• HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaah direct democracy is pretty awful too. The problem there is that most of the people have no understanding of what they’re voting on. You don’t want every single person voting on every single issue, unless you want a society that’s bogged down in details and backwards. What you want is to find experts that actually understand a subject, and appoint those experts to deal with the issue. Which, in theory, was what we had with various gov’t agencies, before the systematic defunding of them. E.g., you can’t rationally expect the average person to understand all the ins and outs of climate science/collapse, or what policies/steps are required to prevent it (minimize it at this point).

    But the problem with that is that you can easily end up with a bureaucracy that doesn’t answer to anyone at all. Which, if they’re actually all experts in their given area, and genuinely working for the best public outcomes, isn’t bad, but can seem bad. And if they’re not experts, then it’s actually bad.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        My basis is: read what i fucking said.

        No single person can rationally have a thorough understanding of every single issue facing a country of 1M+ people. An engineer with expertise in electrical systems shouldn’t be expected to have a reasonable understanding of public health policy, and expecting people with no understanding of a <<thing>> to make good decisions about it is folly.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Generally okay, but they shouldn’t necessarily do the will of the people, when the will of the people is wrong. (Which is, BTW, an objectively slippery slope as well.) We can look at history and see that Bernie Sanders in the US has consistently been working for the LGBTQ+ people to have the same rights as cis- and het- people, even when it was wildly, deeply unpopular. (Which I’m old enough to remember; there used to be strong public sentiment against allowing people that were LGBTQ+ to be teachers.)

            A good leader, IMO, is someone that is intellectually curious and honest, willing to change their beliefs when given new information, is able to incorporate new information appropriately into their worldview, and knows people that has the expertise they lack in order to get good direction. E.g., I don’t expect all leaders to be experts in every bit of policy, but I do expect them to find people that understand the things being legislated, and can evaluate options as objectively as is reasonably possible.

            But.

            No system is infallible. Every system can be broken and abused, or function outside the intended parameters. The goal, IMO, should be to create systems that are highly resistant to being broken or abused, while still trying to serve the people as a whole effectively.

    • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Take a moment and realize that “tyrrany of the majority” is literal propaganda to make stupid people throw away their freedoms and embrace a tyrannical minority.

      You shouldn’t repeat Capitalist propaganda, it has no substance

      Human beings are perfectly capable of being their own masters.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        That’s an incredibly stupid take, esp. since RIGHT FUCKING NOW the majority of people in the US and UK are opposed to transgender people having equal rights, and it wasn’t until less than 10 years ago that the majority thought that gay people should have the right to marry the person they chose. If you polled in Sweden, Denmark, et al., you’d probably find that the majority of people are opposed to Muslims immigrating to their country as well.

        The tyranny of the majority is absolutely alive and well; what you’re talking about is a utopia, which is literally ‘no place’.

        • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Lol where do I start?

          The “majority” you think exists is the result of bias polling.

          Your “representatives” decided for you that trans people arent real. So great representative democracy you got there.

          You’re now sitting there taking it instead of participating in reality. You now have to fight for the influence that would be guaranteed to you under a direct democracy.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            Yeah, no, it’s not. Multiple polls, from multiple different polling firms, shows that people broadly oppose things like allowing minors to have gender-affirming care, or allowing equal participation in gendered sports (e.g., having transwomen compete in women’s divisions). It doesn’t matter what the political leanings of the polling firm are. This is why Republican attacks on Dems regarding trans rights were so effective in the election. It’s irrelevant that Dems are on the morally right side, because the majority supports the immoral position. Here’s one source for you; raw data is here.

            Under a direct democracy, transgender people would absolutely lose rights in the states that now protect them. 40 years ago gay people would have had it even worse under a direct democracy.

            • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              You realize most people approve of adults receiving the care right?

              The majority did not support the JK Rowling law.

              The law was changed by representatives that refused to represent their voters.

              Sorry you have a hard time engaging with reality.

              • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                1 day ago

                First: I gave you numbers for the US, so you’re pivoting to the UK in order to avoid addressing the salient point. But okay, here are some UK numbers. The numbers weren’t great to start, and they’ve been getting worse; people in the UK may be okay with allowing adults to get gender-affirming care, but they’re not okay with the NHS paying for it, and they broadly opposed gender-affirming care for minors. And paying for your own health care in the UK ain’t exactly cheap.

                If the plurality of people are broadly unsupportive of transgender equality (it’s not a strict majority because there is a percentage of people that don’t have an opinion), then the MPs that voted against transgender equality were doing what their constituents wanted.

                If you have hard data showing that this the polling on this is incorrect, now is a great time to present it.

                And yes, all of the scientific data that’s credible demonstrates that trans people fare better with social acceptance, with access to gender-affirming care, when they aren’t discriminated against. But that doesn’t significantly sway public opinion on the matter. The majority of people that have an opinion on the matter as simply wrong.

                • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  You’re the one randomly refrencing cherry picked shit.

                  You are arguing in favor of being a slave with no rights because JKR paid to have a law passed.

                  The dictatorships of the world don’t like trans people, in those countries trans people get sent to prison or death.

                  The places in then world where people vote on policy are the objectively safest for trans people.

                  Grow up

                  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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                    23 hours ago

                    You are arguing in favor of being a slave with no rights because JKR paid to have a law passed.

                    No, what I specifically said was that we shouldn’t follow the will of the majority in all things, because the majority can and does act in tyrannical ways. Meanwhile, you’re insisting that letting everyone always vote on every single thing would somehow result in a utopia.

                    Here’s the thing: I live in the rural south. Our local high school has one transgender student. The superintendent consulted with an attorney, and then let the student us the bathroom of the gender that they identify with. The community as a whole fucking lost their minds. The school board held a public meeting about it where they explained why they took the steps they did, and then they let community members speak. In a town of 5k people, there were over 500 people attending. They cut off comments after three hours. It was roughly 10:1 against treating this poor girl like a girl.

                    If they’d taken a vote that very day, she would have been run out of town on a rail covered in tar and feathers, because the town is full of bigoted evangelical christians. But you think that people should always get to vote on everything, even when they have zero real knowledge about the subject? That’s absolute nonsense.

                    The places in then world where people vote on policy are the objectively safest for trans people.

                    Okay, and right fucking now those countries are voting for people that have explicitly told them that they’re going to clamp down on trans rights, and then those people are doing it. So the countries where people vote are becoming less safe for trans people, even if it’s still safer than being transgender in, say, Iran.