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Comment by MrBuddyCasino | Hacker News Reader

Almost as if democracy isn't real and all statecraft is driven by intra-elite conflicts.

Britain leaving the EU purely because a majority voted for it in a popular vote is a pretty bad example to use in support of the claim that democracy isn't real. It's probably this sort of vague cynicism about democracy that led Cameron to call the referendum in the first place, only to discover that people can actually vote however they like!

Democracy requires an informed electorate. Just having the right to vote isn't enough.

No it doesn't, democracy means rule by all the people not rule by some educated elite.

Two things:

- Education is not "elite", it's open to all.

- Informed is not "educated".

Forcing political speech to be truthful (or at least have a reasonable expectation of being truthful) with serious consequences (jail time) for knowingly lying would go a long way to counter the misinformation that caused Brexit.

"Educated" and "informed" aren't the same.

It works better with an informed electorate. However, one of the reasons that voters don't bother informing themselves is the campaign of cynicism aimed at convincing them that all political parties are the same, that their vote doesn't matter, etc. etc. One might just as well say that an informed population requires democracy: why bother keeping track of national policy if you have no control over it?

In the days after the Brexit vote, it turned out that a significant minority of 'leave' voters had been convinced that their vote would be an ineffectual protest with no actual influence on Britain's membership of the EU. Lazy and cynical anti-democratic rhetoric just feeds into that cycle of ignorance and stupidity.

Which is how autocracy governments get hold of countries without military action, it only needs enough patience and uninformed electorate to win the election.

They can even argue it was the will of the people to get a dictorship.

> They can even argue it was the will of the people to get a dictorship.

Is there an example where "they" have not done that?

Plenty, ask AI friend about military coups.

Aren't they still claiming, that they do it for and represent the people?

Maybe, however with elections they did in fact asked for it, which was the whole point.

Yes, you're entirely right. One further, I was at a talk from a law professor at a big uni once, where he had printed the entire text of the Medicare bill on a giant pile of paper. He explained that it had taken him, a professor, several months full-time to understand everything at stake; what chance has a representative to do so, let alone on every bill? What chance has a voter? What does it mean for democracy that no one with decision powers understands what they decide?

The UK government usually publishes explanatory notes together with the text of the bill itself. It's quite feasible to read these if you're interested in the details of a particular piece of legislation. E.g. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/pdfs/ukpgaen_20...

A truly wonderful point. Some attacks on low-information voters in other comments which I understand but none of us have read that whole Medicare bill. That’s even if we don’t have three jobs and six kids. Considerations when we reach for “lazy” or “dumb” to describe voters.

Boy, the number of hours to research candidates & propositions on the last ballot in California…

Representatives should vote no on everything they don't understand then, until the bills are short.

How does that work with courts that work to the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law? That rule based on the exact text instead of the history of what went into the drafting and passing of the bill, and refuse to even ask legislators what the intent of the law would have been under certain conditions?

> it turned out that a significant minority of 'leave' voters had been convinced that their vote would be an ineffectual protest with no actual influence

+1 to this.

"I didn't thing it would actually happen!" IIRC there were polls soon after asking people if they'd change their vote or vote the same way again, and there was a fair amount of people saying they would have voted remain had they known.

Madness really

What annoys me is that Farage said something like "if it's 50.1% remain then this is not over" I.e. he'd be calling for a recount or a second vote. Yet it was basically that for leave and we got no recount or second vote. Similar deal for Scottish independence referendum... They keep on seeming to want to do another one so they get the answer they want, despite it being shutdown fairy recently.

Yeah, but you can't legislate people to care.

It happened because it was voted for and the elite wanted it.

Several counterfactuals are plausible: either the elite only allowed the vote because they knew how it would go, or they would've brexited even if remain won, or they don't care either way. What is not possible is that the elites wanted to remain but were forced to leave by the vote, because in that case they simply wouldn't have left.

That can only be true for a definition of 'elite' that excludes the Eton and Oxford educated Prime Minister of the day and the majority of his government. So I mean, yeah, some people wanted Brexit. If those people had some sort of sinister behind-the-scenes power to bring it about, you have to wonder why Brexit only actually happened after the referendum vote and not in the decades prior, during which those very same people had been continually agitating for it.

>the elite only allowed the vote because they knew how it would go

Clearly not, in this case. Remain was forecasted to win, and David Cameron called the referendum because he felt confident that remain would win.

>they would've brexited even if remain won

This also is obviously not the case. David Cameron would have remained Prime Minister. He was always in favor of EU membership, remaining in the EU was part of the policy platform of his party, and he would have been under much less pressure from Brexiteers than he was before the referendum.

>What is not possible is that the elites wanted to remain but were forced to leave by the vote

This is in fact what happened. David Cameron resigned after losing the vote and was replaced by someone committed to implementing Brexit.

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