A sad yet realistic summary of representative democracy.
Also his cyberspace and seasteading ideas are far too optimistic. High tax governments are currently going after tax heavens, even as old and diplomatic strong ones as Switzerland. What changes does your sea outpost have against the world?
But he's missed out on two important things. First democracies tend to follow a long term cycle of government boom and bust. See Sweden and Great Britain. The general patter is the government grows until it's too big to be effective and then it collapses.
The other example is direct democracy like Switzerland, that's also worth examining.
(replying to this thread because the parent was killed)
I object to this submission being killed. I understand the desire to keep HN 'pure,' but Peter Thiel is interesting to hackers and founders in the same way that a PG essay is interesting even if it is not a direct dissertation on Lisp or startups.
The direct democracy is something I've toying around with. The Republic arose because it was not feasible to have thousands of people vote on every decision a government needed to make, obviously. However as technology advances there is a very real possibility that we'll see more direct democracies arise as technology simplifies those voting procedures (assuming we ever reach a satisfactory security level on digital voting.)
At least in the United States that isn't true. In the U.S. the republic was constructed as a way for the well educated to trump the masses if need be. That's the original reason for the Electoral College and that's why the U.S. Senate was originally filled with people appointed by state governments.
I'm not saying our Government wasn't built around a populist ideal and in the end I think the Framers trusted the public to appoint worthwhile people. But the republic our system is based around was created specifically to shield government against the knee jerk reactions of the masses
I don't see what's so beneficial about direct democracy. Sure, it whets our 21st century egalitarian appetite. However, while populist sentiment is sometimes correct and sometimes disastrous, it is never created by any sort of rational decision-making process.
I have a hard time thinking of reasons why direct democracy is an optimal government structure.
I have an easy time thinking of examples of why direct democracy is an optimal government structure. Switzerland. It has a long history of direct democracy, compare how it has been governed with how the other democracies have been governed.
There's no need to get all abstract when there are real world examples.
That's a good point, all of those places are tiny places. Still, I'd like to think that Switzerland can be scaled up. As well functioning as Singapore is, I don't want to see that scaled up.
In any democracy, direct or representative, the majority has the power to take from the minority. If there's something the majority wants that the minority has, they can just vote it away from them. Conversely, if there's something the minority has, but wants to keep from the majority, again, they just vote to keep it from them. It's an inherently unequal, unsustainable and unfair system. I don't see how either form of it is optimal, ever.
The strongest point in favor of seasteading is that, if successful, it will allow people to experiment with many forms of government, including variants of democracy. Currently, the government industry has an extremely high barrier to entry, which has resulted in stagnation and inefficiency.
Also his cyberspace and seasteading ideas are far too optimistic. High tax governments are currently going after tax heavens, even as old and diplomatic strong ones as Switzerland. What changes does your sea outpost have against the world?
But he's missed out on two important things. First democracies tend to follow a long term cycle of government boom and bust. See Sweden and Great Britain. The general patter is the government grows until it's too big to be effective and then it collapses.
The other example is direct democracy like Switzerland, that's also worth examining.