lowenz on 13/12/2019 at 05:47
Quote Posted by Kolya
But the point isn't this concrete example (nor Trump). The point is that as long as the (majority of) voters aren't directly disadvantaged by their decision those "natural checks" for bad ideas fail.
- Because people prefer short term gratification over long term sustainability
- Because they choose their own minor advantage over someone else's major loss
- Because the sufferer of the decision is a minority
- Because the sufferer is in another country and cannot participate in the vote
- Because people never know what they missed
This is not an argument against democracy. Although it clearly needs limits, like minority protection. But it is
an argument against direct democracy. And against the idea that the best idea will crystallize somehow from a lot of partial interests without any guidance or rules. These rules used to be
enforced to a large degree by journalists acting as filters and amps. If we don't want that any more, I think we need something else.
->
Quote Posted by lowenz
I know humans are narrative-lovers viruses.
So what? Politics AND the so called "anti"politics feed people with the stories people love.
The problem IS the "people" as "headless monster" craving for self-indulging stories.
Direct Democracy (anarchy) DOES NOT have this problem, 'cause there's no one trying to be "the head" of the headless monster (head+headless monster=monster->state)
In a true direct democracy (neurons in our brain) there's no space or need for "narration".
Journalists are the ienas of politicians.
demagogue on 13/12/2019 at 09:40
Regarding the last few comments, I'd add two things.
(1) People on the ground don't have any direct control over the mechanics of state power. At their best, the richest and most powerful among them can influence some officials to do some things. This is political action theory; and even when it works it doesn't really work very well since there's always a bad translation from advocacy to implementation to effects on the ground, so what you end up with is pretty different from what anybody actually wanted. So for most things it's irrelevant what people think, and even when it's relevant it's still not very relevant to what actually happens. Unless they form their own militia and take effective control over a region like the Taliban or ISIS, non-state actors don't and can't do anything except glare at state officials to do things.
And even for that, (2) for the vast majority of people on the ground, the vast majority of what government does is completely invisible to them. Like it never even enters their mind most of what governments do, much less form a coherent opinion about it beyond some guttural gesticulation. For these things, the government will happily continue doing what it's doing, usually no matter who is in power, and very few will even fathom that it's happening; they wouldn't understand what they were even looking at even if they could see scraps of it, which they can't because it wouldn't occur to them there are vast troves publicly accessible records on all of this stuff. And, the kicker, then most of what is in people's mind, what they think the government is doing, doesn't actually exist. A lot of the GOP went nuts about this apparent vast caravan of migrants on its border that just didn't exist at the time. So it kind of doesn't matter that they're so worked up about them. Trump actually stationed the military on the border to "deal with them". It was ridiculous. They were in the middle of a desert. Were people expecting them to shoot at mirages? So even if a person cared an awful lot about an imaginary thing, it doesn't matter because no official could do it even if they wanted to, since it doesn't exist.
That leaves you with a Venn diagram overlap of things normal people are worked up about that actually exist and that they can actually influence. But I think that's such a negligible thing in our era that it's not the thing to worry about. The thing to worry about is when the people in government start seeing the phantoms and wanting to shoot them. But by that point, congratulations, now you're a theocracy or a fascist or communist utopia and you have bigger things to worry about.
I like thinking about it though, so I appreciate all the discussion and all of your thoughts though. :)
Kolya on 14/12/2019 at 00:27
You're saying that people's opinions aren't directly implemented, because there is a "bad translation from advocacy to implementation". I guess you might call it a filter, that grounds those public fears eg of a phantom migration caravan, dismisses them and then goes on to care about the really important bits and pieces, that most people don't even see.
That is the same filtering process that the press used to do before these opinions about phantom problems decided elections and entered the government. It used to create and moderate a reasonable dialogue of the public with itself. And I think it's important this happens at that level already, before government, because if irrational opinions only crash at the governmental implementation filter several bad things happen:
The disconnect between the public and government creates feelings of frustration and betrayal with violent outbursts. Since there's no reasonable main public opinion anymore, fringe extremists feel encouraged. And people start to vote for extremist outsiders, who are as irrational as themselves, to finally get things done.
lowenz on 14/12/2019 at 06:26
Problem is that today, in the social media publishing era, there's nothing (to) "moderate", as term :p
There's only the primordial massive black hole of the tribal "engagement", the price we pay for delegating to the market the creation of a political opinion too (as a *PRODUCT*, you "political ideas" are now a *PRODUCT*, remember this).
So it's not "irrational", it's a kind of "rational-induced irrationalism": fear SELLS.
