Does Betteridge apply here?
Paul Weyrich, founder of the Moral Majority and the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation spoke to a crowd of evangelicals some 30 or more years ago:
There seem to be more and more Americans around today who do not want us to vote at all.
In many cases, the opposite is true.
I donât think anyone can anymore. Societyâs gotten too complicated. This is the real Singularity, if you ask me, and itâs been here for quite a while.
The actual reason why âSocietyâ appears to be complicated is because there are actually many countless societies. Some of them are separate. Some of them overlap. There has never been one singular human Society, and there does not appear to be any cogent reasoning for assuming that there will ever be any such thing. On individual level, people seem to mostly understand that âyou canât please everybodyâ, and that no system can be all things to all people. But then many of them quickly forget this and suppose collectives where hundreds of millions of people somehow magically share the same goals and values, with no evidence of this.
Imagine creating a Tool That Does Everything. Of course it would seem complicated! And as complicated as it would be, it would still not ever work as advertised. But accepting this flies against a lot of dubious âcommon senseâ that countries, religions, corporations, etc should âobviouslyâ maximize their influence by growing as large as possible. The reality is that it causes zombie groups where most members donât matter, and everything is run by an elite minority.
Real participation happens by working with others right now, instead of hoping to be invited, or hoping to preserve the old group identity.
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I agree completely. Interesting analysis. Gad, I donât even really understand my two siblings and our interlocking relationships. And they are both the political opposites of me (and probably of each other! :^).
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Either delegating, or they could just publish guides on voting issues. We also need to be able to figure out who is actually trying to act in the best interests of everyone, and who is just corrupt. I think a lot of people fail to vote because they have just decided that everyone running is already in the pocket of some shadowy interest or even a bunch of them. And I think we are going to really have to go back to making sure that kids get civics lessons. There seem to be a bunch of people these days that have no idea where the concept of liberty fits into our system of government. There seems to be a general trend of wanting to ban things that other people do, instead of understanding that those people probably want to ban some of the stuff we do.
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I absolutely hated the âdirect democracyâ propositions on the ballot when I lived in California, which has them. They were so misleadingly titled and the choices so convoluted that even after reading up on them beforehand I wasnât always sure if I made the choice I wanted.
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"Could America Ever Become a Democracy?"
Is a much more interesting question. At the moment itâs a kleptocracy with a biennial two-ring circus to entertain the masses.
Ever? Sure. And if America can do it, the USA can, too.
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Yes, itâs annoying. I feel like I have to cram for a midterm every time I head to the polling booth.
Propositions are complex, often intentionally soâwhich means most voters decide based on the political ads and media narrative. Giving âpower to the peopleâ often really means âgiving power to whoever has the resources and connections to shape the public discussion.â
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Direct democracy can also mean that the public are the ones who decide the various bills and ballots in the first place. If somebody else is shaping public discussion, that is arguably not direct democracy, or is a subversion of it.
And yet, they are a necessary check. Look at this fall- marijuana is sure to be legalized, yet the legislature wonât touch it with a 10 foot bong. See also: MMJ, and The Train. Passed by the people with pretty clear provisions, yet time goes by and the politicians wonât respect the will of the people. The rulers in Sacramento and throughout the cities clearly have nothing but contempt for the will of the people.
The ones that should be blocked are the ones that specify certain budget amounts for certain things, which has made budgeting a gordian knot. Even if theyâre in favor of cute puppies and for the children, I always vote against those. Well, I always vote against the for-the-children anyway, just on principle.
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Thatâs ostensibly the way it is in California now. Theoretically any citizen can propose a bill, organize volunteers to collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot, and lobby the public to support it.
In practice that takes a lot of effort, organizing and resources which means moneyed interests are more likely to get their ideas in front of the public than non-moneyed interests. A billionaire can hire thousands of people to collect signatures or blanket the airwaves with messaging about their pet proposition; a local community organizer canât.
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California is far too large to be a single direct democracy. There is also the cultural barrier where a population suddenly get some sort of greater participation dropped upon them, but they have already been socially conditioned against their better interests.
Thatâs precisely what I mean. Those âinterestsâ money is only so good as peopleâs willingness to take it. Anybody who thinks that a dollar from somebody like Trump or Murdoch is worth anywhere near as much as a dollar from the average person does not understand how egalitarianism works.
And when people drop some participation into an area controlled by runaway capitalism, this raises other issues. If the population are running the state, should they be paid for it? Is it worth chasing money through some abstract job when direct participation in the society allows people to create and interact with culture and capital directly?
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