Hacker News Reader

Comment by syntaxing | Hacker News Reader

You. Must. Vote. This is extremely infuriating but it’s even more maddening that we as a country, voted for this. We voted for our representative. We voted for what they stand for. There’s no one to blame but ourselves (even though you didn’t “directly” vote for them, we still bear the brunt of the decision, that’s how a democracy works). But I’m honestly hopeful that voters will get wiser as the current state of technology becomes a commodity. The thing that does concern me, is the irreversible damage that will take generations to heal.

View on HN

Instead of blaming yourself for the actions of the elected officials you voted for, consider that you have absolutely no control over what that official does, beyond literally one bit of data you’re allowed to send every 2 or 4 years. That’s one of the problems with democracy: it gives illusion of control and provides legitimacy that politicians need to do what they want.

You could become a representative yourself, like AOC did.

It's one of the problems with what is commonly called democracy. It wouldn't be a problem in "real" democracy (i.e. government by the people).

I can imagine many more problems that would cause. Apparently I don't have as high an opinion of the average person as you. It would certainly lead to a different incentive structure and outcomes, but not necessarily better ones. The book "Democracy for Realists" covers more details about how people vote. Spoiler; they tend not to be very rational, objective, realistic, or nuanced.

That would require people to constantly educate themselves to deliver a proper vote, which is unfeasible (because people have to work and live, and large parts of any country are too ignorant/uneducated/outright dumb).

Representative democracy was invented to solve that problem by having the representatives and their staff do that education, but they took the easy way out and listened to those with the biggest campaign contribution coffers.

I can imagine all sorts of horrendously terrible problems with real democracy.

Imagine a restaurant whose menu and prices were voted on by the people at large. What would happen? The menu would look deranged and prices would be too darn low for the restaurant to function in an economically viable manner. The whole restaurant operation would collapse! Who said democracy is a good way to bring about stability and prosperity to an organization/operation in the long run?

Struggling to see why the people would decide on deranged prices rather than sensible prices. Do they not like the restaurant?

Regardless, seems like a wildly inaccurate and unhelpful metaphor.

Because the self interest is to have cheap food. No majority would vote to have high menu prices.

Surely the self-interest is to have a nice restaurant? Having cheap food for a week or two, then not having the food at all, doesn't seem like something people would want.

We've been given an illusion of choice between a few carefully preselected candidates. Most of positions in today's ballots are like this: a really bad candidate and a bunch of lunatics or outright fakes as an alternative.

Aren't you blaming the victim of our mathematically flawed electoral system, First Past the Post?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Say for example you voted for Andrew Yang in the iowa democratic primary. He drops out super Tuesday (IIRC). You no longer have any say in the Democratic primary. If we switched to a more representative electoral system, these people can still have their vote count.

These people could still put Yang during the general election, while still having their vote count for the candidate with the better chance to win.

There is also no reason for our multi state primaries to occur over many days. This ensures the media has maximum influence on the results.

> You. Must. Vote.

Of course, but there is very little utility to it when the vote counting is hidden behind an opaque software system, and you have no way of confirming that the vote counting is secure. So sure, go vote, but with absence of verified and secure counting it's almost pointless.

Promote open source and vote for those that do. It takes time but it isn't that hard. Of course you have to execute what you preach and use more open source yourself otherwise that'd just be hypocrisy.

Specifically, vote Libertarian. They seem to be the only party who still cares about civil liberties. Unfortunately, the voting system is set up so that third parties only have a real chance in local and state elections.

Can you share some info on that? The little that I read about it, US Libertarian party is not what most Libertarians would recognize as libertarian.

Here's the American Libertarian party speaking out about CISPA,

https://www.lp.org/blogs-staff-libertarian-party-kill-cispa-...

Here are some essays by individuals on the topic.

http://freenation.org/a/f31l1.html

https://mises.org/library/intellectual-property-and-libertar...

Audit. The. Elections. First.

Who do you expect to do that or who do you expect to give the power to somebody to do that?

In AZ, the legislators tried to https://patch.com/arizona/across-az/senate-issues-subpoenas-...

So far, the county election supervisors have resisted. I do not know what the next step that would compel them to force an independent audit. Maybe contempt charges?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com