The Intellectual Dark Web

[C-Mag]

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[DBTrek]

You could have represenatative government with campings encouraging the uninformed not to vote. By uninformed i mean those who don't know basic shit both sides should know.


The difference is that those certain professions in most cases cannot eliminate human beings from the workforce, take away kids from the parents, draft you...

Yet the alternative is you have people without kids voting on policies that effect everyone’s children and people who cannot serve in the military voting on conscripting others. Likewise you have people with no jobs voting on how much to take from employed people, and people with jobs voting on whether the jobless deserve anything at all. Even worse, you have a massive majority of people who do not understand the most basic aspects of social or economic issues voting “their feelings” on how to fix “problems”. Both approaches (full democracy or disenfranchisement) have their own shortcomings.

And most everyone realizes in short order that a full, direct democracy, is a bad idea. That’s why we’ve moved on to representative democracies and parliamentary democracies where “the people” don’t actually vote on policy as much as they pick other people who decide policy. That might be more efficient, but it doesn’t solve the problem of unqualified masses selecting unqualified individuals to create policy.

On the other hand - no one wants to be part of the disenfranchised class. And I was thinking about this yesterday - it may well be that once a sizable demographic can vote, human inertia (perhaps a natural inclination toward “fairness”) seems to dictate that soon all will be voting. We started out with land-owning males voting. This was then extended to non-land owning makes, then women and minorities. Though I’m no expert on the political systems in the rest of the free world it seems to follow similar patterns elsewhere.

So it may be once you allow one group to vote, you must allow all groups to vote or face an imminent revolt. Democracy may be an all-or-nothing proposition.

[Martin Hash]

So it may be once you allow one group to vote, you must allow all groups to vote or face an imminent revolt. Democracy may be an all-or-nothing proposition.

A sufficently powerful aristocracy has been the World's go-to solution for millennia. StA and Libertarians don't really have a problem with that but The 2nd Amendment kind of makes it untennable in the U.S. They're trying though.

[DPM17]

You could have represenatative government with campings encouraging the uninformed not to vote. By uninformed i mean those who don't know basic shit both sides should know.


The difference is that those certain professions in most cases cannot eliminate human beings from the workforce, take away kids from the parents, draft you...

Yet the alternative is you have people without kids voting on policies that effect everyone’s children and people who cannot serve in the military voting on conscripting others. Likewise you have people with no jobs voting on how much to take from employed people, and people with jobs voting on whether the jobless deserve anything at all. Even worse, you have a massive majority of people who do not understand the most basic aspects of social or economic issues voting “their feelings” on how to fix “problems”. Both approaches (full democracy or disenfranchisement) have their own shortcomings.

And most everyone realizes in short order that a full, direct democracy, is a bad idea. That’s why we’ve moved on to representative democracies and parliamentary democracies where “the people” don’t actually vote on policy as much as they pick other people who decide policy. That might be more efficient, but it doesn’t solve the problem of unqualified masses selecting unqualified individuals to create policy.

On the other hand - no one wants to be part of the disenfranchised class. And I was thinking about this yesterday - it may well be that once a sizable demographic can vote, human inertia (perhaps a natural inclination toward “fairness”) seems to dictate that soon all will be voting. We started out with land-owning males voting. This was then extended to non-land owning makes, then women and minorities. Though I’m no expert on the political systems in the rest of the free world it seems to follow similar patterns elsewhere.

So it may be once you allow one group to vote, you must allow all groups to vote or face an imminent revolt. Democracy may be an all-or-nothing proposition.

I don't know if Nassim Taleb is considered part of the IDW or not, but the first part of your response here seems to jive well with the topic of his latest book Skin in the Game. The core of his argument is that when you have people who don't have skin in the game making decisions for the people who actually do, everything gets fucked. For example: policy in medicine should be distilled from observations of doctor/patient relationships, not tailored to the whims and interests of administrators who set up self serving incentive structures.
We evaluate risk much differently when it affects our bottom line, and we tend to make better decisions when we have skin in the game.

[Speaker to Animals]

Martin makes a lot of assumptions about what I would and would not have a problem with. I am just telling you the time of day. I may or may not like the time, but that's the fucking time.

[DBTrek]

So it may be once you allow one group to vote, you must allow all groups to vote or face an imminent revolt. Democracy may be an all-or-nothing proposition.

A sufficently powerful aristocracy has been the World's go-to solution for millennia. StA and Libertarians don't really have a problem with that but The 2nd Amendment kind of makes it untennable in the U.S. They're trying though.

I wonder if a conditional democracy would perform any better. One that had a “cover charge” that must be paid before a citizen is allowed to vote. Doesn’t have to be economic, maybe just a class one must attend for an hour before being granted the right to vote. Or, it could be restrictive on several levels - like a one hour class, with a test that must be passed, which costs $10.

Cover charges keep homeless out of bars, I wonder who they keep out of voting booths. Would we really be worse off if anyone who couldn’t be bothered to attend a one hour class once in their life was not allowed to help steer the direction of the nation?


(and the class doesn’t have to teach anything. Sit in a chair and stare at the wall for an hour, then you can vote, for all I care. The goal is to remove people who literally wouldn’t do a damn thing to vote if they were asked to perform the smallest of tasks)

[DBTrek]

I don't know if Nassim Taleb is considered part of the IDW or not, but the first part of your response here seems to jive well with the topic of his latest book Skin in the Game. The core of his argument is that when you have people who don't have skin in the game making decisions for the people who actually do, everything gets fucked.

I would agree. The question then becomes how do you limit representation to those who have “skin in the game”. Especially when different people have skin in different games? Who gets to vote on gay marriage issues? Only gay people? Gay people and religious people who oppose it? Gay people, religious people, and people with religious and gay relatives?

Problem identification is always simpler than finding solutions. I’ll check out the video but I suspect Nassim doesn’t get around to saying “we can fix this by...”.

[Speaker to Animals]

Start with subsidiarity. Government decisions should be made at the most local level possible.

Second, consider most of what people think we should "vote" on should not be voted upon.

Third, consider that we lost something when we lost the Church as a parallel governing structure which was responsible for social welfare. I am not here talking about the religious and moral loss, but the social loss. We need to handle social welfare separately from the secular state. Combining the two powers, the power to influence the masses and the power of state violence and law, is not a great idea.

Fourth, drastically limit democracy itself. Use it where it works. Don't use it for important matters. People really need to assess this blind faith in the goodness of democracy. History strongly suggests that faith is misplaced.

[Speaker to Animals]

Also consider a small wrinkle in the common narrative of democracy..

It was democracy that led to the American colonies revolting. Parliament enacted the tyrannical laws, not the king. The king merely went along with it, partly perhaps because the last time the king tried to restrain Parliament they raised an army and committed regicide.

The Founders made their accusations against the king because they were trying to make a better democracy than the one that fucked them over. But there is no such thing. Once everything goes up to a "vote" somebody is getting fucked over.

[DrYouth]

Monarchies fuck people over...

Republics fuck people over...

Democracies fuck people over...

There is no getting away from the potential for people to get fucked over.

Once again I take you to Fukuyamas "Origins of Political Order"...

The best (most harmonious and potent) states are based on a balance among three main factors:
1) a strong capable state
2) bound by rule of law (a clearly articulated moral limit on power) and
3) accountable to it's citizens...

Any one of these can go badly wrong under any of the above systems.

Notice how 1 and 3 are often in opposition to one another.... as all three factors are.