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Comment by DANmode | Hacker News Reader

Active consent of the governed has often been a large sticking point for rule of law, historically.

Whether or not you, or we, believe that is correct, incorrect, otherwise.

Consent of the governed doesn't mean unanimous consent. If I don't consent to being taxed, I don't get to skip on my taxes. If I don't consent to sharing the road with self driving vehicles, I don't get to sabotage them.

The sticking point is that “consent of the governed” doesn’t even mean majority consent anymore.

That's too vague. If you mean "every law", it never did mean that, and never should. Mob rule is awful.

When citizen initiatives (e.g., the Equal Rights Amendment [0]) can poll at >=70% for decades and still show no progress towards implementation, something is broken.

[0] https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2022/6/2/fifty-years-la...

Because breadth of support and depth of support are two different things. >70% of people may indicate they support something in polling, but if most of those 70% are only weakly motivated and the 30% opposition are intensely motivated then it's likely not going to happen. For example, support for more gun control in the US has broad, but shallow support. Opponents of gun control are in the minority, but are very intensely opposed to it.

I’m confused, you’ve gone from the status quo being “plurality consent” to “consent of some vocal minority”. That seems even worse?

It's still majority consent in terms of voting. The point about depth of support is to point out that just because >70% of people support a given item on polls does not mean it'll translate into action at the ballot box. To re-use the earlier example: most Democrats would take a candidate that's pro-gun, pro-choice, in favor of higher marginal tax rate over a pro-life, anti-tax candidate that supports tougher gun control. The depth of support for gun-control is shallower than the depth of support for other issues. Conversely, most anti-gun-control voters will never support a pro-gun-control candidate even if they agree with them on many other issues - they'd prefer an anti-gun-control candidate even if they diverge on other issues. Depth of support is high. Thus, gun-control doesn't get passed because plenty of people who would prefer gun control still consent to anti-gun-control candidates because they prioritize other issues.

The idea is that claiming consent of the majority doesn't exist because initiatives that score high on polls don't get implemented by government is highly naive. People can, and do, consent to policy they don't agree with if it's in pursuit of other things they value more deeply.

It does mean majority consent - or at least plurality consent. If people don't want self driving cars on the streets, then elect legislators to pass legislators to prohibit then.

I don't understand what you mean by what you've written. What is "active consent"? What, here, is described by that term?

A few people has said "WE don't consent". That's the first issue: a few people think they have the authority to speak for everyone. Is that your definition of "active consent", the commandeering of society by a few self-appointed authorities? Sorry to break it to you, but that's exactly the opposite of the rule of law. That is the tyranny of an aggressive minority.

The second issue is that mob rule is an absolutely terrible way to govern, which doesn't apply here. We have representatives for a reason. Direct democracy is tyranny of the mob, and mob rule, too, is the opposite of rule of law.

Also, re: the tweet, I cannot take seriously anyone who uses words like "un-alived". It's clownish newspeak.

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