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Babalugats@feddit.uk 17 hours agoWe do know it doesn’t work.
Look up arrows impossibility theorem.
Anarchism is one of many, and while it is in some ways similar to democracy, it is less open to corruption and it doesn’t have a handful of people deciding everything for us because they got the most votes based on a minority number of issues that they (at the time) claim they will fix.
That you want to stick with democracy and aren’t willing to even be open to the suggestions of anything else, but surely that in itself goes against your beloved democracy, by just assuming that democracy is the best option. Many have thought that their ‘solutions’ were the best option for them in centuries gone by. Feel free to look up quite a few religions for example.
HetareKing@piefed.social 6 hours ago
Arrow’s impossibility theorem just states that strictly speaking, there is no system within a particular subset of voting systems that is guaranteed to be immune from spoilers affecting the outcome. So not only are you using an overly strict definition of democracy that doesn’t even encompass all democratic systems implemented today, let alone all the ones that could be (which again, includes anarchism), but you’re disqualifying things based on not meeting a level of perfection that is unreasonable to expect of anything. It’s not like anarchism would be free of irrelevant factors affecting decisions; it would be a lot more affected by relationships between people and people’s standing in a community for one thing.
None of the problems you point out are innate to democracy. The reason you associate them with democracy is not because of any inherent quality of democracy, but because of history. To simplify things a lot, the people who championed democracy back in the days of absolute monarchies and nobility also championed a liberal economy. At the time that would have made sense, since it was seen as more fair and meritocratic than an economy managed by the nobility. And compared to that it was, but ultimate it just ended up creating a new nobility in all but name.
But just because they were wrong about one thing doesn’t mean they were wrong about everything. You can pick and choose ideas, and the anarchism you’re promoting is one such attempt.
Babalugats@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
Again, you have skipped over the principal point or points that i am making.
Democracy is not working. An important difference to distinguish between anarchism and democracy is how easy it is to coerce and/or corrupt the central body in charge. That is what is happening now on a massive scale, it was always happening on a large scale we can assume, but now it’s leaps and bounds above anything that we have seen before, just look at what is happening in South America as a result, for example.
My main point is still that democracy is not working now, and ANY alternative could help, if not least, to reset the whole thing.
A governing body made up of a very small minority easily corrupt with many career political families only benefits those already with the power and money.
HetareKing@piefed.social 30 minutes ago
Your points? You haven’t been making any! All you’ve been doing is treating the assertions that democracy is susceptible to corruption and anarchism less so as almost axiomatic, backing it with little more than “look at how bad things are!” (while ignoring all other factors that created the current state of things) and a need for an alternative, while being dishonest about what democracy is.
All forms of governance, with no exceptions, require delegation. But as soon as you delegate, there is room for corruption, and therefore a need to prevent it. In other words, there is always going to be a minority of people mandated with authority and a need for mechanisms to ensure that they don’t abuse that authority. And any system of accountability that involves fewer people than the public, is going to be more corruptible than one that does involve the public. Even anarchism would, without a democratic core, inevitably decay into a dictatorship in all but name. By insisting that anarchism is distinct from democracy, you’re contributing to undermining the very thing you’re trying to achieve.
If you’re trying to say that there are some very fundamental problems with current implementations of democracy, I wholeheartedly agree. But do put it that way, then. Democracy is entirely too important to be reduced to a lure for replies.