The European Comission is the top decision maker of the EU. The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC. No different than the politburo in China.
That is incorrect. Usually, the legislation happens in the trilogue, which is an abomination and everything but well representing it's citizens interest, but the Commission can do very very little if the council says no. That again is a body consisting of elected officials with varying degrees of distance from a direct election.
Best example for a change: everything that happened after Magyar replaced Orban in the council.
This is just to say... Its complicated. The EU can definitely do with a reform and better, stronger democratic legitimacy.
It is slightly different than China, China has implemented hotlines/apps for citizen complaints in response to social pressure, and it actually attempts to address those complaints.
It's mostly a lack of properly descriptive words in the language. I think "totalitarian liberalism" or the "managerial state" is probably closer to what we're talking about here. Power is not concentrated in one individual; responsibility and accountability are diffused so far that it is impossible to find someone who actually can do or change anything. "Rational systems" of business process and rigour serve to remove individual wisdom and intuition from the equation entirely. Adding AI on top of this will probably only further entrench it - walls of words protecting people from really improving anything meaningfully.
In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. Trouble is, the people are seldom even morally aligned with each other in a unified way, so a dictator cannot easily represent their conflicting interests. Representative democracy does at least take a step towards solving that issue.
It has more terms as well: neoliberal encasement, depoliticization or post-politics, it's designing a system in such a way as to protect private property, international trade and other economic orthodoxy from democratic influence. That is an incredibly potent theory to understand the EU by. Lots of work in academia on the subject as well, for instance:
It's not, not everything need to be a single word, because the world is full of nuances.
Calling everything fascist, nazis, communists, etc. is making actual fascism, nazism and dictatorship more likely.
Because you can't raise the attention of people to the absolute priority those needs when the time come if you just wasted it on stuff that were not it again and again.
What? Tell me the similarities :)
There is not strong-willed, controlling figure or imposed ideology, the financial institutions are fairly independent, in general journalism is relatively free to choose topics, the federal states can be pretty independent from the central power if they choose to do so, and all the rest I already wrote in a sister comment.
Note I did not compare this to any country, just applying criteria for dictatorships.
No, I think the term applies very well. That there are worse dictatorships does not really nullify the statement.
Even "democracies" have death penalties and commit to genocide. See the USA as an example here. One can always reason that there are worse countries in this regard - nobody rejects that either.
We need to have a much more nuanced view on democracy. The EU presently is not one.
If the decision-makers are elected by the people, it's not a dictatorship, no matter how many atrocities the nation commits.
You can have some gray area I guess, with unfair elections or whatever, but when the bad decisions are made by leaders who keep on getting re-elected in reasonably fair elections, we do not have a dictatorship.
I think you mean something different than I when we think of dictatorships.
I agree in being unhappy with this decision and maneuvering, but we do have to keep a watch out for actual, in the political sense, dictatorships and not mix them up with other concerns.
Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.
> Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.
Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Or using "criminals" as enforced organ donors. I suppose there's that.
The EU is being a bit short-sighted and shit with regard to Chat Control but let's not loose perspective here.
Oh please. That is not and never was my argument.
I just said, it is not a dictatorship. No Fun discussion anything with you.
If you'll indulge my argument: I have a fair amount of confidence in the stability of the system and fairness of elections. It may be rigged in favour of some interested parties, but there are solid ways to get the people currently in power to be replaced by others and still retain stability in the system.
Not so in any of: Iran, Russia, Albany, Eastern Germany, The phillipines, China, Belarus, Sudan, ...
That is my whole point. The rest is a different topic, but cynicism usually does not help in doing something.
It's much more of an oligarchy where even though the members of the elite are elected the body of them as a whole appears to have enough influence over new members to force them to act in accordance with an ongoing plan. It seems like any real change would require a very large super majority of new members to be elected at the same time in order to change course. Even a country like the UK seems to still be under their influence after leaving the union which speaks volumes about the amount of backroom dealing that must be going on.
You think the UK is influenced by backroom dealing and not just the fact that they want to trade with the single market, which is the whole point of banding together as the EU?
In the past, pre public availability of internet chat rooms, people used to be a lot more reserved, and speech had a consequence of public accountability.
Now, anyone can be anonymous, post anything that comes to mind without any real repercussion. People love to criticize laws like UK has against hate speech online, citing lack of freedom, but most people that got punished with that law will be seen in public saying the same shit.
There are 2 options to fix this. First, is no internet anonymity. Second is surveillance. The latter option is preferable, because it de-anonymizes you only to the government entities, not everyone.
The famous argument is "don't give the government power that you don't want the political opposition to have" is silly. As been proven so clearly, if the political opposition takes power, they will just do what they want ignoring the law anyways. Its much better to create systems in place that allow current sane governments to implement guardrails to prevent nefarious ideas from taking hold in the first place, and silencing the people that would have been ostasized in public in the pre internet days anyways.
You have apparently no idea what an actual dictatorship is
The European Comission is the top decision maker of the EU. The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC. No different than the politburo in China.
That is incorrect. Usually, the legislation happens in the trilogue, which is an abomination and everything but well representing it's citizens interest, but the Commission can do very very little if the council says no. That again is a body consisting of elected officials with varying degrees of distance from a direct election. Best example for a change: everything that happened after Magyar replaced Orban in the council. This is just to say... Its complicated. The EU can definitely do with a reform and better, stronger democratic legitimacy.
It is slightly different than China, China has implemented hotlines/apps for citizen complaints in response to social pressure, and it actually attempts to address those complaints.
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Apart from the fact it can't make decisions.
It can only propose; the decision is made by the EU parliament.
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> The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC
Whenever one reads EC you need to read: "All of the heads of state in a trenchcoat". Macron, Merz, etc
And yet this is an EP maneuver
And let's not forget on the American lobbyists pushing for it (Including Big Tech)
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It's mostly a lack of properly descriptive words in the language. I think "totalitarian liberalism" or the "managerial state" is probably closer to what we're talking about here. Power is not concentrated in one individual; responsibility and accountability are diffused so far that it is impossible to find someone who actually can do or change anything. "Rational systems" of business process and rigour serve to remove individual wisdom and intuition from the equation entirely. Adding AI on top of this will probably only further entrench it - walls of words protecting people from really improving anything meaningfully.
In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people. Trouble is, the people are seldom even morally aligned with each other in a unified way, so a dictator cannot easily represent their conflicting interests. Representative democracy does at least take a step towards solving that issue.
The current term seems to be “guided democracy” (formerly “managed democracy”): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy
Although I’d argue it is often just as much a failed technocracy.
> In some ways, the concentration of power in a dictatorship might be better, if the dictator was well morally aligned with the people.
This is pretty much the exact argument that Hayek makes - socialism leads to fascism through political gridlock.
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It has more terms as well: neoliberal encasement, depoliticization or post-politics, it's designing a system in such a way as to protect private property, international trade and other economic orthodoxy from democratic influence. That is an incredibly potent theory to understand the EU by. Lots of work in academia on the subject as well, for instance:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45129546
https://lpeproject.org/blog/neoliberal-encasement-infrastruc...
It's not, not everything need to be a single word, because the world is full of nuances.
Calling everything fascist, nazis, communists, etc. is making actual fascism, nazism and dictatorship more likely.
Because you can't raise the attention of people to the absolute priority those needs when the time come if you just wasted it on stuff that were not it again and again.
We are crying wolf, and we'll pay the price.
Tell me the difference please. Which country we compare to?
A dictatorship has a dictator. Who doesn't know that?
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I lived in a dictatorship, I can’t tell the difference. Is exactly the same for the average Joe.
What? Tell me the similarities :) There is not strong-willed, controlling figure or imposed ideology, the financial institutions are fairly independent, in general journalism is relatively free to choose topics, the federal states can be pretty independent from the central power if they choose to do so, and all the rest I already wrote in a sister comment. Note I did not compare this to any country, just applying criteria for dictatorships.
No, I think the term applies very well. That there are worse dictatorships does not really nullify the statement.
Even "democracies" have death penalties and commit to genocide. See the USA as an example here. One can always reason that there are worse countries in this regard - nobody rejects that either.
We need to have a much more nuanced view on democracy. The EU presently is not one.
If the decision-makers are elected by the people, it's not a dictatorship, no matter how many atrocities the nation commits.
You can have some gray area I guess, with unfair elections or whatever, but when the bad decisions are made by leaders who keep on getting re-elected in reasonably fair elections, we do not have a dictatorship.
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I think you mean something different than I when we think of dictatorships. I agree in being unhappy with this decision and maneuvering, but we do have to keep a watch out for actual, in the political sense, dictatorships and not mix them up with other concerns.
What relationship does the death penalty and genocide have to democracy (or lack thereof)? That seems orthogonal to the definition.
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I suppose you know?
Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.
> Now go enlighten us on how the EU is super democratic and way better than the worst dictatorship that ever existed, so we may be happy we are not the worst.
Well they're not rounding people because of their religion or sexuality and putting them in "retraining" camps yet. Or using "criminals" as enforced organ donors. I suppose there's that.
The EU is being a bit short-sighted and shit with regard to Chat Control but let's not loose perspective here.
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Oh please. That is not and never was my argument. I just said, it is not a dictatorship. No Fun discussion anything with you.
If you'll indulge my argument: I have a fair amount of confidence in the stability of the system and fairness of elections. It may be rigged in favour of some interested parties, but there are solid ways to get the people currently in power to be replaced by others and still retain stability in the system. Not so in any of: Iran, Russia, Albany, Eastern Germany, The phillipines, China, Belarus, Sudan, ... That is my whole point. The rest is a different topic, but cynicism usually does not help in doing something.
It's much more of an oligarchy where even though the members of the elite are elected the body of them as a whole appears to have enough influence over new members to force them to act in accordance with an ongoing plan. It seems like any real change would require a very large super majority of new members to be elected at the same time in order to change course. Even a country like the UK seems to still be under their influence after leaving the union which speaks volumes about the amount of backroom dealing that must be going on.
You think the UK is influenced by backroom dealing and not just the fact that they want to trade with the single market, which is the whole point of banding together as the EU?
Nearly every law pushed by the EU Commission has support from the EU Council.
Chat control is no different.
Is there reliable polling that shows this is broadly unpopular?
The fact that the parliament pushed back already twice in the very recent past is a clear signal the population doesn’t want it
People like you are why Chat Control is needed btw.
I don’t understand your point. We do not need chat control.
We do.
In the past, pre public availability of internet chat rooms, people used to be a lot more reserved, and speech had a consequence of public accountability.
Now, anyone can be anonymous, post anything that comes to mind without any real repercussion. People love to criticize laws like UK has against hate speech online, citing lack of freedom, but most people that got punished with that law will be seen in public saying the same shit.
There are 2 options to fix this. First, is no internet anonymity. Second is surveillance. The latter option is preferable, because it de-anonymizes you only to the government entities, not everyone.
The famous argument is "don't give the government power that you don't want the political opposition to have" is silly. As been proven so clearly, if the political opposition takes power, they will just do what they want ignoring the law anyways. Its much better to create systems in place that allow current sane governments to implement guardrails to prevent nefarious ideas from taking hold in the first place, and silencing the people that would have been ostasized in public in the pre internet days anyways.