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276 sats \ 21 replies \ @Jon_Hodl 20 Oct \ on: Example of something you believe is true which most people believe is false? culture
I think democracy is a violation of natural human rights. We have been conditioned for so long to believe that 51% of people decide what is right and wrong but I think this has made people somewhat sociopathic. Many people (if not most people) will gladly use the violence of the state to harm and even kill other people without even batting an eye because the state is the one doing the killing based on "popular vote".
This is an excellent one I think.
The point is quite simple: say we're in a group of 5 and 4 of us vote to murder one; does that make it right? Obviously not it would seem.
What if 4 vote to steal from or forcibly disown the 5th guy?
And would it matter if the voters say they're taking his stuff in order to help others?
And how does this situation differ, morally speaking, from forced taxation under threat of violence?
Strange that these obvious problems or shortcomings of democracy seem so rarely to be noticed by many people.
Instead the word seems to function like a synonym of "good", "obviously good and righteous" and not so often of "3 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner".
I think democracy can be a good way for humans to coordinate in many spheres of human interaction but the scope for democracy is definitely limited.
The founders of USA were aware of this and that's why they included the bill of rights which can't be voted away.
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The nature of life its such that everyone will have their own definition of moral. The powerful majority forcing their values on the weaker minority will always happen. I wouldn’t reserve that phenomenon to only happening under a democracy.
Democracy I reserve for the governance system whereby we try to convince the minority the wishes of the majority to convey they’d lose in a violent disagreement.
Good in theory but the majority don’t always represent the most powerful, and the participants don’t always know what’s being voted on. Most don’t have the time to understand the existing system of laws made before them and the unintended interactions between new laws.
The US also doesn’t have a true democracy, it’s a republic, which makes an even more convoluted system for which people must navigate to make changes to.
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A nerve seems to have been touched.
In philosophy and argument generally it is often instructive to use extreme examples in order to illustrate a point and get clear on our intuitions.
The point illustrates the obvious shortcomings of the mechanism of democracy for deciding about things.
It's a prompt for further thinking.
I'm glad it stirred something in you and I'd suggest thinking about the limits of democracy further yourself.
When getting a strong reaction to something you read in a post; also make sure not to forget to read the rest of the post and to read it carefully so you don't read into it things which may not actually have been written or even implied by the author.
Cheers
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A nerve seems to have been touched
There is no purpose in a statement like this except to make people mad 😂. Your post came off a lot stronger than his lmao🪞
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It's my honest assessment of the situation but thanks for the feedback
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USA is not a democracy. It's a republic and a federation
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What alternatives to democracy can you point to as demonstrating a superior model?
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And be vulnerable to larger more powerful communities that come in and take everything from you?
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I don't think in our Bitcoin future humans will be competitive in this way. I think we can be better. We can Co exist peacefully. Once we have our needs met, we will evolve. Maybe. I don't know. I'm a idealist. Maybe unrealistic. But it's what I will always keep in my heart.
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A republic
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I think this point of view is propaganda or at least is not fully and precisely explained. The term Democracy is too often used in a simplistic way.
I explain myself: There is not only one kind of democracy but a lot. (You can either vote for everything, in other countries you can choose somebody that will make the decisions, some countries do this last one but they can create a vote to change what they don’t want, etc.etc.).
So my question is which one do you refer to? Which country? Do you already experienced full real direct democratic society, in other words, did you have the power to change everything just by collecting votes?
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