[mistermann]

In elections you put an X beside someone's name who has made promises that they most likely will not fulfill which is a far cry from getting together to decide what we want to do collectively.

I think it's rather bizarre that no grassroots movement has arisen to work towards the general public getting together to actually decide what we actually want to do collectively, it's genuinely a very good idea.

[wolverine876]

There are many, many such organizations. Just look around at political organizations of all stripes.

> who has made promises that they most likely will not fulfill

That's just your assertion. It hasn't been my experience, and they can always be voted out of office.

> In elections you put an X beside someone's name

You can do a lot more than that, if you use the power you have been given in a democracy. Having worked on many elections, I can say that it amazes me how much power the few people doing the work have. To stand on the outside and say you are powerless is bizarre - like standing on the shore of the ocean and insisting there are no fish.

[mistermann]

> There are many, many such organizations. Just look around at political organizations of all stripes.

I'm referring to this: "We the people get together and decide what we want to do collectively".

To me, "we the people" means the population of the country, rather than a tiny subset who actually engage in political organization - I'm thinking (for starters) of something as simple as fine-grained surveys on various issues and policy proposals. Of course, most opinions are going to be pretty uninformed, but then whose fault is that? The population as it is, is a product of the system we've constructed to raise people in.

> That's just your assertion.

Is it a genuine point of contention that there is a substantial delta between what politicians promise and what they can be observed trying to achieve after election campaigning is over?

> It hasn't been my experience, and they can always be voted out of office.

So the saying goes. The system runtime certainly supports it, but the degree to which it is actually possible if one takes into consideration the given system state and historic behaviors makes it seem rather uncertain to me. Technically, what is and is not ~pragmatically/realistically possible is unknown.

> You can do a lot more than that, if you use the power you have been given in a democracy. Having worked on many elections, I can say that it amazes me how much power the few people doing the work have. To stand on the outside and say you are powerless is bizarre - like standing on the shore of the ocean and insisting there are no fish.

I can agree that people have some more power than they often think...but acting individually, how likely is it that one person can make significant change? Do we have substantial examples demonstrating it is possible, and few that demonstrate difficulty? And then also: how would our current state look plotted on an absolute scale of what is possible in the runtime, as opposed to what is possible in the system we've built within the runtime?