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Comment by ailideex | Hacker News Reader

>>> it needs an authoritarian component to prevent more authoritarian form of governments from taking over.

>> I don't think so.

> I think what he means is that democracy as understood by most, is basically a dictatorship of the majority.

If the majority of people are against that more authoritarian form of government, why would they support it? If they are not against it, how would them restricting their own speech help? This argument just makes no sense.

Either they support it or they don't - speech restrictions that they supposedly impose on themselves to prevent them from being more authoritarian like they would like to be is just - I don't know - does not make sense to me - some circular reasoning somewhere there.

If the majority wants to be more authoritarian, and they would be save for speech restrictions, why would they not just vote to change the speech restrictions?

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> If the majority of people are against that more authoritarian form of government, why would they support it?

misinformation is the obvious answer, I'm unsure why you couldn't find that counterexample yourself.

We literally have misnamed bills put forth by our leaders in the US to misinform the populace. And it's acceptable to do so.

> misinformation is the obvious answer, I'm unsure why you couldn't find that counterexample yourself.

> We literally have misnamed bills put forth by our leaders in the US to misinform the populace. And it's acceptable to do so.

So in order to prevent the government from lying to us we should put the government in charge of deciding what is fact and what is not fact and also according to others in this thread put them in charge of what is moral and not moral.

Hard pass but thanks for the suggestion.

when in doubt, strawman the fuck out of your opponent. That'll teach em to engage you.

> If the majority wants to be more authoritarian, and they would be save for speech restrictions, why would they not just vote to change the speech restrictions?

They eventually will. However, that takes time and political capital. Hopefully enough time to fight off/fix whatever is causing the hate and resentment to build.

I guess there is more nuance to what you are trying to say but it is not far from saying we need to design our systems so that the minority can suppress the genuine will of the majority while they indoctrinate them to think different.

This is where culture and tradition should play a role in my view - if we foster a liberal culture and encourage our children to adopt this culture we can keep what those that came before us paid the blood price for.

If we on the other hand encourage our children to take the power of government to compel their follow citizens to do what they want them to do and adopt the morals they want them to adopt then I think no amount of government censorship of speech will save us from tyranny and dystopia.

I don't believe that restrictions of free speech are necessarily authoritarian. They can enhance the overall balance of power, for example by making minorities feel more safe.

For example hate speech could be restricted, supported by a majority of for example 60%, whereas the hate speech would only be exercised by for example 10%, endangering a minority of 5%.

Those who actually argue for more authoritarian elements, for example those who'd like Trump to not be hampered as much by the judicial system, don't really want "authoritarian"-ness, but rather they want the government to do what they want. They don't seem to realize that once a government has those powers, they have no control about what the government actually does. When a sufficient majority is buying into this, and actually wants to enact the same things, it's game over for democracy.

However, most authoritarian governments didn't develop that way. Most seem to develop by some people just taking power through various means and not really through appealing to a large majority.

This is rather divergent from the argument I was engaging with - if you disagree with the argument I was engaging with it is best to take the disagreement up with the person who made it rather than me.

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