Comment on Electoral politics doesn't get the job done
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 week agoVoting is a good system. The alternative is “let’s just have a fight with guns, or with money, or connections to powerful people, every time there’s a disagreement.”
Show me how this is not a dichotomy. Why are these the only options?
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 week ago
Discussing why not having voting invites other methods of deciding power struggles that are even less democratic, does not mean a false dichotomy. I am very clearly discussing why both voting and also using other means of people power, together, is the way.
What do you think is my main argument? If not that both together are the way?
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
Yes it is. It presupposes that parliamentary democracy is the only way of democratic governance.
You are literally demonstrating the effect of the media landscape that you’re criticizing: you’re acting like there’s no other democratic alternative than a parliamentary democracy.
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 1 week ago
Tell you what: Tell me more about the other democratic alternatives you say I am missing. I didn’t think that my examples at all presupposed the existence of a parliamentary democracy, but if I know more about your counterexamples, I can better make sense of whether or not I overlooked them.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
While I don’t have a perfect plan on democratic governance (sorry, I’m just a small, little boi), these examples came to mind right away:
What I also want to adress is that the things you’re criticizing in your first comment are structural problems of a liberal democracy. That means that they don’t stem from bad actors inside the system, but rather from the way the system is set up. Members of parliament have a free mandate and are under no direct obligation to enact policies on which they ran in elections. Yes, they can not get elected the next term, but this can also be an incentive to “get away with it” by e.g. manipulating the media landscape, lying, covering your tracks, searching for excuses, etc.
Also: you canwt vote the system away. When you’re voting, the only available opitions are ones that stabilize the parliamentary system. That’s why I don’t (or at least not completely) agree with “it needs both”. A general strike could lead to a more democratic system, while electoralism will always try to strengthen the current system.
bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
A successful form of democracy is Swiss style direct democracy. They also have a parliament and political parties, but public votes on all kinds of things happen very regular and are binding.