[jauntywundrkind]

Show me a government that's lasted through hundreds of years of responsible careful balanced governance.

It's just so stupid to trust governments. They won't be the same government in a couple years, in most places in the world. (Gods fear those who do remain static & fixed!) The temptation to legislate, to start saving the children or hunting terrorists by becoming a police state is a temptation that should never ever be technologically open.

[rdlw]

The fact that a system may become perverted in the next several hundred years doesn't make it not worth using. Best of luck to my children's children, I hope they don't fuck it up too bad, but I'm not going to preemptively save them by not giving anyone power to govern in the present day.

[Aerroon]

>in the next several hundred years doesn't make it not worth using.

A decade before my grandfather was born the area of my country was part of the Russian empire.

He was born into a democratic republic that turned into an autocracy while he was a child.

When he became a teenager the country was occupied by the Soviet Union, then the nazis, then the Soviet Union again. That last one lasted for 50 years during which he was sent to a gulag camp.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the country became a democratic republic again.

And now war seems to be on the horizon and the country might end up as part of a new Russian empire again. Probably won't, but the possibility exists.

Modern democracies are young. The US is the odd one by being so old without changing the form of its government.

Edit: the country also joined the EU, which took some sovereignty away, but I think this is a minor thing.

[gabaix]

As citizen in France, we also had an old democracy. Under Nazi Germany occupation it took no time for the ruling party to oppress ennemies of the state. Jews were hunted down using the National n database of names and addresses.

I do view technology as a double edged sword for the freedom of the people.

[bigstrat2003]

> The fact that a system may become perverted in the next several hundred years doesn't make it not worth using.

I strongly disagree, given that you're also talking about a system which will be difficult to reform at best. At worst, it will require bloodshed (God forbid, but it does happen often enough throughout history). A system that will be that difficult to fix is one that you absolutely cannot afford to trust with more than the bare minimum of power.

[solatic]

It's a tool. Technology is neither positive, nor negative, nor neutral, it simply is. You might as well claim that banning guns will solve social violence and nobody will murder anybody anymore. The key is not to try to ban the tools (a deceptively alluring easy fix) but to fix the social ills (much harder).