The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
EDIT: Wow, the entire article is full of gems like this. Most lucid writing I've ever read in the Atlantic.
"But in public affairs the stake is infinitely greater. It involves the lives of millions, and the fortune of everybody. The jury is the whole community, not even the qualified voters alone. The jury is everybody who creates public sentiment—chattering gossips, unscrupulous liars, congenital liars, feeble-minded people, prostitute minds, corrupting agents... If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor’s cow, I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off, and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible."
The problem is that 'everyone is the hero in their own story'. Everyone who spreads falsehoods in service to some cause is convinced that they are doing the right thing and are trying to "bring about a good thing".
Is there any advantage in winning the war if by doing so you lose your soul?
This is - of course - a very rough synopsis of Machiavelli's treatise - even if he never actually said that.
But the other way of looking at his work was that he was the first person to develop a code of ethics that led to the idea of "doing the greatest good to the greatest number of people"
I highly recommend the series from the blog of the this Renaicance scholar and specialist in Machiavelli which I discovered via HN the other day: https://www.exurbe.com/machiavelli-s-p-q-f/
He argues quite compellingly that Machiavelli's work led to classical utilitarianism ethics ("the greatest good to the greatest number of people") since he was the first to consider judging actions on their consequences rather than "what was in someone's heart".
Determining this, even with the information available today, seems like folly; like a never ending circle of statistical manipulations and justifications to support preconceived notions.
Action on just about any social issue of note can be argued one way or another to be satisfying this guideline.
It would be worse for central planning, because in addition to the problem you mention, central planning has the problem of getting the necessary information to the central planner, which in the general case is impossible: the information goes up as the exponential of the population size, but the bandwidth of information channels to the central planner only goes up linearly with the population size.
Does that mean you can't actually know what the greatest good is? We can probably get very close to knowing it, and the little details shouldn't matter. But most of our "social issues" are squabbles over these details, and the good never gets done, or becomes reduced.
For all the popularity of the phrase "the end never justifies the means", I have never met someone who actually believes it. Just to begin with, almost everyone agrees with state sanctioned violence as means to maintain a social order, even if they find the action itself horrible.
I found the phrase itself more commonly used as a way to dismiss certain ends on the grounds of PC than an actual moral objection.
I've definitely met people who agree that choice and liberty is so important that it's better people lead shorter, less healthy and more miserable lives through their own choices, than be tricked or forced into prosperity, health and happiness.
Each it's own ideals, but as mentioned, I believe the phrase is just used to quickly dismiss ends that people are if not against, not so invested in.
Forgive me sharing a passage from Public Opinion, one of my favourite bits from any book. I call it "Two sides to a fact":
The statement is, I think, susceptible of overwhelming proof, that moral codes assume a particular view of the facts. Under the term moral codes I include all kinds: personal, family, economic, professional, legal, patriotic, international. At the center of each there is a pattern of stereotypes about psychology, sociology, and history. The same view of human nature, institutions or tradition rarely persists through all codes. There is a war supposed to affect all alike. Two men are partners in business. One enlists; the other takes a war contract. The soldier sacrifices everything, perhaps even his life. He is paid a dollar a day, and no one says, no one believes, that you could make a better soldier out of him by any form of economic incentive. That motive disappears out of his human nature. The contractor sacrifices very little, is paid a handsome profit over costs, and few say or believe that he would produce the munitions if there were no economic incentive. That may be unfair to him. The point is that the accepted patriotic code assumes one kind of human nature, the commercial code another. And the codes are probably founded on true expectations to this extent, that when a man adopts a certain code he tends to exhibit the kind of human nature which the code demands.
That is one reason why it is so dangerous to generalize about human nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These versions differ by codes in the same person, the codes differ somewhat among persons in the same social set, differ widely as between social sets, and between two nations, or two colours, may differ to the point where there are no common assumptions whatever. That is why people professing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war. The element of their belief which determines conduct is that view of the facts which they assume.
That is where codes enter so subtly and so persuasively into the making of public opinion. The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts. I am arguing that the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see, and in what light we shall see them. That is why, with the best will in the world, the news policy of a journal tends to support its editorial policy; why a capitalist sees one set of facts, and certain aspects of human nature, literally sees them; his socialist opponent another set and other aspects, and why each regards the other as unreasonable or perverse, when the real difference between them is a difference of perception. That difference is imposed by the difference between the capitalist and socialist pattern of stereotypes. “There are no classes in America,” writes an American editor. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” says the Communist Manifesto. If you have the editor’s pattern in your mind, you will see vividly the facts that confirm it, vaguely and ineffectively those that contradict. If you have the communist pattern, you will not only look for different things, but you will see with a totally different emphasis what you and the editor happen to see in common. ...
And since my moral system rests on my accepted version of the facts, he who denies either my moral judgements or my version of the facts, is to me perverse, alien, dangerous. How shall I account for him? The opponent has always to be explained, and the last explanation that we ever look for is that he sees a different set of facts. Such an explanation we avoid, because it saps the very foundation of our own assurance that we have seen life steadily and seen it whole. It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent. Without that habit, we believe in the absolutism of our own vision, and consequently in the treacherous character of all opposition. For while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a “question”, they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a “fact.” And they never do believe it until after long critical education, they are fully conscious of how second-hand and subjective is their apprehension of the social data.
So where two factions see vividly each its own aspect, and contrive their own explanations of what they see, it is almost impossible for them to credit each other with honesty. If the pattern fits their experience at a crucial point, they no longer look upon it as an interpretation. They look upon it as “reality”. It may not resemble the reality, except that it culminates in a conclusion which fits a real experience.
...For the opponent presents himself as the man who says, evil be thou my good. He is an annoyance who does not fit into the scheme of things. Nevertheless he interferes. And since that scheme is based in our minds on incontrovertible fact fortified by irresistible logic, some place has to be found for him in the scheme. Rarely in politics or industrial disputes is a place made for him by the simple admission that he has looked upon the same reality and seen another aspect of it. That would shake the whole scheme. – Public Opinion, 1922, p81
Jane Jacobs wrote a whole book 70 years later about how important she thought this particular distinction was. (Her view is that both are necessary but that either can corrupt the other.)
The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard.
For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.
This is balanced by the desire to keep leaders accountable and is a compromise against the rule of law.
Saying that this applies to the US is really saying you have dictators who abuse their powers and are willing to bend the law in the name of a democratic transition.
It can be an exceptional temporary measure, but certainly not a sustainable norm.
2. Some on the left fear that Trump will not leave office when the rules say that he must, and are at least somewhat public about saying so.
You don't have to believe either of these things to see the problem. The more they shout about #1, the more likely they are to create the conditions for #2 to happen.
I am not claiming that #2 would actually happen, even given the right conditions. I am merely pointing out that, given their stated beliefs, they should stop publicly calling for Trump to go to prison.
A real cynic might suspect that such people don't actually believe what they say, and are just looking for anything possible to yell at Trump about. A cynic of a different flavor might suspect that they aren't bright enough to see the problem. A charitable person might suspect that different groups of people on the left are shouting #1, and darkly muttering about #2.
Jailing Trump would be counterproductive. Taking such an extreme step would be destabilizing and make it more difficult to bury the whole affair of the Trump presidency. Would you really want a slow drip of Wikileaks about how compromised a US President was going public?
If I were a victorious president-elect, I would offer to pardon him with the condition that he STFU, and appoint a special counsel to investigate his crooked family if he failed to remain silent, or some kid decided to run for Congress.
With that kind of figure, it’s better to have him sell out and take away the mystique than to get a conviction and make him a martyr. The more you directly persecute him, the longer you’ll have people wearing Trump hats, etc.
If Nixon or Cheney had served jail time, there would probably be more push back against Trump's actions.
And there's an especially strong motive for state-level actors in blue states to prosecute - it's a massive political boost with the electorate there, it'll score a lot of points.
I think it's a difficult situation, and the only way I see out for the US is if someone developed another powerbase within the Republican party (quickly!) and it was in their interest to see him removed from office.
Outside that it just breed contempt for the rule of law. Ether he is convicted in a Democrat state and Republicans explicitly use that in the culture wars, or he's not and people see that the powerful don't even have to pay lip service to the law.
It seems pretty clear that in 30 years time we'll look back at this and think it is a miscarriage of justice that he wasn't removed from office (I'm assuming he won't be). But in 30 years it will be pretty irrelevant.
The author, Walter Lippmann, was a close advisor to Wilson and had been an intelligence officer in France. I wonder if he was aware of the President’s condition?
Existing law did not defended democracy enough and we're easy to be exploited, but did not allowed actual complete take over of power.
Another point of view is that elections are way to make people believe they are represented and therefore won't fight a state that maintains the monopoly of force, which can impose taxation, arbitrary laws, and a lot of other attacks to individual freedoms that people wouldn't be keen to accept naturally.
A society where democracy can not work because it would be "corrupted by bourgeoisie" has even lower chances of making anarchism work IMHO.
We HAVE to make democracy work.
Actually, reading it reminded me of another such book I had read a while ago. Qaddafi's Green Book, where he lays down his ideal system, the Jamahiriya.
On paper, it is pretty cool: every matters of state are decided by local assemblies that can call for a higher level assembly when deemed necessary. But devil is in the detail. The Guide has a final say, in a bit of an unspecified way, exactly how Maknho stays pretty vague on the whole decision process.
I am sure that if Qaddafi had been defeated in his youth, many anarchists would be musing about this system in the way we do Makhno's.
[1] http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/org_plat.ht...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Book_(Muammar_Gaddaf...
Qaddafi's green book is just a rehash of the council democracy. But yes, it can certainly be implemented differently - just as you can have a multi-party representative democracy on paper that is a totalitarian dictatorship in practice, as in e.g. DPRK.
I think better examples of functional democracy along these lines can be seen in the Zapatista-controlled areas in Mexico, and especially in Rojava/AANES. Rojava is interesting because they have an actual written social contract that captures the details of the electoral system, which is not very typical for such forms of governance: https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of...
A paraphrase of a bit from the Makhno article on Wikipedia:
""" The first Congress of the Confederation of Anarchists Groups issued five main principles:
1) Rejection of all political parties
2) Rejection of all forms of dictatorships (including the dictatorship of the proletariat, viewed by Makhnovists and many anarchists of the day as a term synonymous with the dictatorship of the Bolshevik communist party)
3) Negation of any concept of a central state
4) Rejection of a so-called "transitional period" necessitating a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat
5) Self-management of all workers through free local workers' councils """
There may be a discussion to be had about these principles, but they certainly do not sound like "a railroad towards dictatorship" to me.
Edit: Minor fixups
[...]
As a result, democracy is merely one variety of bourgeois dictatorship, its fictitious political freedoms and democratic guarantees are a smokescreen designed to conceal its true identity. " [1]
In his "constructive part" [2] he carefully avoids talking about assemblies or votes. It is clear he does not know really how to solve conflicts and just hope none will arise.
He also mentions the need of an army to have a unity of command, but just specifies this must be decided quickly, without giving clear advice on how to do that without dreaded centralization nor democracy.
[1] http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/general.htm
[2] http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/constructiv...
The words "democracy" "vote" "majority" appear nowhere else in his proposal.
Have some reading about argumentative ethics, it derives natural law based on private property through the means of logic:
I am of the opinion that it is good that individuals have total ownership over their mind and bodies, but it is just that: an opinion. I can't demonstrate it.
If I could somehow infer it being a "natural law" it would not be a satisfying justification, it would just be a naturalistic fallacy. Most of human society's goals are to fight against "natural order" because we, collectively, aim at unnatural things like justice and fairness.
Specifically, I think this is nonsensical:
"Second, it must be noted that argumentation does not consist of free-floating propositions but is a form of action requiring the employment of scarce means; and that the means which a person demonstrates as preferring by engaging in propositional exchanges are those of private property."
It is a well accepted rule in logic and debate that propositions have merit on their own, therefore the way they are stated is irrelevant, whether they consume scarce means or not.
The jump from scarce means to private property is laughable.
Actually I have a hard time charitably following his reasoning. It is obvious the conclusion he wants to reach, but it is hard to understand where he sees an unfolding of logic arguments.
Even if his claims were true, which are, if I understand correctly, that the mere fact of engaging in a moralistic discussion presupposes the speakers assume a kind of private property instinctively, it does not follow that this presupposition is correct.
That's a naturalistic fallacy. It can be used to justify domination, sharing, violence, death of the weak. Using it to defend something as obviously artificial as private property is news to me, and I think pretty hard to defend, but even if it did, it presupposes we should care about "natural law", something most philosophers learned to dismiss since the 19th century.
I think you are being very polite in your assessment.
Or is it the case that you simply don't like the content and therefore you dismiss it using whatever excuses you find convenient?
If property rights are derived by the ability to argue then babies can't own property. But they can... If the argument is that someone else does the argument on behalf of the baby then anything can use that argument.
We see other numerous counter examples - court cases on behalf of animal rights, collectively owned property etc.
It's a simple circular argument disguised in lots of complicated writing.
You missed the point about the ability of performing arguments. Babies and children might not be able to argument at the moment, but they are capable of argumentation. Therefore, for as long as they don't achieve maturity, tutors can act in the interest of the child.
Animals, on the other hand, can't argument at all, therefore are not capable of holding negative property rights.
Bear in mind that positive rights can't be reasoned without failing at Hume's razor, for the simple reason one can't have rights over other people's property. Collective property can't be reasoned either. In any case, I invite you to try to reason about said "rights" without resorting to positive law.
Which other articles didn't you like and that you claim are "nonsensical"?
This is the "shifting sands" technique that was previously mentioned.
Counterexamples are simple to find: a baby with a terminal disease, a mature person in a vegetative state.
Animals, on the other hand, can't argument at all, therefore are not capable of holding negative property rights.
So you say. And yet animal cruelty rules are a good counterexample.
Bear in mind that positive rights can't be reasoned without failing at Hume's razor, for the simple reason one can't have rights over other people's property.
Of course they can. Building code rights are a good example. Appealing to Hume's razor is another example of the technique on that site - it makes it sound like something is factual whereas actually it is completely non-obvious that it applies at all.
It seems that you believe that positive law (meaning: law that you "think" is right and want to impose on others) is perfectly reasonable.
The deal with argumentative ethics is that it derives natural law through logic reasoning. You may not like it, you may hate the conclusions it achieves, but it's only way you can build an ethical system that allows for the pacific co-existence of individuals in a way that is perennial in time and space that we can possibly agree on (but not necessarily will). Once you start removing constraints (eg. no need to allow for pacific co-existence, or no need for being perennial), then pretty much anything goes, and we're in the authoritarian/totalitarian land we live with today.
In any case, it really doesn't matter what I think or what you think, as decentralization removes the ability states and governments to exist, law will be progressively handled by the free market. How do you believe that law will be handled in a competitive environment, with no government, no "constitution" and Kelsen's pyramid for people to bow to?
In the end the only thing we can possibly agree on is that we hold negative rights on other people's properties. Even if someone doesn't agree on that, the market will find a way to record that person's actions against other's property in a distributed database, which can make the life of that person a living nightmare in a fully technologically decentralized society. We are not there though, so let's have authoritarian ideas pushed right and left while we can.
Both of our biases should not affect if the argument is valid. If I can find counter examples to that argument that simply then there is something wrong with the argument.
we're in the authoritarian/totalitarian land we live with today.
Ignoring the pejorative judgement ("authoritarian/totalitarian"), yes indeed we are in the land we live in today.
I'm not interested in an ethics system for some world that lives as a thought experiment.
Except that you didn't. All you did was to state your opinions against the argument without any reasonable refutation.
Let me help you a bit by over-simplyfing the logic:
- If I state an argument to you, it can either be true, false or indeterminate. No matter what argument you make to me in that regard, you'd end up agreeing with that argument, which means that specific argument is "a priori". Moreover, you can only reach a conclusion about my argument by being you, which means you need to have control over your own thoughts to achieve that conclusion (self-ownership)
- If we define ethics as the minimal set of rules that we agree upon in order to maintain our voluntarily stable pacific relationships over time and space, the only possible way we can achieve those ethics is through an argumentative process (I invite you to think of a refutation of that statement)
- Self-ownership can't be maintained (therefore invalidating the time and space requirement) without some means (food, water, shelter, etc). Those means are scarce, and can only be used by a single person at a time. So if we define property as something that is scarce (therefore delimitable) and is being used (therefore modified and protected), private property is a necessary requirement for sustaining self-ownership.
- In conclusion: A minimal system of ethics require arguments to be produced. Arguments require self-ownership to be produced. Self-ownership require private property to be sustained. Therefore if the aim is to achieve a minimal system of ethics that allow for the stable and pacific co-existence of individuals over time and space, the agreement on private property is required -- and that itself constitutes the minimal ethical.
That said, it doesn't mean that you'll agree with anything I exposed. By not agreeing, however, you are implicitly agreeing (by stating an argument). The moment you generate an argument, by the means of logic, you're agreeing on the minimal ethics of private property (although you may not be acting in alignment with that ethics).
1. is actually two propositions, the first one unnecessary to the discussion. But useful to frame the second part as as self-evident as the first one.
2. is simply false. We could agree to a relation of dominance. Several non-violent ways of doing that through cultural, religious, familial, societal means have existed in the past. Luckily for you, 2. is also totally useless to the argument being made.
3. Yes, if you define private property as the act of eating and drinking, then it is consubstantiated with our human condition. That's not the definition generally admitted though. My son (who is 5 yo) does not own anything, yet he eats food I own, is sheltered at our place, receives water we pay for. Does it make him incapable of reasoning? He frequently argues, occasionally reasonably.
Actually this jump from scarce to private property is the main problem of the argumentation. Scarce things don't have to be owned. That's the whole subject of the debate, you can't just assume it is true to prove it is true.
4. follows from 3 so I consider it invalidated. I'll just ask this: is a slave unable to produce arguments? Or do you consider a slave owns their body, food, water, shelter?
Doesn’t the first step conflate verification of truth with truth?
It's about deriving the minimal ethical that we can agree upon using a logic derivation.
If the aim is to determine possible agreement it requires arguments.
Coming up with arguments require private property, starting with self ownership, and extending it to objects that can be delimited, modified, and protected.
Turns out the requirement for private property is the minimal ethical, as we can only agree (or disagree) that we can form arguments.
"> Moreover, you can only reach a conclusion about my argument by being you, which means you need to have control over your own thoughts to achieve that conclusion (self-ownership)"
I don't see this as a given at all. A conclusion can be formed about some "arguments" (eg, X > Y) by mechanical means and others by other non-thought based means (drawing lots, dice etc).
Lemma (2) ("If we define ethics as the minimal set of rules that we agree upon in order to maintain our voluntarily stable pacific relationships over time and space, the only possible way we can achieve those ethics is through an argumentative process") is false in many ways.
For one thing "voluntarily" ignores the numerous cases of involuntary peaceful relations. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) gave Europe its longest period of peace in history and was not voluntary.
Secondly there are numerous protocols that lead to peaceful coexistence without argument. Hereditary rule and collectives are good examples.
Lemma (3) ("Self-ownership can't be maintained (therefore invalidating the time and space requirement) without some means (food, water, shelter, etc). Those means are scarce, and can only be used by a single person at a time.") is incorrect.
There are numerous examples of collectives where people do not own food and just use what they need. Hunter-Gather societies are another example.
I thought CGPGrey laid this out very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
And yet, since the early 70s, the middle class in the US has continually eroded—with no end in sight. So much for theory.
The real trick is keeping the middle class in the US convinced that its situation and prospects are much better than they really are.
When that trick stops working, so will democracy.
Since both houses of congress need to agree on a bill, both of those different slices need to agree to pass a law.
Yes, it is deliberately anti-democratic.
> it is representation by geography.
By political subdivisions, actually.
> A different slice of the country that isn't undemocratic.
It is absolutely and deliberately antidemocratic by initial design.
This is just a different slice of society - one that doesn't favor the political party you are in favor of, and so you're happy to miscategorize it.
...but be careful. Eroding the public perception of legitimacy in the American system won't have the impact you intent. The only realistic way to convert to a pure representation-by-population system would be a revolution - and those seldom produce any form of democracy at all. ...and usually involve quite a bit of death and destruction in the process of NOT achieving their goals.
The purpose of protesting is to demonstrate the need for violence to the fence-sitters. If protesting results in change non-violently, so much the better. But the purpose is to demonstrate that violence is absolutely necessary.
Seems like they often exist to expose systemic violence that is underappreciated, undocumented, forgotten, etc. That is, show what the violent are really willing to do to get them to alienate themselves.
It’s the threat of reprisal from the entire population that does that.
While some regimes get overthrown by mass uprisings, many more lose power because they either lose support from the security state or create an insurrection inside of it. Of course the lines here are often fuzzy.
You believe that MLK and Gandhi were really in it for the violence?
Furthermore, in other cases, people don't have to realize the purpose of the strategy that they're applying in order to apply it. Intention isn't function.
If he was in the USSR or Nazi Germany he would have been quietly murdered one night.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-35-milli...
Granted even that is deeply evil, but it doesn't mean that they would wipe out any given people group that they conquered.
On top of Generalplan Ost the holocaust had 12 million victims, 5 million of whom were Slavs. The only reason why they aren't counted as genocide victims in the West is because it was not convenient to admit that during the cold war.
As a percentage of the population of the time it would have been similar to the British gassing 17 million Indians after starving another 45 million. And that would have been in three years of occupation, not a century and a half.
So yes, India was incredibly lucky to have the UK as their colonial overlord.
Or if their opponents weren't willing to ramp violence up enough. The thing about Gandhi in particular is that he is famous precisely because he won. How many like him were there that didn't win, and we have no idea that they even existed, because their body was dumped into a ditch behind a prison tucked away in the middle of nowhere?
And sometimes we do know about them, because they did survive to tell the story - but it's not a very inspiring story when they lose, and so it gets eclipsed. This guy was a Gandhi to his people before Gandhi was even born: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunta-haji - how many have heard of him?
As an aside, if you haven't read it I highly recommend it. I think it's an excellent example of arguing that a position is consistent with people's existing worldview instead of trying to force them to adopt a different worldview.
I think a more correct way to put it/think about it is: protesting is a threat, not a statement that "violence is absolutely necessary". If violence were absolutely necessary, then they'd all just skip the protesting and do the violence.
Protests are a basic right in every democracy. The vast majority of protests (as in: >99%) is peaceful.
Protests are among the basic set of methods and institutions that form the public sphere where democracy actually happens. They are no better or worse than newspapers, public libraries, TED talks, Trump rallies, call-your-senator-campaigns, Twitter, Sunday sermons, bumper stickers, the NAACP, triple-A, or, yes, even the Star Wars franchise.
Each of these forums has different strengths and weaknesses, and protests are somewhat unique in being basically free and accessible to everyone (as active participants, not just consumers). Not a single protest since the Civil Rights Movement got anywhere close to being large enough to threaten the sort of overthrow-the-system violence that would be required in an outright confrontation challenging the US government.
(I include Vietnam War protests as meeting the threshold).
Outside the US? The Arab Spring was nothing but protests, and it did topple something like a dozen governments. Yes, the new ones mostly failed, but that's a different matter.
In Ukraine the protests succeeded. In Hong Kong, they certainly seem to be a major pain for the local government as well as China.
Environmental protests have succeeded almost spectacularly over the last decade or so. Germany's anti-nuclear movement relied on protests as their main method-the Green party was actually founded by a group of people who first met at a protest. Today, Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future and similar keep climate change in the news week by week. That's the sort of pressure without which the Paris accord would have never been attempted.
Compare any agenda from a G7/G8/G20 meeting a decade or two ago, and you'll notice that issues such as the environment, labor protection, or fair trade have gone from zero to dominating these meetings.
The US-EU trade agreement basically died on the day that half a million people in Berlin protested against it.
Obviously, it is often impossible to unambiguously assign causality. It's a complex system where everything affects everything.
But purely subjectively, I am actually surprised by how effective protests are. Consider Ukraine, where a single protest at a central square toppled the government. In practical terms. a Tiannanmen-style massacre was entirely possible. But the protesters won. Why? How?
History is full of bloody revolutions. It takes democracy to make them bloodless.
Another fun way to put this and make the point perhaps a bit provocatively is to say there are no wrong outcomes from a [free and fair] election - even if your choice didn't win.
Edit: Consent of the Governed is probably the most powerful legitimacy arguments there is beside maybe Divine Right.
Half of people don't vote. Half that do don't get what they want. Half that do don't understand the issues, and without understanding can't give consent.
You don't know what laws your representatives will write. You don't know how the obtuse legal language will be interpreted through a myriad of other legal artifacts by unelected judges. You don't know how the administrators of the executive branch will selectively enforce whatever does get written.
How does giving an almost entirely symbolic vote (for national elections) in any way convey the consent of the governed?
That would be direct democracy (and probably a clusterfuck).
Why do you believes this? I'm not an advocate of direct democracy but I have no idea why this valuation is so ubiquitous.
First of all is how do we choose what to vote on; a lot of power is rests on whoever drafts and sets the "framing" of votes. If we also do this "directly" in some manner then the filtering mechanism is vulnerable, and if we try to crowd source all the things we are likely to get "government by reddit".
Direct democracy moves power away from politicians and towards media (traditional and social), celebrities, opinion makers. If you believe we live in a world of misinformation now, there is a potential for direct democracy to make that much worse.
It's also not obvious in a direct democracy how you would control for holistic things that result from many decisions. The obvious one is how do you balance a budget without making the voting process very complicated.
Having met some representative and politicians, I can confidently say that they are as vulnerable to misinformation, hubris and inadequate education than the average voter.
Switzerland has actually a system pretty close to DD with its petition-triggered referendums. I believe California has something similar?
DD is the possibility to vote, but it is fine to have representatives, as long as you can take your cote back when you want.
Regarding the budget question - could we still vote on important issues and leave the rest up to the bureaucracy? i.e. The people have spoken. Make it so... If there is a major budgetary issue with a given decision, we vote on where to get the money...
Even if direct democracy wouldn't work officially - I think it would be interesting if there were a way to collect the general populations opinion on a matter at any given time and make it known. I'm surprised Facebook/Google hasn't done something like this yet. I bet you they would if some startup came along and tried to market an app like this.
You don't have to lie in order to make people vote in a certain direction. For example, you could give more coverage of one side of the argument than the other. E.g. in the case of the topic of terrorism you can choose to ignore it, or you can frame the issue in such a way that it seems that the viewer is at a high risk of being attacked, e.g. by showing old footage in every news bulletin. As another example, take euthanasia; you can explain the humanitarian side of it, or you can zoom in on the mistakes that have been made by doctors in other countries in this context, and make them look horrific. You can apply these kinds of tricks to almost any topic, I'm sure you get the point.
Moreover the risk of unmitigated populism storming the masses into voting some real shit is ever present; while a populist leader still have to work within the framework of the houses it would be extremely easy to con the people into, say, voting xenophobic measures during circumscribed but substantial crisis like the Syrian war.
Not only that, any time I read such criticisms, they seem to overlook the fact that DD would change the landscape. Perhaps people are "ignorant of the facts" now, and I certainly don't disagree, but can you blame them? If a democracy offers you only two choices of party, who differ very little if viewed from a perspective outside the Overton Window (which is constantly drilled into people's minds as a true representation of reality), then why bother putting much effort into it?
Of course, the average Joe's reasoning doesn't get down into such detail, but I believe the common man has a reasonably accurate intuitive sense for discriminating between sincerity and theatre.
To know with any level of confidence whether DD could work, it would have to be tried, with many variations, over a very long period of time. To me, this seems unmistakably true due to the complex nature of reality - and yet, the overwhelming consensus opinion seems to be that It Is Known that it could not possibly work, full stop. To me, this seems like yet another an example of intuition being mistaken for fact, a general idea that this [0] excellent comment touched upon.
No, you can also build up a set of ideas of how people behave in response to desires, norms, and stimuli. Those ideas let you make predictions of how people would act.
Can those ideas be wrong? Totally. So they should be tested. But at what scale do they need to be tested?
If you've seen a 20-person student group engage in a long wankerous meeting for 6 hours until 1:30am, does that experience provide valid information about what can happen in a Direct Democracy the size of Singapore (pop: 5.6 million)?
Implying you disagree with me, but then:
> ...you can also build up a set of ideas of how people behave in response to desires, norms, and stimuli. Those ideas let you make predictions of how people would act.
Correct. But I'm sure you realize that there is a difference between predicting something and knowing something. Don't forget, "knowing* something is actually limited to under a certain set of unique circumstances - whenever human beings are involved, very few things are absolutes, there's just too much randomness and inconsistency (matters of opinion vs matters of fact, hypocrisy, etc).
> But at what scale do they need to be tested?
That's the thing: we don't know - once again, you can make a well-reasoned prediction (now we have nested predictions) about how well they need to be tested, but forget that you're making predictions at your peril (see: the current state of affairs on planet Earth).
> If you've seen a 20-person student group engage in a long wankerous meeting for 6 hours until 1:30am, does that experience provide valid information about what can happen in a Direct Democracy the size of Singapore (pop: 5.6 million)?
Yes, absolutely - the key phrase being "can happen". However, what else can happen?
- do we know?
- how would we know?
- does anyone actually care? Let's say, just for the sake of conducting a thought experiment, we could magically invoke an omniscient being who could provide us the answers to these and other questions. Based on your reading of political arguments on HN and elsewhere, what percentage of people do you believe are truly interested in discovering The Truth (the best approach to yielding the maximum benefit to all people on planet Earth)? Personally, I would put that number at about 5%, tops. To be clear, I'm not talking about people that truly desire the best outcome - that number would be much higher - but rather, I am talking about people who are willing and able to set their egos and axioms aside and truly open their minds to all opinions and reasoning in pursuit of maximizing the outcome for all people. Most everyone thinks this is what they're doing, but watch how they react to the slightest hint of criticism of that belief.
EDIT: I won't mention the dreaded d-word, but excluding "Let's say, just for the sake...." and onward, I would absolutely love to know any thinking on how one might disagree with what I've said? I say this in interest of improving my personal thinking, which I perceive to be sound, but have no actual way of knowing.
In common speech, someone will say "I know this will happen" when they merely predict it with high confidence. So would you agree that we've reached the point where we need to be more meticulous about definitions?
If so, lets go back up the thread a bit:
/u/LoSboccacc said:
> the chances for Joe Random to understand the ramifications of his voting in direct democracy are slim
> the risk of unmitigated populism storming the masses into voting some real shit is ever present
To which you said:
> the overwhelming consensus opinion seems to be that It Is Known that it could not possibly work, full stop.
The distinction between "chances are slim" and "could not possibly" is as meaningful as the distinction you make between predicting and knowing. Its not the same type of distinction, but it is just as meaningful.
So if you actually think "I don't think it's 100% inevitable that DD would result in chaos", then sure. We agree on that.
But if you think "I don't think chances are slim of DD being stable and happier than our current system", then we inherently start to talk about probabilities of future events -- we start to talk about predictions.
>
So that is the path of how one might disagree: By pointing out that you're also making predictions and that I'm making different well-reasoned predictions.
--------
> does anyone actually care?
I think for this question to be meaningful, you have to resist the temptation to treat the verb "care" passively. To care about something is to direct attention to it... hopefully to direct action toward it. We eat, sleep, and care within finite time. So we can try to choose what to care about based on:
- What impact we predict the thing has on our lives.
- What impact we predict our care and its actions would have on the thing.
- How much time and effort we predict we would need to spend for our care to make that impact.
- How frequently that prediction of impact is re-enforced with evidence-of-success that we recognize.
And we strive to parcel out our attention well among all our responsibilities. Some are better at controlling their attention than others, but all have limited time.
Consequently, I think very few people direct a lot of their care to the question "what is the best approach to yielding the maximum benefit to all people on planet Earth?"
Most definitely, ages ago.
> The distinction between "chances are slim" and "could not possibly" is as meaningful as the distinction you make between predicting and knowing. Its not the same type of distinction, but it is just as meaningful.
Maybe I misunderstand you, but people not realizing (so it seems) when they're making a speculative prediction (as opposed to stating a ~proven fact) seems like a rather big deal to me. The "chances are slim" and "could not possibly" comparison is from two different contexts. We must have our wires crossed somehow?
> But if you think "I don't think chances are slim of DD being stable and happier than our current system", then we inherently start to talk about probabilities of future events -- we start to talk about predictions. So that is the path of how one might disagree: By pointing out that you're also making predictions and that I'm making different well-reasoned predictions.
Had I made any predictions, I would obviously agree.
I guess my point is, I take a bit of offence to:
a) people strongly suggesting our options are limited, without evidence
b) people using speculative predictions as some sort of a proof of widespread racism: "Moreover the risk of unmitigated populism storming the masses into voting some real shit is ever present; while a populist leader still have to work within the framework of the houses it would be extremely easy to con the people into, say, voting xenophobic measures during circumscribed but substantial crisis like the Syrian war."
If similar negative generalizations were made about people based on skin colour or culture, I suspect the reaction would be far different.
> To care about something is to direct attention to it
100% agree. And I have noticed a pattern of people not being willing to direct attention to the possibility that their predictions of the future, and observations of reality, may be in part speculative.
> Consequently, I think very few people direct a lot of their care to the question "what is the best approach to yielding the maximum benefit to all people on planet Earth?"
100% agree, which is my complaint. However, there is simultaneously no shortage of people directing significant attention and effort into pointing out that certain groups are "the" underlying problem with the world, typically with no evidence other than popular opinion.
Will be interesting to see how it all turns out.
As obvious as some of the problems are with DD so is it obvious the system would need some guard rails. Just as modern republics looked at the failings of historical ones and added features to protect themselves.
I have no idea whether it could work or not but it seems to me there's little empirical evidence to validate the commonly held strong opinion that it would necessarily be a disaster.
Inventing a better form than democracy would be a huge boon to the humanity. It's a pity that research for better forms of democracy doesn't get that much funding, if any at all. For some reason it's considered less important than yet another food delivery service.
The Chinese emperors all sought ways to appear mandated to rule.
And the purpose of royal portraits in Europe was to show the lineage of throne inheritance.
>Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys...
This, but it also needs to be trusted. The losers need to feel that they lost, not just be told they have by the winners.
This is why American democracy was stable after GWB’s initial election. Also, one of the reasons the UK voted to not change its voting mechanism in a recent referendum was that STV was portrayed as too “complicated”, while FPTP has an intuitive definition of “winner”.
I don't understand this comment. I agree American democracy was stable after GWB (George W Bush)'s election (although I'm unclear if you mean the end of the vote counting or the judicial process here?). But I don't think the Gore camp felt they had legitimately lost at all.
recent referendum was that STV was portrayed - what is STV?
while FPTP has - FPTP = First past the post.
My memory may be false or incomplete, but I thought Gore ultimately said he’d lost and that Bush has won?
He lost to a recount overwatched by the GOP in a state where Jeb Bush was governor. He lost by 537 votes in a national election.
Non-official post-election recount show that the counting criterion chosen could easily make one or the other the winner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
An issue that I see is what to do with groups who are two small to achieve their aims via democracy but large enough that they can cause unrest.
The textbook answer would be that the constitution places limits on democracy in order to protect the rights of the minority. However, looking at current American culture it seems like that hasn't worked since society outside of government is still free to punish minority views and lifestyles.
While things like gender, sex, race, and religion are often protected; things like political views, worldview, and way of life generally are not.
To do so would require the government to become an arbiter of those things, which would be antithetical to the protection of individual rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and in general individual liberty.
Leaders always have to do the bidding of their citizens to some extent - if they cross the line too far, the citizens might overthrow them violently. They have incentive to respect democracy, because that will allow them to avoid physical violence when the citizens want to get rid of them.
The flip side of that would be that this means that there's an equilibrium to be found, i.e. the point where citizens are not dissatisfied enough (but as close as possible to it) to revolt, or are not powerful enough to. In other words, we're getting less and less democratic in search of that equilibrium.
Also... I feel like a ton of people shouldn’t be allowed to vote based on lack of intelligence/understanding of political issues.
"So bad is the contact of legislators with necessary facts that they are forced to rely either on private tips or on that legalized atrocity, the Congressional investigation, where Congressmen, starved of their legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish man-hunt, and do not stop at cannibalism. "
p. 6, PUBLIC OPINION (1921) by Walter Lippmann
http://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2429/2487430/...
https://artsone-test.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/08/lippman_...
By that I mean that the majority votes based on a confused jumble of propaganda and misinformation and this voting pattern has not produced the best outcome for 1) the protection of the minorities and 2) solving problems that impact every individual, that also require collective effort, such as climate change and poverty.
While Lippmann blames the impossibility of gleaning facts from the "inconceivable confusion" that is presented to the common person -- and this problem has only become much worse in 2019, given the ease of access to opinions in the internet age -- is it possible that fake news to undermine democracy is an inevitable feature? In other words, is it possible that even if everyone was presented with crystal clear facts, they would not become rational agents? That the opinion of the masses will still converge to something based on external variables rather than facts?
The article gives the impression that once the problem of misinformation is eliminated, the democratic model will truly achieve liberty, as Lippmann defines it, but it does not seem rational to subscribe to this belief, simply because there is no historical precedent (fake news and propaganda are as old as democracy itself and the information age has merely provided infrastructural strength for its spread) and if we were being factual/Bayesian, there is no reason to believe in the redemption of democracy in the absence of misinformation.
Given how well Icke is doing, Lippman wasn't wrong.
A 100 year old typo!
I always understood that the terms liberty,freedom,independence,slavery,bondage and servitude must imply a subject to have meaning. Two persons can talk about liberty but they presume the other person agrees the subject of the term in the listener's understand is the same as theirs. I think that's what the author means. But also, it's not just an ideal that is the subject but specific person(s).
Awesome sentence
Fact is that democracy is constantly under attack say voter suppression etc.
The question should be about what can be done in practice to make democracy work better, not whether it "is" a perfect system or not.
Democracy can be made to work better if people get informed, there are proposals like "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy" and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting which should be discussed more in the media.
And how about making the election day a national holiday?
The more informed people are, the more willing to believe they can engineer the society that they want. This seems to always fail.
I would argue that widespread adoption of explicit acknowledgement that in fact, many (if not most) of the the current Top 100 Disputes in the public sphere actually have an answer of UNKNOWN (as opposed to what 95% of politicians, intellectuals, and thought leaders would have us believe), would go a very long way towards kicking off a process whereby global society could start towards reaching consensus compromise on all issues.
I fully realize this belief is amazingly naive if considered within the context of objective reality and history, but I also believe it is absolutely true (if perhaps unachievable given our current state of affairs).
But I agree. My hope is that the frailty of human reason and the limits of human knowledge can become wider spread and that can help people stop holding such confident and unwaivering views.
I assume access to computers and internet can have a big impact on democracies, so history may or may not be a good guide on what works and what not
I also find it ironic to be censored when commenting on topics related to censorship, or at least greyed out to -4, which is about as much as can be achieved without moderator assistance, I think.
One of these is not like the others.
> "such things shouldn't be allowed on the Internet"
This is why people created things like Tor in the first place. The internet is not a country. Nobody should get to decide what is and isn't allowed on the internet.
While technically true, the reality is every first world country's internet backbone is controlled by the state.
But I think your comment touches on a deeper philosophical question that is, should information be allowed to flow freely?
We need to move beyond this. Some kind of world-wide mesh network would be great. Perhaps phones will become this one day.
If we don't, the internet as we know it today will be destroyed. Every country wants to impose its own laws on it. This will lead to a regionalization of the internet: each country will have its own.
> should information be allowed to flow freely?
Yes. If some information is not meant to flow freely, it shouldn't exist at all. Laws must be enforced before the data is created. Instead of making information illegal, target the activity that generates the information.
In NZ, there was a law at the time that allowed the government to basically designate the video as illegal, forcing ISPs to take it down - or perhaps it would be better to say, allowing them to avoid making a choice either way. But that was not the case in Australia. So after NZ took it down, the Australian ISPs voluntarily censored the video - all of them in concert, acting, effectively, as a private censorship cartel. And it was a very intrusive form of censorship - not only they blocked the video itself, but any blog or forum that posted a link to it, and refused to remove it, was itself blocked. There were several large forums that were blocked in that manner, because they had a subforum with an "everything goes so long as it's not illegal" policy, where people can rant and vent and have flame wars. Furthermore, the ISPs refused to publish the exact list of websites that were banned, or even confirm or deny whether any particular one was banned.
And despite it being a country-wide block on some information - much as the Great Firewall censors e.g. any Tienanmen photos - as a private action, it was completely legal, with no third party review, oversight, or appeal. Something to ponder when we're talking about freedom of information in developed Western countries...
> spreading of state secrets
Nothing controversial about this.
Countries step out of other treaties occasionally, even major things like the EU, climate change and weapons limitation, but copyright is sacred.
I suspect that some form of state secret law is also found in practically every country, and any political controversy is only in the details of how its used and misused, not in the concept.
This doesn't change the fact that copyright infringement is so trivial copyright might as well be incompatible with the 21st century. Actually enforcing copyright requires sacrificing free computing and the free internet as we know it today. Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free. Abolish copyright and let them die if they can't adapt.
My problem is not with state secrets but with how governments prosecute their revelation. Whistleblowers are treated like traitors when they reveal the abuses perpetrated by governments under the cover of national security. Of course, the governed doesn't have the privilege of keeping secrets by using encryption: authorities and judges feel disrespected when they can't get access to information and punish people without proof almost out of spite.
> Humanity should sacrifice the entire copyright industry instead so that computers can remain free.
I agree, but I don't think it's likely to happen. Free computing would sooner be sacrificed to save copyright, and the other restrictions on information. At best, the current uneasy coexistence will continue.
True. It's not just copyright though. Free computing is a direct threat to the power of governments. Encryption is powerful enough to defeat entire militaries. They don't want mere citizens to have this power. They want a future where computers only run software signed by the government.
This is likely to happen because electronics manufacturing is extremely expensive and centralized. We can write our own software but we can't make our own processors. Due to Intel ME, we already know how dangerous trusting these manufacturers can be.
Perhaps FPGAs will change this one day. What if people could design and implement their own CPUs? Someone just posted this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898061
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891056
> At best, the current uneasy coexistence will continue.
It's not an uneasy coexistence. It's a politico-technological arms race. Governments make laws, people make technology that circumvents those laws. The government must always increase its reach just to maintain the same level of control over the governed. We'll end up with either a tyrant government that considers programmers a threat to national security or an ungovernable population that has access to ubiquitous subversive technology.
I can imagine an outcome in which the illegal information is driven further underground and no longer accessible at publicly known locations. Like the hidden ftp sites that supposedly exist in the "Warez scene".
The trend that most people no longer keep their own data on their own devices, but use streaming sites and cloud servers, will presumably help keep information under control.