Do I get to be the dictator?
Yes, that is an option
Then yes, but basically the only thing I would do is plunder as much wealth as possible from the country into my personal account and then appoint a successor. I wouldn’t exactly call the good governance
Non-partisan democracy, as the founding fathers intended.
Misinformed.
The founding fathers of the USA never mentioned democracy in the constitution nor declaration of independence.
In their writings, they only ever used the word as a pejorative: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=democracy&s=1111211111&sa=&r=1&sr=
“we are not so absurd as to “design a Democracy,” of which the Governor is pleased to accuse us”
Are those the founding fathers you’re talking about?
From Wikipedia: “Historians have frequently interpreted Federalist No. 10 to imply that the Founding Fathers of the United States intended the government to be nonpartisan.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy?wprov=sfla1
I’m not reading all of that btw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldYfQT35_38 (just listen to the first two minutes if you’re lazy)
Experience shows democracies work better in just about every way. Mainly, there’s questions about how stable they can be over the long term.
I’ve known people who liked the idea of a dictatorship, but they’ve all had funny ideas about how they internally work. Palace intrigue and corruption are inevitable and huge, it’s never just one potentially-wise individual calling the shots.
So you could say that both suffer from a vulnerability. Both break eventually.
Also, consider the attractiveness of dictatorship. I think that everybody would like to be a dictator. Who wants to share power? Not me. I want to be in control, of my forum, my project, my game.
Dictatorship had a pretty clean run of several thousand years there. Sure, dynasties changed, but never the actual system.
Also, consider the attractiveness of dictatorship. I think that everybody would like to be a dictator. Who wants to share power? Not me. I want to be in control, of my forum, my project, my game.
So, my second paragraph kind of addresses that. It’s never actually about one person having the power, as a government system.
One-person control over something, backed by externally imposed laws, is a completely different thing. You don’t have to worry about your forum members poisoning you and physically taking control of your server.
you think ancient and medieval monarchies were dictatorships? uh…
You don’t??
no, i dont think kings had that kind of power without the support of a modern state. they were complicated arrangements of various oligarchies working together, or something like that.
Like I said in OP, that’s how modern dictatorships work, too. They have coups and intrigues and corruption absolutely everywhere you look. The dictator spends most of their time just staying on top and keeping the factions in balance.
I’d say you’re right that the degree of control was lower on average before the conveniences of fast travel and communication, but then again it varied quite a bit. Rome’s level of centralisation is still etched across the European landscape.
Well the breaking here is the corruption. The 2 different flavors of that. Still ostensibly dictatorship or democracy but not.
Everyone is pro-dictatorship until they realise they’re not the dictator.
Democracy, in the hands of the proletariat, not the bourgeoisie. The government should oppress the capitalist class and uplift the proletariat, political power should be stripped from capitalists and lay with the proletariat instead. This is the “dictatorship of the proletariat” over the bourgeoisie.
Democracy, obviously. No it doesn’t change if I’m the dictator.
Dictatorship by a wide margin. Why should the parliament squabble over a law for months, possibly years, when under a dictatorship said law could be enacted instantly? Also with democracy every politician just thinks about getting elected, not the actual long-term needs of the country.
The squabbling process moves the law toward meeting the needs of more people. If a dictator just gets to decide what the law is, they’ll likely be self-serving to the dictator, or even outright harmful to entire categories of people.
The squabbling process moves the law toward meeting the needs of more people.
Are there data on this?
You’re making a causal claim (if squabbling, then more needs met) and that’s either empirically true or not.
According to election theory, a dictatorship is the only perfectly fair voting system: the only voter wins the vote, every time.
Online? Dictatorship. Let the guidelines be clear and the conversations civil and on topic. If my speech isn’t wanted in a particular community I can find another, or make another where I’m the dictator.
IRL? Democracy. It sucks, but it’s better than everything else. I do, however, wish there were better laws forcing media to be locally owned, and bound to be truthful. And some way to keep late stage capitalism’s hand off the scales.
Online? Dictatorship. Let the guidelines be clear and the conversations civil and on topic. If my speech isn’t wanted in a particular community I can find another, or make another where I’m the dictator.
I like StackOverflow’s democratic moderation. It also scales better than centralised moderation.
(first, thank you for achieving the straightforwardness that has escaped so many others here)
What is the difference between online society and irl society that makes dictatorship preferable in one and democracy preferable in the other?
Is it the size? The complexity?
Online spaces are limitless, basically. If you don’t like living under someone else’s rules it’s dead easy to spin up your own space with your own rules. The dictatorship-ness of these virtual spaces keeps then semi-civil and on-topic. Ideally, at least. We are talking spherical cows here, obvs.
Real life spaces, not so easy to spin up your own country. So we have to use a political system that (on paper, at least) caters to the majority without stepping on the minorities too much.
To build off this. Part of why people, who come off as reasonable and decent in person, can get so…very…VERY unhinged online is that
Tap for personal opinion
you don’t have to see the reaction of the people who read/hear what you’re putting out there. Even in places where you don’t actually have any real anonymity, there’s an assumption that because no one is in the room with you while you madly smash away at your keyboard…well… People used to say there’s no girls on the internet…I feel like most people just type whatever like there’s no PEOPLE on the internet…
TL;DR - can’t see people being disgusted with what you just said.
People are generally very breakfast cereal. One musn’t get worried about that.
And the incongruity here. Preferring the one kind of government for one kind of society, but the other for another. That’s a big deal. Bears discussing.
It’s one of those things that you wonder why nobody ever pointed it out.
Democracy, like mostly anyone. But it depends on anyone’s conception, here.
If the dictator was you, might that make dictatorship more attractive?
neither
No.
Democratic dictatorship of the proletariat
Why do some of the questions asked in this sub make it sound like the OP’s first day as a human being?
I don’t know, but the way they’re answered often ends up being very interesting.
Why do you dance around like this instead of just answering the question?
Depends on the dictator, depends on the democracy. Ideally neither, but democracies are usually less awful than dictatorships.
How about for lemmy?
Lemmy is inherently democratic. If you don’t like a muni, or an instance, you go to another one. Without centralization dictatorship is impossible.
That said, it’s not democracy, either: It’s a federation of interdependent polities, each with their own laws and administrators. Which is good, because it allows for rapid response to spam, inappropriate content, and verbal violence.
And if the admins or moderators overreach, well, back to the first paragraph: we’ve got open borders, go homestead your own community on another instance. You literally cannot be silenced here.
Lemmy is inherently democratic. If you don’t like a muni, or an instance, you go to another one. Without centralization dictatorship is impossible.
That’s more like voluntarism than democracy.
Democracy means that power is held by the people. It doesn’t mean that if you don’t like it you can leave.
It’s called “voting with your feet”. Being free to leave is power. Means a hell of a lot more than up- and down-doots.
In a democracy the vote determines policy.
But this is obvious. Right?
You saw the whole paragraph where I talked about how lemmy is not a democracy, right? And literally cited this as one if the reasons why?
Like I get that you’re probably responding to multiple subthreads right now, but it only takes a few seconds to scroll up.
And you also stated that it is inherently democratic.
Would it kill you to stop being so coy and evasive?
It’s a thousand dictatorships.
In a democracy, the community determines policy. Votes are orthogonal. If the community leaves when they disagree, by definition everyone that is remains agrees with the policy, making it a democratic policy. The friction to changing instance is very minimal, so it’s a good indicator of people’s opinions.
Yeah but they aren’t actually determining policy. Obviously.
Why are you bullshitting?
Homie had his shit removed and now its everyone’s problem.
Actually somebody else got their shit removed and I wax philosophical on their behalf. I’m sophisticated that way.
???
