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Comment by sfe22 | Hacker News Reader

So CA is too democratic in your opinion? It should slide more towards tyranny?

Sounds more like too much direct democracy, and needs to slide further towards representative.

You mean too little direct democracy. Only a handful of people are actually engaging in local politics and therey are no longer representing the community as a whole. Special interest groups are the opposite of democracy.

Is that your opinion on marijuana policy in California?

Which issues, pray tell, are best governed by local control and which are best governed by top-down, remote decision makers?

The emperor can also be your representative, and so is Putin to russians, and the slightly more complex US system. The slider is democracy to tyranny, just because we dont yet have democracy in most or all countries doesn't change anything here. We just have twisted its meaning to describe some decision power when choosing tyrants. Either all decide equally-democracy , or fewer to very few or one-tyranny.

Feels like a flamebaity false-dichotomy.

Is it really tyrannical to, say, elect officials to act on our behalf and consider long-term impacts and x-order effects?

Because to me that just sounds a little more "republic" and a little less "direct democracy".

Absolutely not. Democracy can be fair and open elections, not crowdsourced legislation.

That's exactly it. One of the reasons that the US (and other representative democracies) have limits on direct voter rule explicitly to prevent a "too democratic" situation yielding "mob rule" outcomes.

Sounds like a reason to justify tyranny to me. What do you mean mob rule. In a (true) democratic society just a small group can change something the majority disagrees with because they got together? The majority is also together in the same matter isnt it?

Well, the idea recognizes two concepts:

- We don't want the minority enforcing on the majority

- We don't want a plurality or even a majority enforcing on a minority under certain circumstances

So, for instance, even if 300 million Americans think "sfe22 should be stripped of their assets and have it given to us 300 million" that's not going to happen. Yes, that is 'tyrannical' of you to have such power but it is so nonetheless.

Unfortunately I don’t agree. If 95% Americans want to steal my assets, something is wrong with the them (or me), and I should have probably seen it coming and leave. Why would I want to live in such extreme society anymore. If I was used to set an example that still would tell many a lot about this hypothetical america. Would a tyrant really be of any help then, maybe if it was somehow “good” to me, for a limited time but definitely does not justify its existence and cost on freedom and wealth.

Right, and that's your thesis for the world, but America lives under a different thesis, and some individual rights are protected, _even_ if 95% of people disagree.

Who decides what are individual rights? Would they be held up if 95% disagree with it? I mean it might work idk, it would just not be a democracy.

You're right. 95% is a bit much since they'd just amend the constitution and whack me. But it goes up to 66%-1 in the legislature, and I think that would correspond to ~75% in real life, so that's good.

That's the paradox isn't it. Mob rule ends up being tyranny.

Democracy isn't a Boolean value, it's a cluster of loosely related concepts and practices.

Total democracy is mob rule of the majority.

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