[9dev]

It isn’t realistic, it’s pessimistic. If the government, the system, is your opponent, there is no other outcome than subversion, everything is futile anyway. That leaves no room for democratic participation, for any kind of peaceful change, if you’re being earnest with it. And that seems very cynical and ideologically driven to me. There’s a lot of room for improvement that doesn’t involve tearing everything down because it’s beyond the pale anyway; it isn’t.

[graemep]

I am not advocating tearing everything down, as that will make things worse, especially if done violently.

> That leaves no room for democratic participation

I think there is very limited room for democratic participation and it has become far to difficult to change anything. If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation? Even if the parties are different and I do not like the policies of either, what is the value of my vote?

I think things will improve in the long term when there is sufficient pushback, but it will take a long time.

[9dev]

> If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation?

In joining a party that represents you better—or founding one if no such party exists—and campaigning for it. Democracy doesn't end with casting a ballot, especially in trying times like these. Nobody is going to come and save us; if we don't stand up, nobody will.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "The Germans: They thought they were free" by Milton Mayer[1]. It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.

[1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

[hiatus]

> It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.

> If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.

How do you jive these two statements?

[9dev]

My point is that the German society wasn't inherently evil, but stunned, indifferent; a comparatively small group of thoroughly sinister people managed to use that to their advantage. The correct thing to do would have been civil resistance, while it was still possible.

[hiatus]

But a state is its population, by your own words. How can you say German society wasn't inherently evil and yet hold that a state IS its people? Either the German population is evil and willed evil into existence, or the state is greater than the sum of its parts. It seems obvious that the latter is the case.

[9dev]

Now that's mixing things. We are talking about democracies; and there, a state is its population: Every constituent carries responsibility for the government—the state—that is elected in fair elections. Even by abstaining, you agree with the majority. Without the German people, there wouldn't be a state of Germany.

But of course that doesn't apply to autocracies and dictatorships, which Germany pre-WW2 obviously turned into. My point is that the Germans voted for the NSDAP, and dit not resist the transformation into an autocratic state. They let this happen, out of indifference, wrong assumptions, anger, stupidity, and fear. That means one way or another, the German people decided what the state became.

[bccdee]

False dichotomy. "Either the system is perfect or it is useless." No: systems can have mixed results, and they can be improved. Even when they can't be improved, they can be replaced by better (but still imperfect) systems.

You present a choice between pretending everything is fine and giving up. This is no choice at all. Both options entail giving up; one is just honest about it.

We can make things better.

[Atreiden]

People, and the governments they compose, respond to incentives.

If platforms like discord take a hard-line stance of "no, we're not enabling a surveillance state apparatus" and the government then forces them to cease business in that country, that is a decision with consequences. People don't like when the government takes away their nice things due to motives they don't agree with. It catalyzes a position - "unchecked government surveillance is creating negative outcomes for me".

Over time, if enough actors behave the same way, public sentiments will shift and, assuming a healthy democracy, the government line will as well.

But acquiescing to demands like these only further entrenches the position, as the public is only loosely incentivized to care. The boiling of the privacy frog in a surveillance state like the UK means most people won't care enough to change it until it's too late