[int_19h]

The way "representative democracy" (in quotes because both words are a lie) works at scale of any large country is as follows: you elect people based on simplistic promises that they make, and if they win and you're lucky, they kinda sorta do something that's vaguely like half of what they promised. Your only recourse is waiting for N years to vote for someone else who will almost certainly do the same thing.

Not only is this all by design, but in many countries, the "free mandate" - i.e. the notion that the politician can say A before the election and then do ~A after - is even legally codified. In theory, this is supposed to allow the elected representatives to apply their own judgment based on nuances of the moment instead of pandering to the mob. In practice, it means that your representative is free to pander to people other than those they "represent" while still claiming a public mandate based on the votes received.

[smeej]

Not only this, but most people don't actually like the vague promises of the candidate they voted for.

They're just praying that one will be moderately less terrible than the alternative.

There's never an option to say, "No, none of these power-hungry psychos should get to make this set of decisions on my behalf."

[mulmen]

This is a bad take. Representative democracy works and we have plenty of examples of that happening even within our lifetimes. Your negative outlook is a choice and it’s wrong. Do better.

We elect representatives at every level of government. In a country of 335,000,000 people a slow moving central government is a feature. If you really want to make a difference pay attention to your city council.

[int_19h]

My outlook is from experience. I used to be a believer in representative democracy, but I simply cannot reconcile that with observations anymore.

Note, by the way, that I'm not claiming that changes don't happen in this system. What I'm saying is that changes happen when the ruling class is convinced it's time for them, not when the populace as a whole is - and no amount of voting changes that.

The fewer people each representative represents, the closer it is to an actual democracy, which is why city councils etc generally work better (although they are still far from ideal and have the same fundamental problems I described). But the nature of modern politics weaves local issues into broader ones on higher levels, and what ought to be local politics increasingly becomes national.

[mulmen]

I honestly can’t even follow this. So you agree democracy works but it’s bad for… reasons? Can you be more specific? You have “experience” but you can’t articulate it. Sounds like you’re just jaded. That’s not democracy’s fault.

[int_19h]

I was complaining about representative democracy specifically. There are other forms that do not have the problems that I specifically outlined. For representative democracy, those flaws become more prominent as you scale it up, so on very small scales (like a small town) it works reasonably well, but it quickly breaks down once you have "representatives" claiming mandate on behalf of many thousands of people.

[mulmen]

Direct democracy doesn’t scale. It can and is employed locally but at the scale of the US it’s impossible. Our representative system accounts for that and is effective. None of your complaints are insightful or even coherent. You’re just whining. It’s not constructive, and I think it’s actually harmful. If you can’t be constructive then just be quiet.