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[RedKing]

He's assuming that the citizens are actually capable themselves (to a degree) of telling true from false, right from wrong, and that taking that decision out of their hands is inherently authoritarian.

A caricature would be: mainiac believes in the clear-minded citoyen, you believe in the bourgeois that's been given a ballot.

That's a fair cop. But in the end, which view is closer to the facts? There's been plenty of poli sci studies indicating the prevalence and corrosive effect of the infamous "low-information voter".

[Helgoland]

Hey, I'm a democrat* by pragmatism and not a democrat by ideology too, but to a certain degree you just gotta trust in swarm intelligence to do its job or you'll land in an ideological corner you do not want to end up in. Because believe me, by whatever metric you propose I could make out the Occupy folks to be low-information too.
The voters as a whole might make horrible decisions locally (hello, Iraq war), but in the long run they mostly end up doing what's right. Even if only because our notion of 'right' is shaped by what they did.


*In the sense of being pro-democracy.

[Starver]

I watched the other day, with the sense that I must for the sake of balance, when Trump paraded half a dozen mothers (and one father) on his campaign dais to have them recite the tales of their particular child who was killed because of an illegal immigrant.

I have no doubt that each of those so paraded were telling the truth as they saw it, I have no doubt that they weren't coerced to provide their vocal endorsement of Trump and I have no doubt that (to some) I'm about to cross the same red line in my following challenge that Trump crossed in his Gold Star Parents debacle of the other week, but hello cherry-picked people (suffered the death of a son/daughter, at the hands of an illegal immigrant, support Trump...  ignoring all those who have not lost, whose losses were thanks to a native American (heck, even a Native American!) and did not think that Trump represented their right to grieve and/or grievances) out of an unfortunately massive number of more demographically-representative spokespeople for the more general circumstances of losing a child...  And your son died in 2002, did you say, parent A? That was under Dubya's watch. And, parent B, your son went down to the beach with his friends and ended up victim of... if I understand correctly, an imigrant group of youths, but the way you tell it seems to deliberately hide who initially provoked who. Parent C, you seem to be describing a traffic accident, the person at fault happening to be an illegal immigrant. Parent D's child's killer escaped prosecution, apparently, which sounds suspiciously like Due Process decided that the 'killer' was judged as not at fault. And how can Parent E be so sure that if Trump had been president in 2011 that their son would be alive today, as if omniscient and omnipotent powers would have entirely removed your child's killer from the relevent part of that alternate timeline.

But I am perhaps being unfair. I have not checked the published backgrounds of the above tales (they are merely seered into my mind as particularly unctuous and oleaginous contributions to that rally, in an hour or so of my time thst I dearly wish I could reclaim) and I am doubtless discouraged from believing the suggested spirit of the testimonies for reasons of my own. And it was clearly a response to having Khizr Khan, and his silent wife, endorse Hilary. And it seems to be something of a feature in US political campaigns (over here, we get more "I met Joe the plumber, and he said..." direct from the candidates, to which I also add a dose of liver-salts). And it's a minor complaint when you already had a whipped-up arena-full of rabid supporters chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!" at the mere mention of (so-called) 'Crooked' Hillary, whose extrajudicious fervour would surely end up as a criminal act if just one unfortunate look-alike just happened to poke her head into the rally to ask directions.

Free Speech is one thing, and playing to the home crowd seems to be part of the game that everyone involved has down to a fine art (almost everyone: Nigel Farage's guest spot in another rally was notably off-pace for the audience, even if on-sentiment - to the extent that they understood his position at all. He went too fast through his little speech to allow the usual cheering and booing of the audience participation elements to properly work... but, amazingly, it was the first time I've heard him speak and not thought him too much of a loudmouth for the platform), but when you can say what you like about who and what you like in front of a partisan rabble, whipping them up almost to the possibility of piling into pick-ups and driving across three state boundaries to enact a lynching, it makes me wonder what curbs could be implemented to not set such party faithful as are being preached upon (whether Rep or Dem, my most memorable examples just mostly come from the Trump camp) into a deluded mindset of Bad Fact Soup.  I have no great problem with Bad Opinion Soup, comparatively, but when what is opined becomes effective Lore within the corresponding echochamber... Well, the bedrock of such false strata is a bad place (for society) to build any utopia upon. That's sedimentary, my dear Watson.

[SalmonGod]

Yes, it's politically popular to complain about illegal immigrant violence against American citizens, but what about legal citizen on legal citizen violence?  I don't see anybody commenting on the homicide rate within the legal citizen community.  How can they complain about illegal immigrants killing them, when they kill each other even more?

[mainiac]

He's assuming that the citizens are actually capable themselves (to a degree) of telling true from false, right from wrong, and that taking that decision out of their hands is inherently authoritarian.

And yet somehow democracies are consistently better.

I mean, you say that, mainiac, but the more oversight, the better countries tend to do. While there is always the risk of failure or corruption, there's a reason why the USA prospered and the USSR didn't.

I can just imagine your fact checkers in 1989.  Candidate says "this economic system is a joke and is going to collapse within a decade!"  Fact checker judges "most experts both in the socialist and capitalists blocks agree that the socialist economy is very unlikely to collapse in the next ten years."  His opponent replies "See, my opponent is a fearmonger who doesn't understand the issues."

1947.  Candidate says "people are starving to death because the government refuses to acknowledge the depth of the problem for fear of appearing weak to the western nations they see as enemies!" Fact checker judges "The effects of the fascist invasion on our agriculture is well publicized by the government.  The USSR is employed in active and fruitful diplomacy with the western nations having recently established the United Nations as a permanent peacekeeping organization and proposed a treaty for the reunification of Germany as a demilitarized nation."  His opponent replies "See, my opponent is a fearmonger who doesn't understand the issues."

The problem is that "oversight" sounds good but it's really possible for horrible things to be called "oversight".  The only oversight I trust is the citizen with the ultimate veto: a ballot.  You are trying to create another organization to create accountability but it's just creating an unaccountable layer of elitism.

[RedKing]

The voters as a whole might make horrible decisions locally (hello, Iraq war), but in the long run they mostly end up doing what's right. Even if only because our notion of 'right' is shaped by what they did.

But do they though?* Or is that just something we tell ourselves as small-D democrats, to stave off uncomfortable questions about the rightness of our beliefs? The same way that devout Christians will say that "God has a plan" as a way of dealing with horrible things, because the alternative (that the universe is capricious and uncaring) isn't healthy for the sanity.


*This is an honest-to-God question. Anybody know if there have been any studies done on outcomes of voter-based decisions like ballot initiatives? I suppose the problem is that without a series of alternate universes to observe, it's tough to compare outcomes.

[mainiac]

It's not even close.  Voters have a massively better track record then autocrats.  Democracies, even flawed ones, are better for civil liberties and human welfare.

[Max™]

The voters as a whole might make horrible decisions locally (hello, Iraq war), but in the long run they mostly end up doing what's right. Even if only because our notion of 'right' is shaped by what they did.

But do they though?* Or is that just something we tell ourselves as small-D democrats, to stave off uncomfortable questions about the rightness of our beliefs? The same way that devout Christians will say that "God has a plan" as a way of dealing with horrible things, because the alternative (that the universe is capricious and uncaring) isn't healthy for the sanity.


*This is an honest-to-God question. Anybody know if there have been any studies done on outcomes of voter-based decisions like ballot initiatives? I suppose the problem is that without a series of alternate universes to observe, it's tough to compare outcomes.

*cough*Not the right thread for it but I think LW might have something to say about one*cough*

Whoa, sorry, had something stuck in the BRack of my throat that can't find an exit.

[mainiac]

I think the Brexit was the wrong choice but I think it also happened because eurocrats kept insisting they knew what was right and the idiot voters were wrong.  Pretty much the perfect example of not ending democracy but trying to "improve it".  Let democracy do it's job and then burn Atlanta to tie up your loose ends.

[Rolepgeek]

The voters as a whole might make horrible decisions locally (hello, Iraq war), but in the long run they mostly end up doing what's right. Even if only because our notion of 'right' is shaped by what they did.

But do they though?* Or is that just something we tell ourselves as small-D democrats, to stave off uncomfortable questions about the rightness of our beliefs? The same way that devout Christians will say that "God has a plan" as a way of dealing with horrible things, because the alternative (that the universe is capricious and uncaring) isn't healthy for the sanity.


*This is an honest-to-God question. Anybody know if there have been any studies done on outcomes of voter-based decisions like ballot initiatives? I suppose the problem is that without a series of alternate universes to observe, it's tough to compare outcomes.

In terms of 'intelligent decision-making'?

Eh. It averages out, when you have sufficient separation to keep hysteria/mob rule out. Sometimes a single person who just say 'Just fucking do it, dipshits' would be better, sometimes they're telling you to build the seventeenth palace this week, you disgusting piece of slightly-different-ethnicity trash.

In terms of stability of government, willingness to peacefully abide by outcomes of power struggles, and overall progress?

Much better. And by overall I do mean in the extreme long-term. Not like, twenty-year scale, but, like, century-scale. Individual rulers can go wherever the fuck they want. But councils and voting have been a part of human government for a very long time, for a reason. Giving the vote to everyone was a new thing, but still...

I still wonder if maybe the age to vote shouldn't be 25 or so, since that's about when the forebrain is supposed to finish developing. Might slow 'progress' (in the general sense of the term since who knows where it'll go next) down, obviously, since youngsters tend to be the ones pushing for it, and wouldn't necessarily actually help at all, but I dunno.

But yeah basically the thing with democracy (or democratic republics, I should say; Athens didn't turn out all that well from what I remember) is that it gives so many chances for things to be noticed and corrected. There's an awful lot of room for error. Like, fuckin' Hitler? He conducted a very specific campaign of targeted genocide, in the industrialized era, and took power in a democratic country after the groundwork was set by the treaty of Versailles and all that jazz.

In the medieval era, that would've been jack shit where extermination of populations was a regular thing that rulers conducted. Oh, that town we just took is being uppity? Yeah, burn it down, put the inhabitants to the sword, salt the earth for, oh, a dozen leagues around? That should serve as a decent enough example, I figure. The only real difference with the Nazis being that instead of it just being tied to location, it was targeted via lineage and blood testing of all citizenry, whereas in the middle ages that would only happen to nobles, or to peasants based on where they lived. I mean, except in, like, Spain and everyone thinks of the Inquisition as this awful and terrible thing anyway.

Point there being that it's hard to get democracy to fail that spectacularly. Whole system basically has to be shaped for it. In dictatorships or feudalism, all you need is one dude. And sure, you can get rid of the dude(or dudette, in some cases). But there can always be another one. In democracies, the media remembers the dude very well, and thus does the populace. And when it's the populace, not chance, determining who it is, they can specifically steer away from that.

@Mainiac: More oversight=better. The basic voting populace is also a means of oversight. I mean, hell, man, weren't you pointing out how Politifact was finding Trump to be the one lying far more often than Clinton, and that she was actually really honest, and that therefore Trump is a fearmonger who doesn't know what he's talking about? Like, is fact-checking only good when it agrees with the conclusions you've already come to? I'm not trying to be rude here, I'm really not, I'm really just wanting to know if you've noticed this sort of switchback in your debating. I'm not trying to accuse you of anything except at the most, motivated reasoning, which is something we all have to struggle against, since it happens in the subconscious as much as anything else.

[RedKing]

Ok, but comparing 13th-century Europe to 20th-century Europe is apples to oranges. And there were 13th-century republics that committed atrocities as well. Venice paid the Crusaders to go fuck up some Christian towns down the Adriatic, because they had dared to break away. Then they paid them to sack Constantinople for the lulz and the gold. In the 1600s, they blew up the fucking Parthenon while fighting the Turks.

Moreover, you're treating this as an all-or-nothing situation: either full-blooded representative democracy in which the will of the masses dictates all, or an autocracy. What we were discussing is neither. If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could call it an oligarchy. If you were charitable, it would be a democracy with a limited electorate, similar to those of the 1700s.

In addition, there was nothing said of removing Congress from the equation. That could still be popularly elected, and provide citizens with a voice in government.

Look at the Westminster system -- people don't vote for Prime Minister, they vote for their local MP. (Now, the PM is selected by the majority party, so to some extent it is an indirect election.)

[mainiac]

In the medieval era, that would've been jack shit where extermination of populations was a regular thing that rulers conducted. Oh, that town we just took is being uppity? Yeah, burn it down, put the inhabitants to the sword, salt the earth for, oh, a dozen leagues around? That should serve as a decent enough example, I figure.

Civic rights?  City charters?

[misko27]

On an unrelated note fuck venice. fuck them in their little blind, serene faces.

[Frumple]

... y'know, now I just want to know what it'd take to consider that imperative completed. Are we talking a certain amount of fluids per square meter, per capita, coverage on notable landmarks, what sort of heuristic are we meeting before we can agree that venice has been fucked? How many faces are we talking, here, and how thoroughly?

[MrRoboto75]

... y'know, now I just want to know what it'd take to consider that imperative completed. Are we talking a certain amount of fluids per square meter, per capita, coverage on notable landmarks, what sort of heuristic are we meeting before we can agree that venice has been fucked? How many faces are we talking, here, and how thoroughly?

Sufficient sperm/water proportions in their stupid canals.