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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

>How can the world get better if no one is steering?

Did it get better when somebody was steering? hitler was a strong and popular leader. Democracy is about people being self-governmed, not about having a strong leader

Individualism is the ultimate goal of this Enlightenment era that we are still part of. The goal was to take away the power from the monarch and the collective, and empower the individual, and our civilization is succeeding at it, but our politics do not adapt. There is a reason why social democracy is unpopular in europe now: younger generations realized it was an unsustainable ponzi scheme. Our future is individualist, but our politics is hopelessly centered on the worship of The Leader

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There is no proof of social democracy being unpopular in Europe.

The only relevant political movements that advocate against social democracy are mainly extreme right wing. Even those are not growing - and usually collapsing afterwards - because of their individualistic approach to society but because of their appeal to people that feel migration is not good, that climate change doesn’t exist, etc.

Also, every time I read about “social democracy being a Ponzi scheme” along the demographics argument I feel an urge to remember that social democracy isn’t only the pensions system. Healthcare, education, infrastructure aren’t Ponzi schemes neither feasible from a pure individualistic approach.

social democrat parties are in major decline all over europe, even in sweden.

Well, social democracy is also the welfare system, and it also requires high social trust, and it also incurs debt for future generations.

I may be wrong, but i think social democracy was only possible during the (not so brief) moment of the boomers.

It does not incur debt. Sweden or Denmark has been having debt to GDB ratio constantly declining.

I think social democracy can work but it’s hard and requires huge discipline from government and people. Also, it seems much easier to introduce in smaller countries.

Incurring debt is different than the ratio of debt to gdp (or anything else).

Are our societies ready for a real democracy, that is a direct vote on all issues type of self-governing rule where anything can be put up to a vote including votes for execution of members of the society?

Or did you mean something else?

My theory is that technology will get us there eventually (direct democracy), and we'll get closer to a better, more functional and more inclusive society than the modern representative democracies which are starting to show their massive shortcomings.

It was a stroke of genius to call what we have now in most of the world "democracy", as in "government by the people", when it's anything but that.

My hopes for the future are the same.

However, until we get there, the current system is quite good at maintaining a stable society with increasing gains in technological development and social welfare. It is far from perfect or ideal, and it is full of lies, but until we have something better that is tangible and real, and not just theoretical, I wouldn't touch it.

We share the same hope for the future, but I do not think our current "democracies" are quite good, as you say. I think they're terrible, and the alternatives are even worse.

Sadly we don't have anything to replace them with at the moment, and we're just a hair away from some societal and political event to convince people that this very charismatic leader has all the answers and we should vote for them.

Maybe my standards are too low but the fact that we don't have societal wide unrest, mass murders, famine, revolutions and the like that was pretty common just 100 years ago is good enough to provide for an environment where scientific and technological progress can happen.

We have enjoyed 70 years of peace in this corner of the world, but I wouldn't say we've solved the government problem. Give it a couple centuries first, but seeing how the post-war enthusiast has turned into unrest and widening inequality even in this side of the world, I think this peace is "just a phase".

It's hard to see it (and admit it to oneself) because of recency bias and thinking this time it'll be different, that we're smarter than our ancestors but history tends to repeat itself.

I am not sure that’s going to happen. Most of the people does not care about choices. They just want to have comfortable life without worries.

Another thing is that people must feel that their participation does have an effect.

One more aspect is that most of the decisions is not a popularity vote but must be based on knowledge and science. Average people can’t make that choices unless you have extremely well educated population.

Overall, a simple introduction of a technology which will enable more direct democracy is not enough. We need more ground work which will promote individuals with certain values and behaviors.

However, I also do believe that introducing such technology might accelerate that ground work.

One of the important questions is where to put the line beyond which humans should be independent of their neighbors. E.g. what democracy is not able to touch.

Most people would reject the idea of a city voting what everyone's compulsory dinner will be. But when it comes to zoning and building codes, that's already grey area.

I think we are; unless you can point out politicians/representatives whose individual contribution is so much better than what the average citizen would do. There are no strong politicians in europe (barring autocrats) or in the US (which was until recently led by a cartoonish bully and now by someone who is in obvious cognitive decline), and for decades, it is pollsters that run the show.

One issue is that current states have accumulated too much power . A second one is that individual rights need to be untouchable. But otherwise i think our current representative systems are just fertile grounds for corruption.

The second issue is why I think we won't see our societies self led until we have technology that can prevent tirany of the majority. This has been an issue with democracy as long as it has existed, Socrates is one of the victims of this system. Because what is to prevent 66% of the population voting that you be publicly dismembered? This would be perfectly democratic.

And if you think this is some unreasonable edge case you must remember that humans are beings guided by emotion as much as reason, the whole COVID panic and hysteria that happened just two years ago has enough examples that emotion will trump reason even in situations that aren't even that dire.

What if the one steering didn't need to be a person? What if it was an idea or an ideology? Are we better off in a world devoid of purpose? Or did we never truly have purpose? Did our past generations delude themselves into thinking that they did? Or did we delude ourselves into thinking that our past generations did have purpose?

Ideologies and religions are behavioral tools. Whether we re better or worse with them depends on how they are used by the ones who control them. Delusion is the natural state of humans, at any time we believe that our core beliefs are established (e.g. belief in science) even if we dont have sufficient arguments to convince ourselves. it seems we constantly seek some model structure to explain and guide our behavior

In the states we feel like we're just coming into perspective on social democracy. Can you tell me a bit more about why it doesn't work? (genuine question) I'd like to think I sharply understand the differences between communism and socialism - and social democracy - and that some of my older family members confuse these all as the same thing. Why is social democracy unpopular in Europe?

demographics. The boomer years was that sweet moment where social democracy dependent on intergenerational debt became possible, but only assuming endless growth of population and economy. Then the neoliberal years came and prices of everything went up, so everything is unreachable for younger generations. They tried to replace the missing population with immigrants but that channel also got saturated. Younger people are just not feeling that level of support that previous generations did

It... really depends on which bits of Europe you're talking about. The bits where corruption is endemic and the money never actually winds up going to help anyone? Sure, certain policies are floundering there. The state pension systems? Yeah, people are a bit miffed about mismanagement there.

But like... very few people sitting here arguing that e.g. a right to decent healthcare isn't a thing we want; that education shouldn't be accessible to as many people as possible; that we shouldn't provide public services such as libraries, parks, and sports centres for all; and in a bunch of places there's a general feeling that the pendulum swung way too far against welfare, in the bid to force people to work, that it's now not helpful for the people it was meant to help.

It appears the person you're replying to lives in Germany; so do I. The parties (e.g. the FDP) here which would like to tear down what Germany has built have a minority of the votes compared to those which have social democratic or broadly neutral policies.

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