
A Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - known
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/08/shawn-rosenberg-democracy-228045
======
qpooqpoo
"...Thus we are left with the inescapable conclusion that democracy became the
dominant political form of the modern world not through human choice but
because of an objective fact, namely, the association of democracy, since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution, with economic and technological
success."

\--Theodore Kaczynski, "Technological Slavery", Revised and Expanded Edition,
p. 297

The naive view is that we "chose" democracy because it was a freer and more
humane system. That's a total farce. On the contrary, modern democracy arose
out of a process of natural selection because it was the social arrangement
most conducive to technological and economic success given the environment. As
the world environment changes (due to technology) there very well may be other
social arrangements that will out-compete and replace democracy because they
will be technologically and economically stronger.

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DATACOMMANDER
The irony is that it never occurs to our elites that perhaps they are
incompetent. No, the narrative is always that the ignorant masses are going to
burn the house down, despite the heroic efforts of the educated, level-headed
elite. Newsflash: preventing the masses from burning the house down is the
primary job of the elite. When a fire nevertheless starts, that means that
it’s time for the elites to be replaced by those who can prevent fires.

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tristram_shandy
It is obvious that we do not live in an actual democracy.

Consider this:

Do you actually get to vote on anything?

Do you get to vote on major national issues? Did you get a referendum on any
issue, e.g. Gay marriage? Iraq?

Do you get to vote on local issues that affect you? Did you ever get a choice
on where the new community center would be built?

Do you get to vote at work? Did you ever get to vote on an acquisition, a new
corporate direction, a new office layout, or anything important?

We cast only a handful of ballots throughout our entire lives, and we rarely
get a direct choice on any issue - we only vote for a candidate that has
already been selected by the élite.

We can have direct democracy now thanks to technology. Citizens and workers
should be empowered by technology to vote daily on issues that affect them at
work, locally, and federally.

Yes, the system is broken. I, myself, have cast four ballots in my life. I've
had nearly no say in anything that has happened in my adult life, and ergo I'm
certain that our collective voting history is not the root cause of our
problems. Nor are the élite themselves the cause - the fault in our system is
of course systemic and material.

We are living in late capitalism, and the contradictions within western
liberal countries are beginning to tear them apart. The dialectical
materialist (Marxist) analysis of our system is becoming more correct as we
move forward in the 21st century.

~~~
ukoki
I've daydreamed about tech-enabled direct democracy with arbitrary proxy
voting for a while now. I'd love something like:

* anyone can choose to make their votes public

* anyone can "give their votes" to anyone else, provided that person makes their votes public

Then you can have rules like:

* Nominate Al Gore to be my proxy for all votes tagged with #environment

* Nominate my friend Scott to be my proxy for all votes tagged with #taxes

* Everything else I'll vote myself using the mobile app

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degosuke
Wasn't there a point in the guidelines about refraining from sensational
titles?

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hownottowrite
Actual paper:
[https://www.academia.edu/38564962/Democracy_Devouring_Itself...](https://www.academia.edu/38564962/Democracy_Devouring_Itself_The_Rise_of_the_Incompetent_Citizen_and_the_Appeal_of_Populism.docx)

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julienreszka
"political psychologists"

The term is more adequate than it looks.

Psychologists that do politics.

Now that it's pretty clear that psychology is as much fraud as marxism why
those people are still in the public arena puzzles me.

~~~
vectorEQ
because they say things like "Human brains aren’t built for self-rule, says
Shawn Rosenberg. That’s more evident than ever." :'). popular with the rich /
power greedy westerners :D meanwhile ±85% of earths population disagrees while
they take care of themselves as they have for centuries or longer.. but i
suppose they don't tweet so they don't count for science! :D

