[HN Gopher] Brian Eno's Theory of Democracy
___________________________________________________________________
Brian Eno's Theory of Democracy
Author : akkartik
Score : 157 points
Date : 2025-05-04 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
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| brazzy 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.
|
| 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.
| James_K wrote:
| 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.
| mettamage wrote:
| How come it's just a 2 party system and not a multi party
| system like in some European countries?
| bazoom42 wrote:
| 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.
| Propelloni wrote:
| 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.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| 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
| kubb wrote:
| 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)
| mamonster wrote:
| 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 "Zurich"/"Bern for
| UDC/SVP.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| 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.
| mettamage wrote:
| 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
| mettamage wrote:
| 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.
| meristohm wrote:
| 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?
| ronnieboy493 wrote:
| 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/1996/09/1
| 8/p...
|
| [3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/18/jil
| l-s...
|
| [4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3740146.stm
| notahacker wrote:
| 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.
| ronnieboy493 wrote:
| 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.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| whatever1 wrote:
| 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.
| mtsr wrote:
| 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.
| noduerme wrote:
| 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.
| whatever1 wrote:
| 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.
| cjfd wrote:
| 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."
| fragmede wrote:
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| 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.
| saghm wrote:
| > "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.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| 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...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Big fan of the second, which is called "Sortition." Seems
| powerful
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
| thechao wrote:
| 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".)
| roenxi wrote:
| 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.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| "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
| thechao wrote:
| 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.
| Eextra953 wrote:
| 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.
| notahacker wrote:
| > 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)
| lurk2 wrote:
| > But it prevents the certain path to self-destruction.
|
| History presents us with far more examples of successful
| autocracies.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| What is successful?
| lurk2 wrote:
| Persistence over time.
| cjfd wrote:
| If we manage to blow up the earth and all life ends, a
| state that 'persists over time' will be created. Is this
| the ultimate success?
| lurk2 wrote:
| It would save future generations from having to read
| inane questions so I don't think we can rule it out.
| whatever1 wrote:
| 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.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Factually true, but this is like saying that history presents
| more examples of rotten teeth.
| lurk2 wrote:
| No it isn't.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| I enjoyed the article but it could be clearer and more concise.
|
| 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.
|
| The essence is that all participants must be _co-operative_ in
| their education, motives, and intentions. And this requires a
| system of _reliable information_ and agreed laws.
|
| 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.
| amos-burton wrote:
| 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.
| meristohm wrote:
| 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)
| amos-burton wrote:
| 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.
| fifilura wrote:
| 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.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| 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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 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.
| saghm wrote:
| > 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...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 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.
| patrickmay wrote:
| 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.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| 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.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| 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.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| selecsosi wrote:
| 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...
| prox wrote:
| What is your theory, if you are willing to share?
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| 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...
| vintermann wrote:
| > 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.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| 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.
| kstenerud wrote:
| 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.
| jemmyw wrote:
| 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.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| 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.
| ultrasandwich wrote:
| 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
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Also, democracy let vote for dictatorship that killed most
| people in human history. It's harder to implement ideologies
| in decentralised society.
| thom wrote:
| 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.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| 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.
| RhysU wrote:
| > Contrary to common sentiment, there is nothing about
| democracy that makes it inherently correct.
|
| "Least bad" is all anyone claims.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| 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.
| harimau777 wrote:
| 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.
| RhysU wrote:
| > 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.
| gradus_ad wrote:
| 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.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Democracy is based on citizens making informed decisions about
| how they are to be run, therefore misinformation is a
| fundamental assault on democracy.
| criddell wrote:
| Politicians know that using emotional arguments is much more
| effective than factual arguments. I don't really expect that
| to change anytime soon.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| One could hope for _emotional, factual_ arguments ...
| teamonkey wrote:
| 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.
| mrangle wrote:
| "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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > 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.
| mrangle wrote:
| 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.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > 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.
| globnomulous wrote:
| 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.
| chaosprint wrote:
| 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.
| emsign wrote:
| 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.
| jack_h wrote:
| > 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.
| keiferski wrote:
| 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. 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.
|
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| Speaking of literacy: what does "populism" mean? Isn't it just
| another word for "democracy," in contrast to "republicanism?"
| fifticon wrote:
| as I understand it, populism is when you exploit 'popular'
| causes to get a mass backing to bring yourself into, and to
| stay in, power. It is opportunistic, 'goal justifies means'
| philosophy.
|
| So, you don't really have orinciples or a cause, apart from
| 'I should be in charge'. It also means voters, if they are
| capable of judging that, cant really trust you, because you
| will switch causes whenever it suits you.
|
| In my own country, I could name politicians who always
| carried the same color as the reigning political movement,
| and who would switch when the winds change, because their
| real principle was 'be on the winning side'.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| This has an obvious aside of letting voters try whatever a
| large majority want to be tried, for example scaling back
| globalization in at attempt to prioritize material and
| psychological well being of citizens. This could well
| backfire and voters would then want something else, which
| turncoats will happily endorse. The alternative is that we
| can't get to something else because it has no popular
| support yet.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > "Prioritize material and psychological well being of
| citizens"
|
| Of which citizens, by what measure and in what direction?
| Up or down? "Quo bono" is never answered. Well, it's
| clear if you look at the charts - the curves never change
| direction regardless of who's in charge.
|
| > "letting voters try whatever a large majority want to
| be tried"
|
| Washing hands with the will of the voters is demagogy.
| Trump promised stopping the U war in 24 hours, bringing
| prices down and unseen prosperity from day one but all
| that was replaced by "it was a joke" and endless
| "necessary pain" (for you, not him). The spin now is that
| the voters elected a person, not his promises, and if he
| lied and joked... it's voters' fault. As if there was
| ever a choice without jokers in it.
| inejge wrote:
| I'm sure you can look up the dictionary definition like
| everyone else, and it won't mention anything similar to
| "democracy", but if you want one from a random internet
| person: it's pandering to discontent and fear of some portion
| of the populace. The populist implies that he or she
| represents the interests of that populace and has solutions
| to their problems.
|
| Of course it is never that easy.
| leereeves wrote:
| Everyone not already in power who wants to be elected tries
| to appeal to those who are unhappy with the current
| government.
|
| How do you decide if they are "pandering to discontent and
| fear of some portion of the populace" or "standing up for
| neglected people"?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think that populism has an element of "tear the system
| down", which is something that goes considerably further
| than the usual "throw those bums out".
|
| When Biden ran against Trump, he tried to appeal to
| voters who were unhappy with Trump, but nobody called him
| a populist. He was just a normal politician. Trump isn't.
| Neither is Bernie Sanders.
|
| How do you decide? I can't give you a clear answer there.
| Still, there is a difference. (Maybe "do they talk like a
| normal politician"?) Most out-of-office politicians are
| on the Biden side; only a few are on the Trump/Sanders
| side.
| leereeves wrote:
| If by "tear the system down" you mean anti-establishment
| and anti-elite, I agree. That's an essential component of
| populism.
|
| I don't think many people would say Biden was anti-
| establishment. In 2020, Trump hadn't been in office long
| enough to change the establishment very much.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Most out-of-office politicians are on the Biden side;
| only a few are on the Trump/Sanders side.
|
| At least on the GOP side, it's because they care only
| about cheap labor. Free trade to harness cheap labor
| abroad, and mass immigration to harness cheap labor for
| what can't be outsourced.
| detaro wrote:
| Having evidence that the fears are based in reality and
| proposed policies that would help said people is a point
| for the latter, obvious contradictions in those one for
| the former.
|
| Proposed policies being realistic vs vague broad strokes
| that are unlikely to be legal to implement would be
| another indicative axis.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I suspect that having "obvious contradictions" in
| policies is an extremely high bar for modern political
| groupings generally - ie all political parties and their
| leaders are populist now.
| detaro wrote:
| It's certainly not an uncommon trait, although there are
| still large differences in degree.
| rayiner wrote:
| > it's pandering to discontent and fear of some portion of
| the populace. The populist implies that he or she
| represents the interests of that populace and has solutions
| to their problems.
|
| That's just democracy! Your definition seems to have an
| unstated premise: you think certain kinds of "fear and
| discontent" are legitimate, and others aren't. But the
| whole point of democracy is that it's a mechanism for the
| people to resolve questions like that.
|
| What you're really drawing is the distinction between
| republicanism and democracy. You want elites to decide what
| the important issues are and propose solutions, and voting
| to be limited to picking between those approved worldviews.
| That's republicanism! That's the system the founders
| created when we had states appoint electors and senators,
| and a limited franchise.
| notahacker wrote:
| > You want elites to decide what the important issues are
| and propose solutions, and voting to be limited to
| picking between those approved worldviews.
|
| I'm not sure the OP said anything that implied they
| wanted this, but on the other hand it's unambiguously
| true that many politicians characterised as "populist"
| _do_ want this upon getting into power. It 's just that
| their justification for interfering with court cases or
| removing elected officials who disagree with them or
| banning opposition altogether is " _they_ represent the
| elites /immigrants/Jews but _I_ am on your side ", which
| distinguishes them from people justifying similar actions
| on the basis of national identity or religion or divine
| right or technocracy...
| rayiner wrote:
| > many politicians characterised as "populist" do want
| this upon getting into power
|
| Your statement makes no sense. The elected politicians
| are the ones who are supposed to be deciding the
| political issues.
|
| The problem is that, throughout the western world, judges
| and bureaucrats are not staying in their lane. The New
| York Times did a good podcast on how the immigration
| system we have is one that nobody ever campaigned on or
| voted for:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-
| daily/electi.... The immigration system has been created
| through litigation and bureaucratic action--e.g,, taking
| an asylum system enacted in response to Jews fleeing
| genocide and applying the eligibility criteria so broadly
| that it covers general unrest in a country, or even just
| crime and gang violence.
|
| Don't forget, the judicial system is quite consciously an
| anti-democratic check. judges were put there to make sure
| that voters don't vote themselves other people's
| property. That's a legitimate function, but you have to
| keep an eye on it. The more and more issues you have
| decided by judges the less and less democratic your
| system becomes.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| This is true for other areas as well. Our healthcare,
| education, and tax systems for example aren't what anyone
| proposed or ever would propose. They ended up that way
| for a variety of reasons and now we're stuck with them
| because the only real solution is to tear them down and
| start from scratch.
| fn-mote wrote:
| > only real solution is to tear them down and start from
| scratch
|
| The idea that tearing the political system down and
| starting from scratch will fix things is just as much of
| a fantasy as the idea that a greenfield rewrite of code
| will produce something with all of the desirable features
| of the original and twice as fast.
| lttlrck wrote:
| The Second System problem. Unfortunately even very
| (legitimately!) smart people fall into the trap.
|
| Though it's true that they may know it's a trap. Ulterior
| motives aplenty.
| notahacker wrote:
| Not sure why you've chosen to go off on a tangent about
| immigration to the United States in response to my post
| about populists of all stripes typically trying to remove
| all sorts of checks on their power, including the
| democratic ones in the guise of "protecting" the people
| from the enemy _du jour_.
|
| But since you've decided to make this about the current
| US administration then yes, it's a matter of fact that
| the current system is a republic with limited democratic
| participation in the decision making process. A situation
| in which a single individual holds all the power and
| permits bureaucrats like ICE to do what they wanted to
| any individual for any reason with noone else being able
| to intervene would _also_ be a republic with limited
| democratic participation in the decision making process,
| though not one I would prefer, particularly not if I was
| a law-abiding citizen who understood how legal processes
| worked but had the sort of ancestry ICE and Trump seem a
| bit suspicious of...
|
| No systems in the US look like what people campaigned on
| and voted for. What would policy look like in with true
| public votes on anything and everything? Well judging by
| approval ratings, Trump's decision to singlehandedly
| cause a recession with his tariff policy is something the
| public overall do _not_ back, no matter how much Trump
| claims that he 's acting for them and against globalist
| elites. Similarly, it seems that what Trump's newly
| created bureaucracy is doing to other government
| departments doesn't meet with wide approval, no matter
| how much the world's richest man appointed to head after
| giving him lots of money it claims to be tackling elites
| and corruption. Trump is a populist, but like many other
| populists he and many of his actions are not at all
| _popular_ at the moment: it 's a feature of the design of
| republics rather than the popular will that he remains in
| power nevertheless. Perhaps that's why the executive's
| power is supposed to be checked...
|
| But yes, the one area in which his approval ratings
| stayed above water in _some_ polls is in his handling of
| immigration. Whether this includes every decision the
| unelected bureaucracy that is ICE makes to select random
| non-citizens and citizens for detention or even
| deportation to to foreign concentration camps for
| wrongthink or wrong tattoos is another question; seems
| like public opinion sides with the courts rather than the
| admin on deporting a legal immigrant for no reason and
| then not bringing him back because that would mean
| admitting error. In a republic like the US it 's actually
| _not_ the job of the official elected in the belief he 'd
| get the price of eggs down to overrule courts, and it
| seems hollow to claim it'd be more democratic to skip the
| process of legislative change in favour of executive fiat
| when the public doesn't agree with him on many of the
| details.
|
| It would, of course, technically be more democratic to
| have people's right to remain in the country based not
| upon law but upon the prevailing fashionability of their
| skin colour and surname with a wider public that got to
| vote on mass deportations to third countries whenever
| they felt like it. Even as someone with reason to be
| completely confident this wouldn't jeopardise my right to
| remain in the country I was born in, I'd hesitate to say
| that supplanting citizenship law with a public popularity
| contest would be _better_ though it would be more
| democratic. But this has nothing to do with what is going
| on in the US, which involves the president insisting his
| his yuge popular mandate places him so far above the law
| that bureaucrats whose actions he favours don 't have to
| follow it, never mind other populists like Maduro or Mao
| or Mussolini who didn't even worry too much about the
| mandate bit.
| rayiner wrote:
| I used that example because, across the developed world,
| immigration policy is _the issue_ that reflects the
| disconnect between what the public wants and what anti-
| democratic checks on democracy have allowed.
|
| We literally just had an election. _Both candidates_ ran
| promising to close the border, and Trump additionally
| promised "mass deportations." Immigration was literally
| the first two issues on his platform:
| https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. He won the popular
| vote. He's got the mandate, and four years to implement
| it and see how the public feels then.
|
| What we are seeing with the judicial and bureaucratic
| resistance to deportation is not the "rule of law." In
| fact, the immigration laws are designed to facilitate
| deportations quickly and to punish those who facilitate
| or encourage illegal immigration. What you're seeing is
| elites try to use the republic's anti-democratic checks
| to impose their preferred immigration policies, according
| to their peculiar affinity for immigrants.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| This often gets forgotten but by all appearances,
| Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS sec, facilitated mass
| migration illegally but avoided ever being called anti-
| democratic, authoritarian, or whatever else people are
| called for doing deportations. (So importations are more
| democratic than deportations I guess somehow??). No one
| gave him a mandate to do the CHNV program flying people
| in, to spend money building a highway in Panama, to grant
| parole to alleged asylum seekers, etc. It's surprisingly
| missing from all this passionate debate about
| authoritarians, populism, and the end of the rule of law.
| notahacker wrote:
| Mayorkas had exactly the same thin mandate as Trump
| appointees, and was also unpopular, but he wasn't trying
| to claim his mandate was so strong that he could ignore
| courts and the constitution.
|
| If Germany gave you a visa, would you consider it
| necessary to start a debate about whether such actions
| were authoritarian? How about if when you got there, they
| locked you up without trial?
| notahacker wrote:
| I point to issue polling because I'm pointing out the
| obvious fact that much of what he and his appointees
| actually done _isn 't_ the will of the public, no matter
| how much shouting about migration or egg prices during
| the election resonated with certain segments of it.
|
| The fact that he has four years left to make appointments
| and executive orders and the public can't do anything
| about is an implementation detail of a republic, just as
| anti-democratic as similar quirks meaning that other
| presidents' appointees are around to thwart him in
| certain areas. Most of those decisions have absolutely
| nothing to do with issues that got Trump elected, but the
| rules let him get his way on many of them anyway. Contra
| populism: democracy /= the guy who got a plurality of the
| vote once getting his way on everything even when the
| rules and votes _aren 't_ in his favour.
|
| I do think your sequence of posts is as good an
| indication of the difference between populism and
| popularity as we're ever likely to see though. Populism
| isn't about making political arguments that are popular,
| it's about making arguments of the form that if an
| ultraconservative Supreme Court of presidential
| appointees (three of them his) determines that part of
| Trump's bureaucracy sending legal migrants to foreign
| concentration camps without even deigning to provide a
| reason might not be constitutional, it's because "elites
| try to use the republic's anti-democratic checks to
| impose their preferred immigration policies, according to
| their peculiar affinity for immigrants...." even when the
| best available evidence suggests the public widely
| supports the court in this instance. Trump won a vote so
| anyone not deferring to him is guilty of overreach.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I point to issue polling because I'm pointing out the
| obvious fact that much of what he and his appointees
| actually done isn't the will of the public
|
| The reason we have elections and not issue polls is
| because voters balance the totality of the circumstances
| in reaching their decisions. People may or may not like
| this or that incident in the moment, but that doesn't
| mean they disapprove of the overall arc of the policy.
| So, for example, polls show that virtually no Trump
| voters regret their vote and he'd probably win a rematch:
| https://emersoncollegepolling.com/trump-100-days/
| (Emerson is a good pollster, its final 2024 polls nailed
| Trump's actual share, and overestimated Harris only by
| 2). Issue polls taken in the moment also suffer from
| response bias--e.g. people who approve of the overall arc
| of Trump's immigration policy are less likely to respond
| to polling about a flub than people who are outraged by
| the policy itself. (The 2024 Harris bounce should be a
| good lesson in response bias!)
|
| And a rule based on second guessing election results
| based on issue polling would never be applied even
| handedly--judges are definitionally elites and such a
| rule would be applied to favor their preferences. Issue
| polling showed the ACA under water for quite some time.
| Roberts had ample basis for finding the statute
| unconstitutional--far less of a stretch than the
| expansive interpretations of asylum laws--but he
| admirably saved it. And I'd argue that, contrary to the
| issue polls, Obamas's reelection ultimately bore out that
| the ACA had a mandate.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The judicial resistance to deportation because they
| didn't follow the law on how to do deportation. That is,
| the judicial opposition is _exactly_ the rule of law.
|
| The courts are not saying that the administration can't
| deport illegal aliens. They are saying that, in order to
| deport illegal aliens, _the administration has to follow
| the law_.
|
| Do you have a problem with that? If so, what and why?
| inejge wrote:
| > Your definition seems to have an unstated premise: you
| think certain kinds of "fear and discontent" are
| legitimate, and others aren't.
|
| I don't. Fear and discontent exist, and I'm not
| interested in the degree of their justification here. The
| unstated part is my disdain for the populist's
| overeagerness to leverage them, offering emotionally
| satisfying but often practically dubious or outrightly
| deleterious policies and actions.
| notatoad wrote:
| the important part of populism isn't the fear and
| discontent, it's the pandering. some fear and discontent
| is valid, some isn't, that's not relevant to whether
| something is populist or not.
|
| populism is telling people that there's a nice easy clean
| solution to their fear and discontent, when in reality
| problems are complicated and difficult to solve without
| causing other equally valid problems.
| leereeves wrote:
| Populism refers to any movement that claims to represent the
| interests of the common people against the elite. It might be
| left, right, democratic, or authoritarian. It might really
| serve the people or just use anti-establishment sentiment for
| its own benefit.
|
| It's not necessarily a bad thing but it's almost always
| reported negatively because the media is owned by the elite.
| Even elites who claim to care about the people don't want to
| be cast as the villain or lose power themselves.
|
| Ironically, a successful populist movement becomes the new
| elite and creates an opportunity for other people to be
| populists.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But it ought to be reported, maybe not negatively, but at
| least skeptically. Representing the people against the
| elites almost always means destroying (to at least some
| degree) the system that has elevated those elites.
|
| That may be needed, it may be justified, but we still need
| to ask what the replacement system is. It is easy to
| criticize, but harder to offer a better alternative. It is
| easy to destroy; hard to build. The populist's answer to
| what comes next often boils down to "trust me, bro" - there
| isn't a concrete, workable plan. As a result, the net
| result often winds up worse than what came before, not just
| for the elite, but even for the people the populist claimed
| to represent. This is true _even if the populist was
| honest_ , that is, sincerely had the interest of the common
| people at heart.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| What you're describing is basically Conservativism. The
| root word is conserve.
|
| Liberals are often about taking down (liberating) the
| current system. But for some reason they often don't want
| or don't get the populist labels. For example, I don't
| think anyone ever called BLM a populist movement.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Ironically, a successful populist movement becomes the
| new elite and creates an opportunity for other people to be
| populists.
|
| Generally the first part is the _defining feature_ of a
| populist movement: a leader or faction that seeks to insist
| that the only solution to elites or other hated minorities
| or purported threats is to assume that anyone trying to
| stop them accumulating more power is an agent of the
| elites. Naturally this rhetorical style suits people that
| want to accumulate a lot of power and wealth and don 't
| want to give too many straight answers to questions about
| what they're doing with it.
|
| That's why Maduro, an oligarch who's been in power for over
| 12 years and decides exactly who is and isn't "elite" in
| his country is characterised as "populist" because his
| rhetorical style is all about claiming that he's on the
| side of the poor against [what's left of] the middle
| classes, whilst a civil war or coup which usually leads to
| elites being deposed may not involve populists at all.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It was just a slur against the People's Party. It was like
| how people now call whatever Trump said last "Trumpism."
|
| Look at the People's Party's policies and that's what it
| stands for. The shorthand is that the policies prioritize
| wage laborers and small business over massive entrenched
| interests and insiders. The way the term has been used since
| then (always by people who disapprove) means "whatever the
| rabble are asking for now." Or "appealing to the lowest
| common denominator voter."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States)
|
| So the term is really meaningless, just a slur used against
| people whose ideas sometimes overlap with People's Party
| policies, used by people who would have hated the People's
| Party at the time.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| Populism and democracy are orthogonal. Usually populists just
| ride democracy as a vehicle to where they really want to go.
|
| If The People selected you as their Chosen Leader, who needs
| pesky Elites in the courts and the Corrupt bureaucrats
| holding you back, the Chosen One? All opposition to what The
| People want is elitist gatekeeping and needs to be violently
| eradicated.
| EnPissant wrote:
| Suppose a political candidate runs on a platform of mass
| deportations of illegal aliens. If he wins the election and
| then makes good on this campaign promise, is that populism
| or democracy?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It was called Fascism when Hitler did it. Why, did you
| have somebody else in mind?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Deporting illegal immigrants is called enforcing the law,
| not fascism.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Depends on how you do it._ Yes, they are here in
| violation of the law. But if that 's what bothers you,
| then the process you use to deport them had better be in
| keeping with the law. If what bothers you about them
| being here is the "illegal" aspect, then you must not
| trample the legal process in order to remove them.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| For example what's an illegal way of departing an illegal
| immigrant?
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| Surely there is some kind of due process? You can't just
| pick up foreign looking types and ship them off in black
| vans. That would be an illegal way to do that, I believe
| (I hope). I'm not American so I don't know how it works
| over there.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| If you read the thread you replied to, we were referring
| specifically to deporting "illegal immigrants", meaning
| the due process has been already run and determined they
| are illegal, which is why I asked how do you illegally
| deport an illegal.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's a bizarre argument. Conduct is illegal because
| it's bad or has harmful effects. Immigration laws exist
| because society recognizes that immigration has various
| undesirable effects (cultural change, strain on public
| resources, etc.), so we need to restrict immigration to
| controllable levels that manage those negative effects.
|
| The objection to illegal immigrants is that _they're
| here._ While deportation efforts should follow the law
| like everything else, there's nothing about illegal
| immigration that makes the legal process especially
| important compared to other things.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| There's a couple of aspects to it that, in my opinion,
| need to come together. Bypassing and/or undermining
| democratic institutions (media, courts, bureaucracy) and
| claiming exclusive representation - "I alone represent
| The People" - come to mind.
|
| Mass deportations, without more context, in and of
| themselves are more a _policy_ and less a _political
| style_.
|
| You can execute this policy in a democratic or populist
| fashion.
| EnPissant wrote:
| > media, courts, bureaucracy
|
| This is a gross redefinition of democracy.
|
| But we can go down this path if you wish. If a judge
| rules that only men can vote by their interpretation of
| the constitution, is that democracy?
| rayiner wrote:
| It's Schrodinger's democracy. _Roe_ voiding nearly every
| state's abortion laws was "democracy," but _Dobbs_
| returning the issue to the states was "judicial fiat."
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| I have a more maximalist view of what democracy means
| which is I believe more common in Europe and I suspect
| that's where most of your disagreement stems from.
|
| First of all no single judge will be capable of upholding
| this, but let's say the entire judiciary has indeed
| decided to disenfranchise half the population I'd say
| they are grossly failing at their job. But anyway, your
| question was: is that democracy?
|
| Well, it depends. In my democracy it would not be,
| because freedom is a big part of what democracy means
| here - even if The People decide freedom is unimportant.
| That's what we don't like about naked democracy, it
| easily leads to mob rule in which freedom is stripped and
| the tyrannical majority overrides all other concerns.
|
| In my mind democracy is a broad system of checks,
| balances and institutions in which the will of the people
| is just _one element_. An important one, but definitely
| not the only one.
|
| Just for entertainment consider this: if The People vote
| to keep women out of the electoral process, is that
| democracy?
| rayiner wrote:
| > Bypassing and/or undermining democratic institutions
| (media, courts, bureaucracy)
|
| Those are all explicitly anti-democratic institutions!
| You can argue that we're not a democracy, but rather a
| constitutional republic, and those are appropriate checks
| on democracy. But that is a different argument.
|
| It's important to keep the terminology straight so you
| can think of the situation clearly. To address the mass
| deportation hypothetical: judges are very different from
| the people. They are cognitive elites with degrees from
| elite institutions. Insofar as judges interpret laws to
| check deportation efforts--for example, expansively
| interpreting the criteria for asylum, which they have
| done--you should understand that what's happening is a
| conflict between voters on one hand, and elites who are
| far more sympathetic to immigration.
|
| In a functional democracy, these anti-democratic checks
| should be maintained within their proper scope. For
| example, judges should avoid allowing the pro-immigrant
| sympathies of their class to color their legal opinions.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| Something I just realized that might be germane to this
| little discussion: I am European, not American.
|
| We often use the word "democracy" as the vast eco-system
| underlying and upholding modern liberal societies in
| general, not just the elected parts. Whether that's
| correct use of the word - I suspect you think it's not -
| I leave open for discussion. If you want I can use the
| narrow definition in which case we are mostly in
| agreement.
|
| Judges should exercise due caution and be mindful of
| their obvious biases.
|
| However, this works both ways. Officials cater to their
| often not so well-informed electorate and this group, The
| People, is as susceptible to biases - if not more - as
| the so called elites are. Both should exercise restraint
| and be mindful of their biases, not just the judiciary.
| It takes a populist to claim The People are always right.
|
| As you can tell I am also very much an amateur. I suggest
| you don't approach me as someone who has studied
| political science because I'll have a hard time keeping
| up.
| rayiner wrote:
| I didn't know this was something europeans did, because
| it's alien to how americans historically have used the
| term. During the founding, there were explicit debates
| about democracies versus republics. The Democratic party
| originated as what europeans might call a "populist"
| party. And over time we changed the original
| constitutional structure to make it more democratic and
| less of a republic (such as direct election of senators).
|
| > People, is as susceptible to biases - if not more - as
| the so called elites are. Both should exercise restraint
| and be mindful of their biases, not just the judiciary.
| It takes a populist to claim The People are always right.
|
| But the biases of people are legitimate, while the biases
| of the elites are illegitimate. If the people vote for
| mass deportations, for example, the only job of the elite
| should be to figure out how to do it efficiently while
| protecting legally recognized rights (but not trying to
| undermine the policy by invoking protecting rights as a
| pretext). As usual, the scandinavians have figured this
| out.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| I can see how it is a possible source of confusion which
| is something we can ill afford in this already
| treacherous waters.
|
| > But the biases of people are legitimate, while the
| biases of the elites are illegitimate. > [...] > while
| protecting legally recognized rights
|
| Agreed, provided that by "elites" we mean the branches of
| government not just "successful people". I guess we're
| mostly in agreement. I'm just cranky about The People
| because in my country they are quite ... self-
| destructive, but that is a topic for another time.
| rainsford wrote:
| Since you asked further up-thread about the distinction
| between "democracy" and "populist", I want to point out
| that your comment is actually a pretty good example.
|
| A little-d democrat might argue that the legal system not
| being immediately responsive to the expressed policy
| preferences of the majority of voters is anti-democratic.
| But a populist argument would add that this discrepancy
| is because judges as individuals are members of an elite
| class entirely separate from the common people because
| they're smart and went to school and stuff.
|
| The populist argument here is an unnecessary rhetorical
| flourish. The platonic ideal spherical judge of uniform
| density rules entirely based on laws that by definition
| do not immediately change based on the results of
| elections. The idea that judicial rulings may at times
| oppose popular opinion as expressed in the most recent
| election should be taken as a given when the system is
| working as intended, whether that's democratic or not,
| rather than as evidence of ideological opposition from
| judges as individuals. But in populist framing,
| everything must be in terms of elite opposition to the
| common people, so arguments about the inherent inertia of
| the legal system are insufficient.
|
| Populism vs democracy aside, I'd also argue that at least
| in the US, the federal judicial branch is no less
| democratic than the legislative or executive branches.
| There are plenty of avenues for the voters to change the
| outcome of legal decisions. They can vote for
| representatives who will change laws, Presidents who will
| nominate different judges to the bench, and there is even
| a democratic process to amend the Constitution. Of course
| none of those processes are quick or obtainable with a
| simple majority at a moment in time, but by that standard
| the legislative and executive branch don't fare much
| better. Voters can choose the President, but they only
| get to do so ever four years regardless of how they feel
| about the President's actions at any point in those four
| years unless they can meet the incredibly high bar of
| impeachment and conviction. There's a distinct lack of
| responsiveness there as well.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Populism is to (small d) democracy like a popularity contest
| is to a job interview. Populism asks "which candidate do I
| like more" while democracy depends on asking "which candidate
| will perform the job the best."
| rayiner wrote:
| That's a weird (but revealing) comparison, because it makes
| it seem like there's some too-down HR or manager deciding
| what the job criteria are what constitutes good job
| performance.
|
| What elites call populist voters are picking the candidate
| that they think will do the best at _the job they want
| done._
| PJDK wrote:
| Populism is definitely a part of democracy, but it is a
| criticism from "responsible" politicians for "irresponsible"
| ones.
|
| Obviously this is all politics so you needn't worry about the
| specifics of what actually is populist.
|
| But, imagine two "responsible" politicians.
|
| One who believes in lowering taxes as a worthwhile thing, and
| acknowledges cuts to services as a negative impact that is
| outweighed by the good.
|
| The other believes in higher public spending, with the
| negative being higher taxes, outweighed by the better
| services.
|
| Both would be angered by a third candidate that came along
| promising both lower taxes and higher public spending - just
| the "popular" parts of their respective manifestos.
| rayiner wrote:
| So by that logic both democrats and republicans are
| populist parties, because neither is willing to propose the
| hefty middle class tax increases, or entitlement cuts, that
| are mathematically necessary to balance the budget (much
| less to fund additional programs). Do I have that correct?
| ncr100 wrote:
| 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| 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.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| 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.)
| jfengel wrote:
| 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".
| atmosx wrote:
| > democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused
| through the masses [...]
|
| Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it's the opposite.
| akomtu wrote:
| 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.
| driuha wrote:
| "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.
| keybored wrote:
| > 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
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > "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.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > 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.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > 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.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 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.
| metalman wrote:
| 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......
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > 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.
| gsky wrote:
| 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
| Hashex129542 wrote:
| Great! Stand against Majoritarianism!
| pstuart wrote:
| And what is that better system? To date, it appears to be the
| "least worst" option. Regardless, the two-party system has to
| go.
| gsky wrote:
| Ask yourself whether society is flourishing or crumbling?
| thrance wrote:
| 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.
| antics9 wrote:
| 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
| dzink wrote:
| 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.
| codr7 wrote:
| 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.
| srhtftw wrote:
| > 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.
| keybored wrote:
| 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.
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