Comment by zaptheimpaler

I feel most of us have been conditioned to prefer only the mildest and most inoffensive ways of protesting as valid and consider the rest impossible. In my view, governments today ignore protests because they don't actually threaten anything. A protest with teeth might be mass absenteeism from work, refusing to pay taxes, something that actually hurts.. although in this case it's probably a bit much, when the threat of real protest is completely gone you end up with authoritarian governments.

The fact is this political system of ours is heavily balanced in favor of those with the endless budgets and resources to spend engaging in "democratic" avenues of influence.

> emailed 9 senators and heard back from one

Good start. Calls are also excellent. Then get your neighbors to do the same.

For controversial stuff, you want tens to hundreds of outreach events recorded. It doesn’t take all that much for electeds to spell a festering primary threat.

Colin Deacon seems to care: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7519403...

Paula Simons has also been actively listening to Canadians on this subject. https://sencanada.ca/en/senators/simons-paula/

You won't be able to convince representatives with facts and logic. So many people want their attention that they can't pay enough attention to your arguments to be convinced. Contacting them is about showing that you care about it.

If they receive 100 calls of people saying they're strongly against a bill and no for they might reconsider their position.

Also calling is a better signal of showing you care then emailing.

Honestly senators probably don't have the time to answer everybody directly even if their concerns have an impact on their decision

Haha. You don't email them, you cut off their funding and smear their public image. This is how you make them move, not with emails. It takes some work though.

This is why it's so important to have guardrails that limit what the government can do. The US tried to do that, and has probably been the most successful at it - though there's still been a lot of scope creep outside their constitution already. And that's probably a one-way street.

This sounds like an interesting argument, but it's damn hard to parse. I think you're saying that real democracy needs political (in the widest sense) engagement, which can't be got from the majority of people, so letting everyone participate without regard to such engagement gets in the way of real democracy, and therefore you suggest to "replace" (redistribute) power?

Anyway, this really needs an explanation of what your idea of "real democracy" is, and what "replace power" is supposed to mean.

Anyway, the answer to your question of "how" is likely: at your own peril. ;)

LBO maybe. Optimal governance would fix all bad mechanisms e.g. incentive traps, shooting self in the foot stuff, obvious inefficiencies, etc. - so it would result in a better future with more growth and wealth.

The difference can be used to bargain with incumbents to compensate for their current position, while installing a new type of government in its place that is better. It's a pretty hard problem but I don't think it's impossible. I'm pursuing this kind of thing in Finland presently.

> do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy

They don’t need to. When the informed minority on an issue gets lazy, stupid or cynical, however, the system dies.

Voting for every little thing is compulsory in Australia and it’s honestly really annoying.

> I do not believe that a majority of humans can be made to meaningfully engage with democracy.

Why not? Is it just that you have not experienced it, or is there a more principled argument?

My personal experience is that democracy feels to work much better in smaller (sub 10 million people) than larger, but it could also just be correlation not causation.