keep in mind that Socrates might not have been as nice as you think, his students ended up doing a coup and their government collapsed in 8 months, their reign was so violent that ended in about the death of 10% of Athens. The tyrants run away amd they put Socrates on trial, and in his defense, Socrates refused to denounce his disciplines and just said it was a whitch hunt because they are mad that he is smarter than everyone else.
So, Socrates might have been more of a Reactionary grifter like Peterson than a wise kind humble man.
Stalinists in the 2020’s on Lemmy:
Instead of trusting ourselves to right wing dictators that are impossible to hold accountable, we need to trust ourselves to left wing dictators that are impossible to hold accountable, except we soyface at eastern right wing dictators because our only principle is simping for someone who says he’s “anti-imperialist”, even if they’re literally genociding people for the same reasons we hate another imperialist power in the middle east.
We need a digital liquid democracy platform. We have the technology and infrastructure for it now, and it’s time for the people to rule themselves.
I have never heard the word electoralism in real life.
Let’s not muddy the waters…the orange turd we can’t name is the type of ism we don’t want ever again. We also don’t want George Bush or another repeat of any of the political families currently in power or their friends. We want direct vote not college vote. WTF is an electoral college doing now that we have communication technology? Its an old and stupid idea.
If Mamdani wins and keeps his mandate strong to the point that opposition to him is career suicide, he can implement some amazing improvements.
Bernie’s success in Burlington was never going to translate to broader America, but NYC is hard to ignore.
The real test will be what Democrats do nationwide in response to a Mayor Mamdani administration. If they do the same old New Democrat/Third Way bullshit they’ve been doing since Bill Clinton won* in 1992, they’ll continue to be irrelevant in the face of populist hucksters like Trump.
Democracy can and will work once a simple rule is implemented. Namely: no one who wants the power to rule should ever be allowed anywhere near power. Of course the rich won’t allow such a law to be passed, and enforcing it is the stuff of thought crime dystopic nightmares, but I’m sure we can overcome those small issues.
I don’t follow, do you mean that goverment jobs should be like a civil duty? Randomly select people to goverment posts or something like that?
.worlder, can’t see your comment.
Oh yea, always forget that.
These liberals really need to read Lenin before commenting. A certain OP may have even read it aloud for them so they can just listen to it if reading is too hard.
https://www.marxists.org/audiobooks/archive/lenin/1917/staterev/index.htm https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoatUez9-2vaAvB78afoKNRC
I really like the idea of randomly elected representatives. Sure, they will try to better their situation for afterwards but with enough corruption control (which is probably easier to implement), this will only ensure that they support their kind of workers a bit more than the rest.
It would be a disaster but a funny disaster ngl.
ngl I do hate this kind of nhilism in terms of democracy. Like I agree with that one quote from that greek guy which says that a democracy needs smart people, but democracy is the best system we’ve come up with that to a small extent, makes politicians meet the peoples needs.
The ancient greeks did not consider electoralism to be democracy. They used a combination of direct democracy and sortition. And it should be apparent now that they were right, and we’ve been played for fools for 200 years by the capitalist class who holds all of the true power in our states.
Electoralism =\= Democracy
The problem isn’t democracy, it’s democracy under capitalism, and the idea that we can actually transition to socialism via electoralist means.
Democracy has as a necessary precondition that people are intelligent enough to differentiate good candidates from bad candidates.
The real question therefore is whether the people are intelligent enough. That decides their fate.
The prevalence of your type of reasoning is why democracy doesn’t work.
The problem is that the whole point of democracy is to align decision-making with the will of ”the people”. That puts the impetus on citizens to actually manifest a will and constitute their interpretation of who the people are. Politics and culture.
That is, people need to actively engage in public discourse about their respective interests. Such discourse demands a lot of things, freedom of speech for one, but most importantly it requires all participants to frequent avenues for discussions among those that share interests outside narrow social groups like friends and families (i.e. in spheres of the ”public”). For example, in political party organizations, trade unions, business groups, pubs and town squares, and, possibly, virtual spaces for disembodied discussion, such Lemmy (however, the disembodiment is more likely to result in discussion for the sake of discussion between people that don’t actually share living conditions or other froms of unity of interest, but I digress).
If such discussion takes place – an increasingly rare thing – there is no need to individually ”differentiate good candidates from bad candidates” and each voter’s intelligence certainly isn’t of consequence. In a functioning democracy, who to vote for, should follow naturally from your participation in public discourse.
It is clear that the scale of the political project complicates the formation of public opinions – though Pete Hegseth no doubt would like to try, you cannot run a country of 300+ million people on spirited bar stool banter – however, the principles remain the same. By definition, you can’t approach democratic decisions like a consumer does choosing a brand of toothpaste – the core principle of democracy is to eliminate any individual’s power, in favor of the collective (e.g. majority).
Democracy is a high effort process that terminates in the poll booth. Voting is foremost a formality that should not be fetishized.
Democracy has as a necessary precondition that people are intelligent enough to differentiate good candidates from bad candidates.
This is just fundamentally impossible, 99.9% of people only relation to candidates is what they see in social media or other ads. People really have no idea who they’re choosing and its entirely a vibes based decision, i.e. candidate A speaks elocuently, candidate B is charming, etc…
I would replace intelligent with well educated, at least
I have come to dislike the word “education” as it refers to plato’s cave analogy in such a way that somebody else leads you out of it.
“Education” is therefore not something that you do yourself, but that somebody else does on you. It is therefore objectifying and puts the humans in a passive position.
Meanwhile, “insight” or “inspiration” is something that you do yourself as it is you who brings up the interest to learn something. Therefore it is a much better word.
Yeah I kind of didn’t like that word as I was writing it. Similar to how “tutoring” literally means to “straighten” or basically to inculcate to normativity.
Meanwhile, “insight” or “inspiration” is something that you do yourself […]
Good edit, this is a better word choice.
:)
I think your capacity to think is irrelevant or even played against you when the elites pour obscene amounts of money to change your perception of reality. Even the greatest minds can’t escape this.
I feel like the belief that intelligence somehow grants immunity to propaganda has utterly devastated media literacy and subsequently our political landscape.
When people started taking memes and blogs as legitimate sources of information we were cooked.
Fuck off
Why? What fact checking did you do?
Hi, I’ve trained machine learning models. I’ve been creating and studying them for over six years.
ChatGPT is not capable of fact checking. It stylistically outputs data based on the input data it was trained on, and it’s important to understand why that’s different to fact checking even when it can sometimes state facts.
It CAN fact check. You just have to prompt it to
For those downvoting
https://chatgpt.com/share/68fb4d04-9960-8001-91f3-b8ab0e4f1808
For the inquisitive
Counterpoint, acturally I dont even need to make a counterpoint you literally just posted an AI screenshot
Yeah… IMO it is important to fact check especially when someone tries to push views that seem extreme and missing the nuance I would expect from reality. But fact checking with AI might be too lazy.
There is no such thing as fact checking with AI.
Who to believe - a random image online or a neural net with the ability to search a few pages online?
We’re so doomed, the idiots are using the garbage generator as fact checking on lemmy too…
Neither, think and research for yourself.
Not to mention that to everyone else your comment is the random image online.
You literally could have just read the sources posted by the OP when someone asked, 3 whole hours before you posted this
Liberals mocked Antifa for not voting, saying left extremists turn right eventually
I hate liberals man.
Your use of “work” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is very reductive. I’d recommend reading theory until you properly understand the issue, Dessalines.
Is your “theory” originating from three letter organisations or have you never actually read it yourself?
See, the problem with Dessalines’ meme is that it uses “work” as a binary category. As in, something either has no effect or it completely restructures society. It is absolutely true that electoralism can’t completely restructure society, and there are many valid explanations for why that is in communist theory. However, Dessalines reveals his lack of understanding by equating completely restructuring society with “working”.
If we were to construct a true binary between working and not working, it would be between having zero effect, and having any effect, no matter how small. The beating of a butterfly’s wings has some effect on the world, and could theoretically contribute towards a tornado that sucks up all the bourgeoisie and allows the workers to democratise the means of production. So obviously voting has some tiny effect, since it’s stronger than a butterfly’s wings. Voting works, in other words. But that’s a virtually meaningless statement if we’re constructing a binary as Dessalines did.
The correct approach is to ask “how much can voting accomplish”, and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance and a justification from within the theory. But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else. Which proves that even if Dessalines read theory, he didn’t understand much of it.
I think the fundamental issue is that “works” doesn’t have a good measurable metric and so when discussing it tends to fall into that false binary that you correctly identified.
The best I’ve seen that attempts to work around this problem was this paper from back in 20141. Unfortunately their results showed that while you’re correct that causitive impact is not zero that <5% correlation, especially for a field with as high a signal/noise ratio as political science, is an incredibly disheartening answer for “how much can voting accomplish?”
So while you are likely correct that it’s not nothing, it does suggest reality is much closer to the meme than your attempt at “nuance”.
If you have any sources that cite measurable and non-anecdotal impact that tell a different story I’d love to read them.
^1 linking the preprint because it’s not paywalled^
Closer than my attempt at nuance? I didn’t know I made an attempt at nuance yet. I thought I just vaguely gestured towards the nuance and said it exists. Can you please explain what my position is on how much I think voting can accomplish so I’m all caught up with the conversation?
The correct approach is to ask “how much can voting accomplish”, and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance
I’m with you here, you’re “just asking questions” and I provided context on my understanding of the answers to those questions.
But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else.
A “theory” is a reductionist model that is falsifiable, by claiming that the level of nuance you suggest proves Dessalines understanding is “not supported by theory” you explicitly state that nuance as an empirical contradiction of the theory.
Either: A. You have some measure or metric which wasn’t clearly communicated showing how that nuance falsifies the theory. ^Which was my initial understanding and was hoping to clear up the miscommunication there.^
B. You’re doing a tiresome argument from ignorance thing and simply muddying the waters because the “theory” conflicts with your pre-formulated understanding of reality and you haven’t put in any effort to actually validate your own understandings.
You claim, rather rudely I might add, that “Even if Dessalines read theory, he didn’t understand much of it.” Don’t do the glib, spineless, two-faced “I didn’t make any claims yet”.
Prove it pot, say it with your chest.
Lmao I read that whole entire comment, and it wasn’t easy, and it’s all frantic backpedaling.
For the record I think the study you’re citing makes a methodological mistake by applying an issues based measurement framework in a representative democracy, but I have no intention of elaborating because you’re not arguing in good faith and you’re just going to waste everyone’s time.
Anyway next time post the version of the study that actually passed peer review and got published, not a draft.
it’s all frantic backpedaling.
Kettle
I think the study you’re citing makes a methodological mistake by applying an issues based measurement framework in a representative democracy
I don’t necessarily disagree. It’s definitely not a holistic view, but I haven’t found much else that even asks that question much less has any real methodology behind it. Have you?
What would be the correct methodology in your opinion?
I have no intention of elaborating
You’re not communicating anything other than the vaguest of concern trolling. You clearly have thoughts and opinions, this is a place to share those.
You can’t both be upset when you are misunderstand and refuse to communicate.
Quit backpedaling and say it with your chest.
Anyway next time post the version of the study that actually passed peer review and got published, not a draft.
You do know how to use sci-hub right? You have the title, or if you’re morally opposed to that option a quick Google and you can pay $30 here for it.
However, before you gish-gallop into concern trolling the source I linked why don’t you provide one, or multiple, of your own that supports the concerns you have surrounding “nuance”.
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
The socialist alliance party is working with Israel? Wowzers, I didn’t know that! Can you provide a source, or are you making things up?
Removed by mod
Which liberal theory do you recommend? Star wars, or Harry Potter?
Which greek philosophers said that? and what did they say? do you have any sources to confirm?
Both plato and aristotle, but aristotle thought that any election-based state turned out in practice, to be an oligarchy or aristocracy, not a democracy (which he define as rule by the poor, with random selection by lot).
Aristotle’s politics books 4-6 talk a lot about this:
Did the greeks suggest any replacement?
I see electoralism weaknesses, but what other systems are less prone to power capture and then raw authoritarianism?
If people don’t choose their representation, then who does? Or is representation the flaw?
Socialist democracy. The political structure is a way to reinforce the economic base, so by moving onto socialism, the working class is in control of the state. The issue isn’t with voting, period, but the idea that we can escape capitalism just by doing so.
That is more clear. I think I should have better defined “electoralism”. Social democracy sounds much better than raw unfettered capitalism.
Social democracy is capitalism with safety nets, I mean socialism. Rather than private ownership being principle, ie covering the large firms and key industries with the state dominated by capitalists, public ownership should be principle and the working class should dominate the state.
Your response is rational, informational, based in fact, and measurable.
The original image is uncited incendiary garbage. This is not a time where we need more division and infighting. If you can’t be nice, please just stick to the facts.
The original image is uncited incendiary garbage. This is not a time where we need more division and infighting.
You’re in a
.mlserver.We want unity, around correct political lines. The point of agitprop is to get people talking and coming to a consensus on the correct line to follow.
Are you not familiar with the concept of a meme?
The original image is a meme designed for humor over rational argument…
Cool
