the speaker presumes they're superior, they know absolute truth, and clearly the unwashed masses are too stupid to understand their own best interests. They must be saved from themselves. Etc.
"Informed" and "falsehoods" serve perfectly well. Inform people don't fight misinformation. Correct falsehoods don't well-inform the public.
"Informed" and "falsehoods" serve perfectly well. Inform people don't fight misinformation. Correct falsehoods don't well-inform the public.
I think you might be projecting here, this is at least not my meaning or interpretation of the world.
> True, but even “least bad” is not correct unless the public is well informed [as in not being fed misinformation]...
You opened by saying that democracy is not ideal unless the populace's information diet is carefully controlled.
By whom and in what way? Who gets to determine what is misinformation? What happens when they deem misinformation rampant or the public not well-informed?
> I think you might be projecting...
I am indeed projecting. I find those specific words only in use among unreasonably self-sure people who aren't terrified by the implications/risks of concentrating power to answer those consequent questions.
> The difference in election outcomes around the 1930s, 1990s and 2020s can be mostly explained by these factors.
But my projecting isn't unjustified. Quoted above, you also began by stating the 2020s electorate was duped with misinformation. Had they only known better, understood their own best interests as seen through the eyes of the self-assuredly enlightened, listened to the nascent Ministry of Truth, etc.
You opened by saying that democracy is not ideal unless the populace's information diet is carefully controlled.
By whom and in what way? Who gets to determine what is misinformation? What happens when they deem misinformation rampant or the public not well-informed?
> I think you might be projecting...
I am indeed projecting. I find those specific words only in use among unreasonably self-sure people who aren't terrified by the implications/risks of concentrating power to answer those consequent questions.
> The difference in election outcomes around the 1930s, 1990s and 2020s can be mostly explained by these factors.
But my projecting isn't unjustified. Quoted above, you also began by stating the 2020s electorate was duped with misinformation. Had they only known better, understood their own best interests as seen through the eyes of the self-assuredly enlightened, listened to the nascent Ministry of Truth, etc.
> You opened by saying that democracy is not ideal unless the populace's information diet is carefully controlled.
By whom and in what way? Who gets to determine what is misinformation? What happens when they deem misinformation rampant or the public not well-informed?
No. I said it works if people are not fed misinformation. The actual truth decides what is misinformation. Sometimes one can’t know it but sometimes one can.
As an example: “Ukraine started the war” is misinformation by virtue of being false.
No. I said it works if people are not fed misinformation. The actual truth decides what is misinformation. Sometimes one can’t know it but sometimes one can.
As an example: “Ukraine started the war” is misinformation by virtue of being false.
Classical Athens offers a fascinating example. It was a radical democracy of citizens who certainly understood what they were doing, and it became the most imperially ambitious, expansive, destructive, and exploitative polis of the classical period. They put an entire city to death for refusing to join the 'defensive' alliance that they led and massively enriched themselves at the expense of member states.
Sure, but their society prospered and the actions of the state reflected the will of the people. That's a big caveat with democracy, it can only be as good as the majority of people.
"Truth" in Education, understanding, and Press easily becomes "propaganda and lies" without the system blinking nor anyone being notified.
The only way to ensure the existence of truth is to give people a choice in what to believe. There are no wildflowers (truth) without also permitting weeds (lies). Certainly, no "organization to manage and protect" can be trusted to manage and protect truth.
The democratic ideal is that people are permitted to come to their own conclusions, given all arguments. Not that the arguments are institutionally restricted.
What happens when your ideological opponents suddenly come into control of the "truth police"?
Freedom to choose is the only protection, unless one's goal isn't democratic.
The only way to ensure the existence of truth is to give people a choice in what to believe. There are no wildflowers (truth) without also permitting weeds (lies). Certainly, no "organization to manage and protect" can be trusted to manage and protect truth.
The democratic ideal is that people are permitted to come to their own conclusions, given all arguments. Not that the arguments are institutionally restricted.
What happens when your ideological opponents suddenly come into control of the "truth police"?
Freedom to choose is the only protection, unless one's goal isn't democratic.
> The only way to ensure the existence of truth is [...]
there is no way to ensure the existence of a thing until there is first some consensus on how the thing is defined.
with the conservative right adopting and extending foucault-era post-modern epistemology ("alternative facts", "that's just, like, your opinion"), it isn't even possible to discuss what "the truth" is, because the agreement on what how we would arrive at an answer is has been undermined (intentionally so, IMO).
for some period of time, much of the west's population bought into the idea that truth was arrived at using some variety of evidence collection, falsification, logic, experimentation and debate. this consensus has been undermined to the point where questions like "do vaccines cause autism" can be asked without any willingness to engage with the historical definition of how a true answer would be arrived at.
there is no way to ensure the existence of a thing until there is first some consensus on how the thing is defined.
with the conservative right adopting and extending foucault-era post-modern epistemology ("alternative facts", "that's just, like, your opinion"), it isn't even possible to discuss what "the truth" is, because the agreement on what how we would arrive at an answer is has been undermined (intentionally so, IMO).
for some period of time, much of the west's population bought into the idea that truth was arrived at using some variety of evidence collection, falsification, logic, experimentation and debate. this consensus has been undermined to the point where questions like "do vaccines cause autism" can be asked without any willingness to engage with the historical definition of how a true answer would be arrived at.
I'm speaking about an environment that passively allows truth by default, because of truly free speech. Something that works simply, and that people can simply understand. Which is a prerequisite for democracy.
You're arguing for active assurance of truth, assumedly forced on people, which isn't possible in principle. While using pseudo-intellectual refences to Foucault and the scientific method in an attempt to slyly imply that, in the end, truth has to be defined by your party interests.
I argue for freedom of individual choice, which is the fundamental democratic principle. You're arguing for the need for society wide consensus in belief, which is not a democratic principle.
Does a willingness to engage with the historical definition of how a true answer "would be arrived at" include the functional banning of future science and debate?
For the record, I wrote a graduate paper on the best evidence for the cause of autism. Not that the then-current best evidence definitely revealed the cause, but only that it was the best evidence at the time. Although the evidence did not point to vaccines, I would hold anyone who wanted to ban such debate as being too academically compromised to be a member of the scientific community. In private, I would be more direct.
You're arguing for active assurance of truth, assumedly forced on people, which isn't possible in principle. While using pseudo-intellectual refences to Foucault and the scientific method in an attempt to slyly imply that, in the end, truth has to be defined by your party interests.
I argue for freedom of individual choice, which is the fundamental democratic principle. You're arguing for the need for society wide consensus in belief, which is not a democratic principle.
Does a willingness to engage with the historical definition of how a true answer "would be arrived at" include the functional banning of future science and debate?
For the record, I wrote a graduate paper on the best evidence for the cause of autism. Not that the then-current best evidence definitely revealed the cause, but only that it was the best evidence at the time. Although the evidence did not point to vaccines, I would hold anyone who wanted to ban such debate as being too academically compromised to be a member of the scientific community. In private, I would be more direct.
> You're arguing for active assurance of truth, assumedly forced on people,
No, this is the opposite of what I'm arguing for. I'm saying that if a community agrees on a definition of what truth is (the old consensus was "something arrived at via a process mostly like <this>"), then "truths can exist" within that community. By contrast, if they do not agree on a definition what truth is, then no truths can exist within that community.
I'm not using references to Foucault to talk about what I think about defining truth; I'm making those references because that's what the public intellectual underpinnings of the alt-right relies on. Personally, I think that some of what Foucault had to say is insightful and interesting, but the extension of his observations to knowledge in general is unsupportable. And not just unsupportable - utterly destructive of a consensus about truth-generating processes that in turn is vital for functioning (democratic) communities.
> You're arguing for the need for society wide consensus in belief
No, I'm arguing for a society wide consensus about how we choose between beliefs. Societies in the past have had this and still accomodated different beliefs. Most of the time this is resolved by noting that the beliefs can't be resolved via evidence. For example: what is the correct role of the state? There is no truth-generating process that can provide an answer to this question, but there can still be multiple different beliefs about the right answer.
> anyone who wanted to ban such debate
The issue is not "ban such debate". The issue is unwillingness to tackle in good faith the debate that has already taken place. No truth-generating process can involve an ever-present willingness to endlessly discard things already accepted as true. Clearly, it cannot refuse to ever reconsider either. So the actual path followed is a compromise between these two: if you don't have radically divergent and NEW evidence or data explanations for something considered settled, you'll have to wait a while. We're not going to relitigate whether the earth is round or not unless someone comes along with either major new data that is incongruous with our current "truth" about this, or someone finds incongruities within the data/"truth" we already have. That doesn't mean "debate is shut down" - it's a reflection of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary whatnot to be worthy of spending any time on".
I don't think anyone serious claims to know the cause of autism; I don't think anyone serious claims it is vaccines, which is in turn a reflection of what the the truth-generating process (the one we had consensus about until recently) says about that.
No, this is the opposite of what I'm arguing for. I'm saying that if a community agrees on a definition of what truth is (the old consensus was "something arrived at via a process mostly like <this>"), then "truths can exist" within that community. By contrast, if they do not agree on a definition what truth is, then no truths can exist within that community.
I'm not using references to Foucault to talk about what I think about defining truth; I'm making those references because that's what the public intellectual underpinnings of the alt-right relies on. Personally, I think that some of what Foucault had to say is insightful and interesting, but the extension of his observations to knowledge in general is unsupportable. And not just unsupportable - utterly destructive of a consensus about truth-generating processes that in turn is vital for functioning (democratic) communities.
> You're arguing for the need for society wide consensus in belief
No, I'm arguing for a society wide consensus about how we choose between beliefs. Societies in the past have had this and still accomodated different beliefs. Most of the time this is resolved by noting that the beliefs can't be resolved via evidence. For example: what is the correct role of the state? There is no truth-generating process that can provide an answer to this question, but there can still be multiple different beliefs about the right answer.
> anyone who wanted to ban such debate
The issue is not "ban such debate". The issue is unwillingness to tackle in good faith the debate that has already taken place. No truth-generating process can involve an ever-present willingness to endlessly discard things already accepted as true. Clearly, it cannot refuse to ever reconsider either. So the actual path followed is a compromise between these two: if you don't have radically divergent and NEW evidence or data explanations for something considered settled, you'll have to wait a while. We're not going to relitigate whether the earth is round or not unless someone comes along with either major new data that is incongruous with our current "truth" about this, or someone finds incongruities within the data/"truth" we already have. That doesn't mean "debate is shut down" - it's a reflection of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary whatnot to be worthy of spending any time on".
I don't think anyone serious claims to know the cause of autism; I don't think anyone serious claims it is vaccines, which is in turn a reflection of what the the truth-generating process (the one we had consensus about until recently) says about that.
Democracy is based on citizens making informed decisions about how they are to be run, therefore misinformation is a fundamental assault on democracy.
Politicians know that using emotional arguments is much more effective than factual arguments. I don’t really expect that to change anytime soon.
One could hope for emotional, factual arguments ...
Those elected to power can and should be held to a higher standard than the citizens that they serve, and that could include freedoms of speech.
An analogue might be how a CEO and board of directors are limited by law about what they can say publicly, so that they do not mislead shareholders.
An analogue might be how a CEO and board of directors are limited by law about what they can say publicly, so that they do not mislead shareholders.
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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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
And what is that better system? To date, it appears to be the "least worst" option. Regardless, the two-party system has to go.
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!
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!
All those words and yet you did not answer my question: what is the better alternative?
I am not about to explain the alternative but just explain your acceptance of "least worst" option. If you look out the least worst case definitely democracy isn't alone :) It's all about your acceptance of which worst is best for you.
Even Barbaric system far better than democratic system. You don't care about the decision just because of it's taken by majority peoples on your own life!
Another alternative is auction system. Auction conducts between parties, so whoever has money that company will hold ruling rights for some years. It's kinda lease. It's far better system the Democratic Election bribe for Votes & of curse the auction money given to citizens but it's official.
If you don't know about bribe election, check it out. https://www.google.com/search?q=tn+election+bribe
Even Barbaric system far better than democratic system. You don't care about the decision just because of it's taken by majority peoples on your own life!
Another alternative is auction system. Auction conducts between parties, so whoever has money that company will hold ruling rights for some years. It's kinda lease. It's far better system the Democratic Election bribe for Votes & of curse the auction money given to citizens but it's official.
If you don't know about bribe election, check it out. https://www.google.com/search?q=tn+election+bribe
> whoever has money that company will hold ruling rights for some years
And that's better? That's what we have now, effectively, but 2 simple changes could "fix" the system significantly:
1. Campaign finance reform 2. Ranked choice voting (or similar, as RCV is not without its issues).
I'd also like to see some sort of "understanding test" so that you can only vote if you can demonstrate that you understand the arguments of the proposition in question. There's no way to do that, but it makes me happy to wish it were so.
And that's better? That's what we have now, effectively, but 2 simple changes could "fix" the system significantly:
1. Campaign finance reform 2. Ranked choice voting (or similar, as RCV is not without its issues).
I'd also like to see some sort of "understanding test" so that you can only vote if you can demonstrate that you understand the arguments of the proposition in question. There's no way to do that, but it makes me happy to wish it were so.
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.