You can fool some of the people, all of the time • Hacker News Board

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#81

Post by disintegore » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #76

merpnderp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictatorships rely solely on force. Democracies mostly rely on a common agreement to follow a social contract. There’s not nearly enough police in the US to quell a rebellion of the people if they lost faith in Democracy.

Isn't it true though, there's not nearly enough police in any country to quell a rebellion of the people? This is how dictators get overthrown.

There might just be enough police and military to quell any feasible rebellion, seeing as pretty much every country is divided along ideological lines.

MAGA types would, for instance, would never participate in a syndicalist general strike.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#82

Post by snarf21 » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #10

My pet theory is that democracy is more tolerable because it alternates between incompetent people fast enough to keep people's hopes alive.

While this is true, the thing that doesn't change is that it is business that makes most of the decisions. They back both sides and threaten to not support a candidate for reelection if they don't get their quid pro quo. I feel like we actually live in a plutocracy.

The most convenient part for the the ruling class is that we have been tricked into thinking it is about red vs blue or left vs right. People talk about politics in a very "us vs them" vernacular. In the meantime, the corporate interests rob the middle class blind. It is a game of misdirection and self interest.

The only way to ever really solve it is a more representative and distributed democracy model. This kind of setup also forces a lot of the money out of politics. Alas, the rulers have no appetite for giving up the corruption they have worked oh so hard for.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#83

Post by cheschire » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

egdod wrote: post #64

Yay politics.

There's something deeper to it. The examples used up front read like any other current events political article, but it does transition.

> If you checked everything you were told from first principles, it would become impossible to talk. Humans are hard-wired to assume that what they hear is true—and therefore, says Mr Levine, “hard-wired to be duped”.

> So strong is that instinct that people suspend their critical faculties when given orders by a superior.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#84

Post by pnutjam » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #59

sputr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with votes. That's it. The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is fought on. Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open) when the landscape of power changes. The only two benefits of democracy to "the people" are: (1) the fact that they hav…

Historically, monarchy’s seem to be more stable and result in less open warfare (civil wars). The US did not even last 90 years before the first civil war. A rather large number of democracies have fallen and been replaced with dictatorship. Democracies have other benefits, but stability does not seem to be one of them. PS: I am ignoring assassinations and power struggles as we have lost 4 sitting US presidents witho…

You could make a good argument that the South was not a democracy and the civil war was an overthrow of their aristocracy; not a war between two Democracies.

Just look at the Constitutions of pre-civil war Southern states. https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/suppressedbooka0...

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#85

Post by kaibee » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

patentatt wrote: post #74

FrankyHollywood wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only two benefits of democracy..." In my opinion the one major benefit of democracy over all other forms is that a terrible leader can be voted away within 4 years. It's a political system with garbage collection :)

But we all know what happens with over-aggressive garbage collection: lost data, errors, cache misses, and lots of wasted cycles.

The term limit on the Presidency was a mistake.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#86

Post by samtechie » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

FrankyHollywood wrote: post #49

sputr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with votes. That's it. The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is fought on. Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open) when the landscape of power changes. The only two benefits of democracy to "the people" are: (1) the fact that they hav…

"The only two benefits of democracy..." In my opinion the one major benefit of democracy over all other forms is that a terrible leader can be voted away within 4 years. It's a political system with garbage collection :)

It's not that easy to vote out a leader in some countries because the leaders control the state machinery. They present an illusion of free and fair elections but use their entrenched power to influence the vote through bribery, disenfranchisement by making people believe their vote doesn't count among other sinister tactics.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#87

Post by thrower123 » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #69

repomies691 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to ruling by force, yes, democracy is inherently good for the people I don't understand why people here see democratic system as a replacement for ruling by a force. Democratic countries also rule by force in the end. Democratic countries also need polices, guns, armies, prisons, tax inspectors, prosecutors etc. Those same institutions are also the tools for dictatorships, they are just governed in a diffe…

The relevant word isn’t “force” it’s “consent”. All forms of government to some extent or another have to maintain a monopoly on legal violence and use force. The distinction with democracy is that the government secures and maintains the consent of those being governed.

That's the theory. However, just see what happens in most democracies if you, or a larger group of people, try to revoke your consent to be governed.

The jackboots come down just as hard.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#88

Post by claudeganon » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #19

chadcmulligan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar theory, the right and the left each get to alternate so we stay sort of in the middle.

Which is the exact reason the system is setup like it is. The federal government is only supposed to take action when it can get two ideological parties to agree on something. The theory being that if the two sides can find common ground, it's actually a good idea.

This has no historical basis. The system was designed to preserve control of government in the hands of the elite cadre who led the rebellion, whose ideological differences were quite small in world historical terms. It’s meant to reconcile these differences, but is in no way broadly inclusive to political interests outside this narrow circumscription. Concessions have been won to further democratize the system, but these were largely accomplished outside its terrain in things like the Civil War, labor struggle, suffrage and civil rights movements.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#89

Post by numinary1 » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

Democracy is ostensibly majority rule (don't nitpick). The majority of people are poor. Therefore, democracy is the rule of the poor (Aristotle). We do not live in a democracy.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#90

Post by lucian1900 » Thu, Nov 07, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

smoll wrote: post #22

lucian1900 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It been happening all along, it's just a bit more mask off right now. It always become more blatant as the contradictions of capitalism intensify and the status quo becomes untenable. You see the same in Western European propaganda from the 30s, particularly in the Weimar Republic.

Is it a pendulum then? When it’s less obvious is it still happening (and they just do a better job of hiding it from a more sensitive public) or is actual positive change happening? There’s this saying that sunshine is the best disinfectant, but that somehow feels less true right now. It seems like you can be openly crooked in a democracy as long as you appeal to a sufficient majority for other reasons not related to…

There is a kind of pendulum, the predictable and periodic failure of capitalism. Whenever a crisis happens, it's hard to sustain the fiction that capitalism is good for most of us. Some shift left, realising that billionaires are in control and can be defeated. Others shift right, mistakenly blaming those already oppressed (poor, immigrants, LGBT).

Sunshine is clearly not the best disinfectant, since we see fascist rhetoric and violence spreading. Repeating a lie enough can work, especially when people are already angry and desperate. And especially when it's merely an intensification of the same rhetoric that capitalism spreads anyway.

Put differently, after capitalism has shifted the Overton window to the right by enough, fascism becomes more generally acceptable.