[mindslight]

> A common crippling meme among democratic societies is to absolve representatives of responsibility and instead keep insisting everything is the fault of citizens for not going to the ballot box, voting incorrectly at the ballot, and to keep trying again and again until they get it "right", even if there are obvious inefficiencies in the democratic process that must be corrected. Where even the most ardent, statistically aware rationalist will succumb to their emotions and begin spouting feel-good drivel about voting. None of this is to be admired. It is to be condemned as insanity and self-hatred.

Well put.

However, democracy is inherently about the masses. I agree with your statement because I often find myself at odds with the masses (or apparently just ahead of them by 15 years, while they play catch up and groupthink transmutes freedom struggles into poor ideas and even oppression), and do not believe that tyranny of the majority is some ideal to strive for.

However, there are only two ways mass surveillance is going to stop - through technical means or through political means. I believe the technical means is the only practical avenue (even if there were political will to end the state-sponsored orgs and control the big-name mass surveillance companies, the business will continue behind the scenes). But I won't detract from those attempting to do so through public means. Even if they do not succeed in [ae]ffecting the government, I would be quite happy if when talking to an arbitrary person there was a good chance they shared my values about privacy. That's culture.

And to appeal to the masses, you have to fluff their sense of self-importance. So I'll give someone a pass to operate within that framework when they're fighting the good fight - if they were to tell the herd followers that following the herd sucked, they would convince no one of anything.

I would love to live in a world where most individuals' primary measure of an idea's validity was not the number of other people who believe it, but I think that's an even loftier goal than ending mass eavesdropping.

[vezzy-fnord]

do not believe that tyranny of the majority is some ideal to strive for

You know, it's kind of funny that direct democracy is commonly derided as "tyranny of the majority". Is it not the case that all democracy, without separation of powers and a legal civil/common law framework to define boundaries, would be tyranny of the majority? But, those things are not exclusive to any political system in the slightest. In a direct democracy like Switzerland, the cantons operate within limitations set by federal law and any cantonal law which violates boundaries can be struck by the Federal Supreme Court.

This is, of course, not to idealize Switzerland. They have many issues, including ongoing mass surveillance through Onyx and files collected by EJPD, they were among the last to grant women suffrage (federally in 1971, but the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden didn't budge until 1991!), they maintained a system of indentured child labor called the Verdingkinder well into the 1970s, the median adult income is lower than in the U.S., etc.

But if you really examine it, democracy by its very nature entails, to some extent, a tyranny of the majority. However, directness allows for much more flexible and reactive amendments and proposals. It's not too expedient, but unfortunately we can't rely on philosopher kings.

[mindslight]

I actually did not mean that specifically about representative democracy, but all democracy. I think the democratic ideal is essentially rule by the majority, which someone at odds with would call "tyranny". Representative democracy, foundational laws, independentish courts, all move away from the democratic ideal in their own ways. Each mechanism has its own positive aspects and poor failure modes, like democracy itself. When people say "democratic", they're usually assuming some of these also.

With respect to mass surveillance, I don't think representative (vs not) currently has much bearing - I believe that most people are presently not opposed to it, whether by (not understanding the technicals, propaganda, not affecting them, feeling powerless to do anything about it).

The prominence of electronic surveillance is quite new (two generations), so widely-held hard-learned moderating laws (eg "Natural Rights") easily remain unapplied.

Courts themselves are part of the government doing the surveillance. They inherently consider themselves as having jurisdiction over everything (even though historically so much as been non-legible), so they're predisposed to thinking that gathering additional information cannot hurt. So they're no help either.

Which is why I think if mass surveillance is going to be curtailed within the next several generations (eg before societal collapse where expensive lessons get internalized as "sins"), it has to be through technical means. Poor technology design and adoption have gotten us to this point by making it so everybody is doing everything in the clear (TLS encrypting the link to your chosen surveillance broker is not security!). So perhaps with a modicum of people caring about their own privacy, combined with the (seemingly) natural swing of the (de)centralization pendulum, responsibly designed privacy preserving systems can be adopted instead.