
Everyday Authoritarianism Is Boring and Tolerable - imartin2k
https://tompepinsky.com/2017/01/06/everyday-authoritarianism-is-boring-and-tolerable/
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xyzzy123
TL:DR; screw basic income, let's talk direct democracy.

I think the article presents a valuable point of view, but most "democratic"
choices in countries involve very low fidelity choices between largely
indistinguishable parties in a way that is not particularly different from
long term autocratic rule.

This might be due to "flight to the centre" in terms of major party policy,
but I like to think of it in terms of the fact that essentially 1 bit every
few years is not really enough input into the whole system. There is a lot of
"bundling" in terms of policy which means that in the process of choosing the
least worst thing amongst the available options, you are forced to legitimise
a status quo.

Worse than that, you think you're voting for something and then the thing you
get turns out to be something else. The customer service is pretty bad too
unless you have a lot of money.

I think it's time technology caught up with "democracy". We have the
technology to do things which look a lot more like direct democracy. Eftpos
and credit card terminals would work fine as mini voting systems. And they're
everywhere. If we determined that we could keep fraud to less than say, 4%,
that's accountable for by setting thresholds conservatively.

There are a lot of issues (media capture, short term horizons, moral panic,
lack of big picture / inability to budget if people have too much control over
laws)...

But while basic income gets debated all the time, I hardly ever see anyone
proposing modifications to "democracy". Which is weird, because I see all this
big picture stuff on HN all the time but it seems to me there's not much
questioning of the larger order of things.

