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Comment by muchtest | Hacker News Reader

"The fact that the regular replacement of leaders has turned out to be democracy’s strongest feature underscores"

That also assumes power is concentrated in the Leader as much as it is in Russia/China. In the West the President/PM is more of a face than the person with the final say.

If we look at US Policy, the policies that effect the common man, hasn't changed much between Republican/Democrat leadership - especially contentious policies - Erosion of wealth of the lower/middle class, Regime change/Expeditions in Middle East, Reduction of civil liberties/press freedoms/internet.

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In the post-9/11 United States, power is much more concentrated in the Executive than you think.

Remember that in the classified 2012 Inspector General's report that Snowden leaked it states clearly that President Obama asked the Director of the NSA that if the warrantless wiretapping program were deemed to be illegal, would he continue it on the President's orders and that the Director's answer was "Yes, Sir."

I wouldnt be surprised if they'd also refuse to stop it on the president's orders. Post-9/11 the security establishment has become a law unto itself.

Absolutely true. It is a huge problem to have so much power among unelected career officiates. At the bare minimum we need to walk back the Patriot Act, the FISA amendments, etc. Unfortunately, I don't think any elected officials will commit to that.

These agencies have quite effectively infiltrated our media[1] as well to the point that it can't really be considered anything other than State Propaganda anymore.

The sad thing is that we pretty much all know it. Some turn a blind eye because they think "same team". But the term "National Security" has transformed from the benign "Public Safety" to "State Integrity/Consistency" right under our noses. The current systems are built to entrench those who already control the reigns of power. And will continue to do so.

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1: Not that they even need to anymore with both groups pulling from the same class of people for membership. Media used to be a very blue collar job that is now the passion-playground of those seeking wealth, connections and favor.

> Absolutely true. It is a huge problem to have so much power among unelected career officiates.

The problem is election in the first place. Power is delegated to power-hungry sociopaths instead of being exerted by the people directly. Whether an executioner or secret service agent is elected or not doesn't matter: these roles are profoundly inhumane and anti-democratic per se.

We need actual democracies in which no State, no Federal Government, and no secret agency can decide what's best for us and assassinate or imprison anyone who disagrees.

Has the goal ever been anything else but "State Integrity/Consistency"? I don't think so, states are evolved beings and self-preservation is their basest, strongest instinct. Public safety, order and prosperity are just some of the strategies to get human cooperation, very often totally illusory.

Or maybe I've just been reading too much ACOUP.

The point is that "Public Safety" is the lie they tell you.

Which is a point where, say, Westminster system or similar really starts to move ahead of the US system - not only do you have reasonable multi-party options (to varying degrees) but also issues don’t boil down to a single person - the douche or turd sandwich - because whilst the modern media state does actually distill everything down to that single person as a figurehead, you still have to win 50% of electorates (or form coalitions to get there) and power is more devolved

The Westminster system is pretty close to the American one, and the fact that there are different parties is a bit by luck. A representative parliamentary system is much better for that - you don't disenfranchise up to half of the electorate, compromise is forced due to the need of coalitions, etc.

In a Multi Party First past the post system, u can disenfranchise much more than 50% of the population. In fact if there are N parties, it’s theoretically possible to have a majority government with 0.5*(1/N+epsilon)+epsilon of the votes (e.g. 12.5% in a 4 party system).

There are lots of ways to do democracy. I used one example because I am most familiar with that one example - australia has the Westminster system but it also has preferential voting which forces many of those same compromises and deals.

For all those reading, because this is a place where pedantry is a rule, can they please appreciate that these replies of mine are sweeping and vague which necessarily recognises that there are both good and bad characteristics of all systems, as demonstrated by the history of those systems

And yet despite compromises, Australia still has concentration camps for immigrants on the northern coast. Ask ordinary people if they support such inhumane treatment and they'll tell you hell no, yet your political system still produces and legitimizes that. Australia is not a democracy, and i don't know many democratic systems in the world (except maybe for the Zapatistas caracoles in Chiapas or democratic confederalism in Rojava).

Not judging, i'm myself from a colonial Empire masquerading as a democracy (France). It's just that changing the complexion/conditions of who exerts power is the wrong solution to a real problem: abolishing power is in my view a much more reasonable policy.

reads post with disclaimer that I’m not trying to make any overly virtuous statements, then makes reply about that anyway

;)

What do you mean by abolishing power? Like some sort of anarchy? Or are you referring more to a techno-anarchy, ie blockchain based

> reads post with disclaimer that I’m not trying to make any overly virtuous statements, then makes reply about that anyway

Sorry i'm not a native speaker and i don't understand this sentence (promise i'm not GPT-3 ;)).

> What do you mean by abolishing power? Like some sort of anarchy?

Yes, exactly. As long as power is concentrated in some hands (authority), there's many incentives for injustice, and the attack surface to take over the entire system is much bigger. And when you have police, prisons and military to impose the rule of the few by force, you end up in the worst timeline we're currently in where we have an abundance of resources and yet screaming poverty, and our ruling elites keep on fucking up the planet even more instead of redistributing resources so that in the end our entire species (and millions of others) will be wiped out.

If you want to see how alternative political systems could look in practice, i strongly recommend to check out the zapatistas (and their caracoles) in Chiapas or to some extent democratic confederalism in Rojava (which is less centered on horizontal power and more centered better representation of multi-cultural societies [0]). While much of the world is seeing setbacks on political freedoms and economic justice, these two regions are going in the opposite direction.

Also, on principle i'm not opposed to some technology helping collective processes. But blockchain as we know it (PoW, PoS) is deeply flawed, and whatever digital system we'll come up with will never be as accessible and auditable as local public decision-making. I understand that public votes in a local-first world could exacerbate some inequalities locally (eg. with an oppressed ethnic/religious/sexual minority in a given commune), but i'm convinced the overall gains would far outweigh those downsides including for oppressed minorities (and can argue on that point if someone is not convinced).

The problem with Nation States is comparable to blockchain. Consensus building is hard but can be done with a limited set of peers (a commune) in which there are existing trust relationships. Trying to build a wide-scale consensus among untrusted peers is doomed to failure and in the best scenario results in "dictatorship of the majority" which is not a good outcome for minorities, and more realistically ends up with an oligarchy controlling much of the network. In that sense, i would argue DHTs and Bittorrent-like protocols are more anarchist than blockchain: there is a notion of global consensus (content-addressed storage enforced by cryptographic hashes) but neither the DHT nor trackers (who federate between autonomous nodes/communes) end up dictating what your local computing/politics should be like.

Does that make sense to you?

[0] Rojava is under constant military threat by Daech and turkish military, and the influential PKK while undergoing anti-authoritarian self-critique has decades of authoritarian Marxist-Leninist practice to deconstruct. Both point don't help to build true local democracy (anarchy), although i would argue the region as a whole is moving in a better direction than most Nation States around the planet are.

Thanks for the explanation.

I’m very aware of the possibility and methods of a number of different organisational structures, but mostly from sci-fi which has always been a breeding ground for these things (probably the biggest and most well done example I would think would be the Mars Trilogy, but also anything by Ken MacLeod, Ursula K Le Guin).

I take your points but am not convinced that the scale of the decision making entity, or the important capabilities an entity must have (ie territorial defence) are capable at the scale you’re talking. I also think the transition to some such state would be messy as hell (but mostly for reasons tou identify like the desire of groups to maintain authority). You can see how A potential collapse of the US could lead to these sorts of groups (ie well armed local communities).

I’m also not convinced at all that we are living in the worst of all possible worlds. Things could be significantly better if the cowards in power made better decisions, and some places are vastly worse than others, but such a stunningly large number of people compared to all of human history now have education, electricity, food, shelter, etc that it’s hard to make an argument that this isn’t the best point to be alive in all of human history.

> mostly from sci-fi which has always been a breeding ground for these things

That's cool! But if you want to do some more reading on actual anarchism, i would recommend for example to read about the zapatistas in today's Chiapas, or the spanish revolution, or the ukraine commune. Or maybe read on the history of anarcho-syndicalism in your area, for example the history of the IWW in north-america.

Anarchism takes many forms across the places and ages. Some people even make connections in their anarchism to much older ideologies such as christianity or taoism (among others). I personally find it important to recognize that anarchism is not a single ideology but an axiom (abolishing authority) with which to build specific political frameworks. In that sense, it's a very rich and diverse body of thought that's worth exploring in my view.

> [i am not convinced that] the important capabilities an entity must have (ie territorial defence) are capable at the scale you’re talking.

I believe it is. The antifascist militias in revolutionary spain in the 1930s and the Makhnovshchina in Ukraine in the 1910s are good examples. They both were crushed due to being heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Franco's army was heavily supported by both Hitler and Mussolini. The peasant's self-organized army in Ukraine had been successful at defending territories from both German troops (WWI) and the white army (royalists supporting the ousted tsar).. it's only after being weakened by all that, that the Red Army led by Trotsky was successful in betraying (they had an alliance) and defeating them.

> You can see how A potential collapse of the US could lead to these sorts of groups (ie well armed local communities).

I may be naive, but i personally think well-armed local communities cooperating for mutual interest is a much better situation than the current generalized injustice we live in where local populations are mostly powerless against State-backed industrial projects to expropriate them from their land or pollute their territories. I'm happy to elaborate on that topic (ZADs, forret occupations, etc) if you will.

> Things could be significantly better if the cowards in power made better decisions

I personally think things would be better if there was no people in charge. Without a centralized police apparatus to arrest/imprison people, there would be zero homeless, given that there's an abundance of empty dwellings and that the vast majority of the population supports fighting homelessness (instead of fighting the homeless as our governments are doing). If there was no police and no State apparatus, we could almost literally snap fingers and have everyone housed: well that's a metaphor of course we'd need drills or lockpicks ;)

> such a stunningly large number of people compared to all of human history now have education, electricity, food, shelter

I think this is a very reductionist and dangerous argument. I'm not arguing that the past was a golden age of happiness and leisure, but there's certainly countless metrics that have significantly worsened over the years, as well as an unmeasurable "quality of life" that's also worsened.

We could for example mention free time (peasants from the middle ages had a lot more of that), clean environment (1/3 of the world population now drinks lead, and there's a lot more pollution sources than lead), as well as environmental changes (desertification) due to industry and monoculture. Just because some communities are/were poor in a materialist understanding of the world does not mean they have a poor/unhappy life.

I understand that the argument for "progress" is appealing, but i personally believe it does not stand scrutiny. There's a lot of great advances (for example in medicine) that i wouldn't want to live without, but there's also many social/technological developments that i personally believe to be entirely hostile to humanity and countless other species not threatened by what some people refer to as "capitalocene".

My point that we live in the worst timeline does not imply that everything is going bad, but rather that for some measure of some things going good, there's countless other things going really bad, bad enough to threaten a new massive extinction of species. How is that not the worst timeline? ;)

The problem with abolishing power is if there's a power vacuum some other "person"/group rushes in to fill it. even blockchain works on a 51% vote. 100% consensus and/or compliance isn't achievable.

> The problem with abolishing power is if there's a power vacuum some other "person"/group rushes in to fill it

Good point. I should probably have phrased it as "abolishing authority", i.e. power from above. When there is authority to grab, there are incentives to game the system. When there is no authority and power is actually distributed, there is way less incentives and it's technically harder to subvert processes.

> 100% consensus and/or compliance isn't achievable

Also a good point! 100% isn't possible under any system, but we can get much closer. Local consensus building is much easier than on a Nation scale, because the numbers of peers to reach an agreement is smaller (so education/debates/compromises do matter) and there is an existing set of trust/inter-dependency relationships which form an incentive to look for fair solutions.

Consensus-building is super important, and majority rule systems don't account for that. Usually, our interests as neighbors aren't inherently opposite, and taking time to address issues raised on every side results in better outcomes for everyone. I've personally witnessed that in self-organized communities i've lived in over the years: we do have some problems and drama, but nothing comparable with the widespread/institutionalized injustice there is in wider political systems.

Australia's democratic system is vastly superior to first-past-the-post.

And yet, here we are - indefinitely detaining refugees, eye-watering corruption that vanishes from public discourse so quickly you can hear a doppler effect (half a billion dollars given without competitive tender to 6 randos to supposedly save the barrier reef), country is run by a member of a Pentecostal cult who brought an actual lump of coal into parliament (where do you even get one? what sort of logistics were involved in that stunt?)

It's either the people, or the Murdoch-monopolised media (not to mention, the de-clawed ABC), or both. I'm never sure. I don't know if altering the voting system would help; many of the independents and minor parties set to take office in this year's election are worse than the two major parties - which are milquetoast evil vs actual evil. They're a bunch of stooges, religious extremists and anti-vaxers. If anything, I want less of them.

We just need a good recession to shake us up. We’re so comfortable that no one is motivated to make good decisions (or advocate for them). Murdoch definitely has a lot to answer for though.

I don’t know - I feel positively about a bunch of the independents that I’m aware of - I have a friend working with a group to try and get 4 elected, the thinking is they would hold balance of power and climate would be back on the agenda in a big way (and hopefully a bunch of other things).

Also, the nutters are out there. We import shitty ideas from the US and everyone is comfortable enough in their bubble they don’t have to be confronted with reality. Having minor parties with shitty ideals, and the horse trading on preferences or even if they end up in parliament, is actually beneficial. Infinitely better than having the crazies infiltrate your party and take it over, like in the US. It’s a pressure release valve whichever way tou look at it - lip service must be paid to the shitty ideas because they represent the (outrageous) views of some proportion of the electorate

The Westminster system has proven its utter failure to provide any measure of accountability for its executive when it emerged that the person who gets to decide whether Boris Johnson violated the Ministerial Code is one... Boris Johnson.

US Presidents have been impeached, and in the case of Nixon forced to resign. French Presidents, probably the most powerful executives in the West, have been successfully prosecuted for crimes committed in office. Same with Helmut Kohl, the King of Spain, or Italian Prime Ministers. British Prime Ministers get a free ride for war crimes like Tony Blair or gross corruption like Boris Johnson.

I'm not really sure the Westminster system is that different to what the USA, or Australia or any country whose system is to divide the country into small pieces each of which elect a single member. They all evolve into two party system.

The reason is pretty simple. If your country is divided into say 4 groups 40%, 30%, 20% and 10%, then it's likely highly either the 40% or 30% are going to win in every electorate. The 20% and the 10% won't get a look in. The 40% and 30% then become your two parties, and competition for the centre tends to make them look very similar.

If you want you parliament to reflect that 40%, 30%, 20% and 10% ratio, then one way to do it is get rid of electorates. Instead ask the 40%, 30% ... parties to nominate candidates in ranked order, and appoint candidates to parliament in proportion to the votes the party received across the entire country.

Mixed-member proportional representation [0] does that in a complicated way, mostly complicated because they keep electorates. It's been remarkably successful for countries that have adopted it, eg Germany, New Zealand, South Korea. And remarkably successful includes financial outcomes. (New Zealand was a mess before they adopted it.) Australia has it for it's upper house, and as an Australian I think that's what keeps the place sane.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...

That might be true in the US (where the president is leader of only the executive branch, and there is a two party system with not much difference between the two parties), but it's decidedly not the case in other systems. For example, here in the UK we also have a two party system but a greater difference between the two, and the Prime Minister also largely controls the legislative agenda.

But the PM in your country doesn't have unilateral authority to commit to military action, which is not the case in the big powers. That's the point.

Of course yes, yes in the United States the President can't declare war without Congress, but we just don't call them wars anymore.

> But the PM in your country doesn't have unilateral authority to commit to military action, which is not the case in the big powers.

They actually do:

"Constitutional convention requires that the declaration of war or commitment of British armed forces is authorised by the Prime Minister on behalf of the Crown. Parliament has no official constitutional role in the process.[7] However, ministers are still accountable to Parliament for the actions they take.[8]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_parliamentary_approval_for_...

In practice they may not remain Prime Minister for long if they tried to use those powers in a manner that parliament wasn't happy with (unlike in the US, the UK prime minister can be deposed by parliament at any time), but in the first instance that power does lie with the PM.

But a prime minister is not remotely as powerful as a president. A prime minister has no independent power as he was not elected by the people but by the party or coalition he/she leads. That party/coalition can in principle remove the prime minister any time they want. You cannot remove a president. Look at the attempts at removal of Trump. It requires an impeachment which proved near impossible.

A vote of no-confidence is contrast is a very simple procedure.

That's very true. A PM with the backing of their party and a strong majority is very powerful, but they cannot really act unilaterally.

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