Comment on How would an anarchist society work?
fizzle@quokk.au 3 days agoI would argue that neither you nor most other people like making bad decisions, right?
I might have thought that a decade ago, but it’s become very, very obvious in the interceding years that people vote against their own interests all the time for a variety of reasons, and do not engage in any kind of self-criticism regarding their previous decisions.
GardenGeek@europe.pub 3 days ago
I understand exactly what you mean.
But at the same time, I also believe that the inherent problem with our representative democracies is this: Voters are asked about EVERY issue all at once every four years and then vote for ONE representative party. So, in the end, everyone ends up voting on a whole bunch of issues that neither interest nor affect them. Worse still: when checks and balances are undermined, as is currently the case, the elected representatives can do whatever they want for four years.
In the best-case scenario, the majority of today’s voters inform themselves about the current campaign promises and forecasts a few weeks before the election and then lose interest again for four years. Or, to put it another way, the system actually provokes the “I don’t do politics” attitude among a majority of voters.
However, if the effects of their own decisions were transparent and immediate, I believe there would be a greater willingness to actually inform themselves.
And on the topic of demagoguery and populism: If people had the opportunity to vote against immigration (even if you don’t agree with that position) without undermining democracy through a corrupt bunch of politicians, we as a society would still be better off than in the current situation, where emotionally charged issues are used to make dictators and shitty politics palatable to people.