What is a "total democracy"? A society without wheelchair ramps because people don't give a fuck as long as they can walk?
You haven't thought about this enough. I have! That is why I'm in favor of lottery. I'm totally serious, too, just randomly roll political positions every N years.
Sure, there would be a lot of chaos, death and destruction at first.
But in the long run, since you never know where you or a loved one ends up, everyone might optimize for making a good world to live in, not just to optimize the benefit for themselves in whatever position they happen to be in.
The veil of ignorance is a concept by John Rawls in the 70’s that to make a fair society you should imagine that you don’t know what position you have (rich, poor, family, class etc) and build society to ensure everyone has a chance since you don’t know where you will end up.
The only way to overcome the bad orange man is the good orange man. So everybody, stop trying to find fault in a perfect proposal and let's start winning!
wtf are you on about? are you so certain that people cant manage a simple democracy without "our betters" representing us or something? your suppositions in this thread are wild.
i'm proving your point by pushing back on your doom and gloom narrative that somehow people need representatives to decide whats best for them instead of deciding for themselves? interesting counterpoint.
I'm proposing a lottery where EVERYBODY is expected to randomly be put into ANY position. Where do you get this stuff about "people needing representatives" from? And what "doom and gloom" narrative?
i vehemently disagree with this concept. this is the perfect way to get unqualified people into powerful positions and cause crazy amounts of damage. a total democracy is something like what the athens had, but even something closer to a more even representation of elected officials would work
Joking aside, I agree with what the White Rose wrote in one of their leaflets:
"All ideal forms of government are utopias. A State cannot be designed strictly theoretically. It must grow, mature, just as an individual person will."
As banal as it sounds, I think we need more raising awareness, and more learning how to organize, but also just to debate.
When I see documentaries of people in the 60s having rather polite debates about HEAVY stuff, and how squeamish people are now, only talking to those who already agree...
... like, we have lost and forgotten so many basics, we simply are NOT the type of people, not even comparable, as those who invented state forms and participated in them. We are generations into consumerism and NIMBY.
If we want to be free, it will take relearning many basic things I think.
And before we start to be honest and disciplined in many, many small things, IMO we simply do not have the tools to build sane(!) societies with billions of people plus high tech.
You can't have this much weight and energy on the one hand, and so much slack on the other. Something has to give.
i always feel like the anarchy thing would just lead to a bunch of petty warlords ruling over chunks of the world. one nice thing about a government is that at least sort of in the modern era we can have some say.
ok i just realized how crazy that switch up was. i do like the idea of anarchy, but it's not realistic. something closer to a total democracy would be more my style; i like the way European democracies are set up better than the US's "democracy"
yeah, our way of doing biz needs a LOT of work. shit nixing the EC and ranked choice would go a LONG way . also let most laws go through a democratic process rather than via reps.
I mean, for when it was founded, America's Democracy was(and is still) called "the great experiment". It helps to look at another country when building your own gov, and go "oh that's a good idea" or "oh god, yeah not doing that".
i think America's version of democracy just needs to be updated. it was made with the intent to keep rich land owners in power while shoving everyone else out
Comments
You haven't thought about this enough. I have! That is why I'm in favor of lottery. I'm totally serious, too, just randomly roll political positions every N years.
But in the long run, since you never know where you or a loved one ends up, everyone might optimize for making a good world to live in, not just to optimize the benefit for themselves in whatever position they happen to be in.
Ignorance of something specific, or would it just keep people dumb because [magical reasons]?
https://bsky.app/profile/neinmc.bsky.social/post/3ld3lm2uzg225
Thanks for elaborating! I will have to read up on his stuff for sure.
"All ideal forms of government are utopias. A State cannot be designed strictly theoretically. It must grow, mature, just as an individual person will."
https://www.white-rose-studies.org/pages/leaflet-3
When I see documentaries of people in the 60s having rather polite debates about HEAVY stuff, and how squeamish people are now, only talking to those who already agree...
If we want to be free, it will take relearning many basic things I think.
You can't have this much weight and energy on the one hand, and so much slack on the other. Something has to give.