[danaris]

> The results of votes are enforced on the losers using the police, who will do so violently if required.

The whims of the dictator are also enforced on the public using police.

All human rules, laws, customs, and edicts are enforced, ultimately, with violence of one sort or another. There is no way to avoid the threat of violence being the bedrock of the power of the state, and in the absence of formal states the strong would use violence to enforce their desires until they became states.

So if you're an anti-statist, just say so. (So we can all dismiss everything you have to say as coming from a place of absolute ignorance of what's needed to live and operate in the real world. If we were to abolish all states tomorrow, and erase the very memory of their existence from every human alive, by Sunday new ones would have arisen to replace them, one way or another, because they are how humans organize themselves.)

[mike_hearn]

This thread started with a false dilemma: do we spend money on datacenters or "real infrastructure". It's only a dilemma if you assume governments should decide the answer, as ElevenLathe did.

Otherwise there's no need to choose between dictatorship or majority rule via democracy: everyone can spend money on the infrastructure they feel is more important, and there doesn't need to be any losers. Which is mostly how we try to do things in reality.