Comment by Gareth321
12 hours ago
Do you have any faith in democracy? For my reckoning, it's the great equaliser. Rich people can lobby all they like, but if the people are starving, they vote for change.
12 hours ago
Do you have any faith in democracy? For my reckoning, it's the great equaliser. Rich people can lobby all they like, but if the people are starving, they vote for change.
In the US, it seems pretty hard to vote for change when, for all intents and purposes, every four years, two candidates are pre-selected for voters to pick from; and primaries (1) either don't happen or (2) are objectively rigged against popular/majority vote; see 'superdelegates'.
I must admit, I think the two party system in the US is not good. The primary system in particular needs fixing. I couldn't believe when the Democrats just suspended the primary election last time - especially after the multi-year PR war about rigged elections and election interference.
Still, I think they learned their lesson and they'll have a primary next time. People will get to vote on a candidate they like. We should also remember that the Presidency is just one arm of government. Elections are also happening for the House, Senate, and local government of all shapes and sizes.
> We should also remember that the Presidency is just one arm of government.
In the past few terms we have very bitterly learned that the President just does whatever he wants, the House doesn't do anything, and Senate is mostly interested in getting bribed.
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People hate to hear it, but Trump is the evidence that democracy is (well maybe was, 10 years ago) still working.
The republican party treated him like a joke candidate and the media did too. Similar thing with the tea baggers, a contingent of outsider congressmen elected on the back of Obama being a communist or something.
The left hasn't really had this moment because the left is closer to a catty book club than an army regiment.
I used to, but not anymore. The incentives and human behavior seem to lead to corruption. New tools have made it too easy to pervert real/honest democracy into "pseudo" democracy/idiocracy.
A well-funded minority can shape what the majority is angry about.
Democracy only exists as a suppressor of violence, the only reason why democratic institutions are upheld is because all participants could enact violence as a response to perceived threats to their group that democracy is seemingly failing.
Historically, if democratic institutions failed, refusing labor to a ruling class has been a first violent step for the laborer class and a preemption against actual physical violence if the ruling class overstepped. However, we are seeing that possibility being taken away step by step. This leaves only physically violent uprising as a means of protesting overstep, and it is not obvious how effective that will be given the massive power imbalance between the labor class and ruling class.
So to put it succinctly, no I don’t have faith that democracies will solve this issue, because democracies only work when there is some semblance of equilibrium.
> Historically, if democratic institutions failed, refusing labor to a ruling class has been a first violent step for the laborer class and a preemption against actual physical violence if the ruling class overstepped.
Basically the ruling class's need for labor gave that labor some intrinsic power, but technology like AI will likely remove that need and therefore take the common people's power away.
> This leaves only physically violent uprising as a means of protesting overstep, and it is not obvious how effective that will be given the massive power imbalance between the labor class and ruling class.
Also things like gun control and new technology like cheap anti-personnel attack drones may undermine the effectiveness of violence against the ruling class, leaving regular people oppressed (or neglected) and helpless.
I think there’s also something to be said about how social technologies are used to reduce the efficacy of democracy as representative of the people within them.
We are so divided and mislead that I feel confident there is a significant sum of non-ruling class individuals who are completely for their own oppression for no reason other than spiting a perceived “other”.
Some other specific examples that don’t all flow together:
Globalism promised efficiency and a way to materially improve conditions for people as consumers and producers. However it has been used as a cudgel to threaten workers that would ask for more and keep down workers who have no other option. Also pitting working class people against each other for the benefit of a few.
Social media, it promised untold communication between people who would never have been able to communicate before, and it would allow them to spread ideas. Instead it is used as a dumping ground of nonsense information, drowning out any semblance of coherent thought.
I agree that democracy requires the bargain you imply: ceeding the right of personal violence to the state in exchange for law and order. I was with you until you framed withholding labour as violence. I think that's the opposite of violence. I also don't follow the logic that workers must use violence to enact change. Why don't they just vote for change?
I don’t think it’s useful to argue whether withholding any particular labor is violence or not. In some cases it is apparent (refusing to maintain key infrastructure is akin to actively destroying it) and some cases it’s not (who cares about nobody wanting to build your app).
However, what I was trying to convey is that voting is not inherently something that holds sway over anything. Votes are sort of like the currency of democracy, and like currency they need to be backed by something. U.S dollars are backed by the countries capacity to physically control strategic resources like oil, land, etc. (I.e., the U.S capacity for violently controlling resources), or emit soft-power (swaying other countries to their benefit).
Votes in a similar fashion are also backed by your ability to deny or inflict your personal power on the system you are a a part of. The clearest manifestation of that power being your ability to contribute to the institution as a whole. If we significantly reduced that capacity, or made it unnecessary for the continuation of the current system, then the power of that vote is reduced in-kind.
> I agree that democracy requires the bargain you imply: ceeding the right of personal violence to the state in exchange for law and order. I was with you until you framed withholding labour as violence. I think that's the opposite of violence.
I would frame "withholding labour as violence" as more as labor flexing its power nonviolently. Violent action is also a way of flexing power, but more extreme.
> I also don't follow the logic that workers must use violence to enact change.
I think they need to use power, which is not necessarily violent.
> Why don't they just vote for change?
At least in the US, democratic institutions are dysfunctional and there are techniques the ruling class can use to neutralize the threat they pose (e.g. propaganda, divide-and-conquer). For instance, I think the combination of "culture war issues," [1] campaign contributions, and well-funded special-interest think tanks means neither US political party will take effective action to answer the threat of AI to the livelihoods of most people. You might see some campaign rhetoric and window-dressing bills, but nothing that will really threaten AI special interests.
[1] I think the practical purpose of "culture war issues" is to fragment the working class by alienating a significant fractions from each other. IMHO, if the Democratic party was serious about representing labor, it would call a truce on them (either significantly compromise or table the issues), but it's not serious, so they continue to divide.
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Democracy is the only thing that can save us. But it isn't a given. In resource rich countries democracy struggles to take hold because human labor is minimally necessary and elites can mostly thrive without it. Many democracies survive, because without the people, everyone suffers. AI threatens to make all countries into petro-dicatorships.
I think government should be small enough that it fears the people. It should never have the power to prevent the people having their way. If the majority of people in a country are suffering, they should be able to vote for change, and the government should not be powerful enough to stop that.
I suppose the future you envision is that the government is a) very powerful, b) capable of physically suppressing the majority of 350M people, c) willing to do it, and d) somehow captured by an elite class. It's not impossible, but a lot of things have to go wrong to get there.
I fully agree that we should have incentives and systems in place that the government works for the people.
> government should be small enough that it fears the people
How would that work when the government controls the military? Would that mean that a country's military has to remain small?
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I hope for a "shackled leviathan" as articulated by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in The Narrow Corridor.