[munk-a]

It's my opinion that getting everyone to vote is the best option - there is a whole big chunk of the electorate that's quite uninformed but any attempt to narrow down the pool of eligible voters seems quite likely to fall into authoritarianism to me.

We've got a lot of historical evidence about what happens if you let only people of certain skin colors, gender or wealth vote and all of those approaches were eventually rejected in favor of a universal voting system[1]. Democracy seems like our best bet for a fair and just government and I'm strongly in favor of having better representation of the actual beliefs of the citizenry - even if they're folks I disagree with.

1. Assuming you ignore American oddities like the electoral college, ignore tacitly socially accepted voter suppression and accept that minimum voting ages should be a thing (which I'm still pretty "meh" on personally but whatever).

[chordalkeyboard]

Do you think there is also a danger of uninformed voters bringing about authoritarianism?

[munk-a]

Absolutely yea - especially since we're sorta leaning that way in America right now. But I think that that risk is coming out of undemocratic qualities of our government rather than the democratic ones.

I really really want to dump FPTP voting since I think it inevitably leads to two party systems and that two-party partisan us vs. them politics is what lets authoritarianism grow.

[chordalkeyboard]

Thanks for the reply. My perspective is that democracy is a type of authoritarianism, or at least closely related because the elections are decision-forcing processes that result in the losing side not getting what they want. How would you reconcile this?

[munk-a]

I don't think you really can, we all live in a society and compromises need to be made for all of us to enjoy a moderate amount of freedom while not impinging on that of others. We don't currently live in a society that comes close to maximizing freedom for everyone (freedom of opportunity is denied to the majority of folks in the US and elsewhere) but I think we're on the right general path to eventually approach a Star Trek future.

I really appreciate parliamentary governments over the hot mess the US has - I think you get a lot better representation especially when no one party has a majority. If everyone is in a minority then you have consensus through coalitions of different fractions and it gets a lot closer to each skinny slice of the nation getting a legitimate say. The more slices you have the better your representation of the public will (up to, ultimately, true popular democracy) but as a society we probably want either majority or strong majority decisions to guide us and that's just conceptually incompatible with no one getting their free-will stomped on.

This hits a really deep point on the topic of freedom - I have the right to not be murdered, but that right comes at the cost of anyone who wants to murder me... restrictions of rights are necessary for greater general societal rights.

[chordalkeyboard]

Thanks for the reply. What is the minimum viable ruleset for a sustainable community? Does that ruleset change with technology?

[munk-a]

I don't know the minimum viable ruleset that we'd all find acceptable but it's an ethical question that changes over time with societal ethics. We value different violations with different levels of punishment - if we were living in madmax times then maybe rules around water sharing and preservation would be chief among folks.

That ruleset does change with technology on a functional level (murder with a gun when guns don't exist is a non-issue) I don't think there is a particularly interesting relationship with technology though - it's more just an extension of existing rules to platforms.

One thing that might counter that is doxing though - this is a pretty new phenomena that was pretty inconceivable when the world moved slower and humans were more directly involved with communication handling. I think you have the right to not be doxed but I don't think that right clearly translates to any pre-internet rights - it might be an implied right (but unstated or considered due to the infeasibility) but it is a pretty good example of a more novel rule for a sustainable community... that said we're still societally new to the internet so maybe it eventually won't be a rule and we'll find that doxing was an unfortunate emergent behavior of some integrated systems that really shouldn't have been integrated.