[amelius]

Well, the populist approach is to exploit that people are uninformed about most of the important topics and then induce fear with just one tiny topic. If people were better informed, they would see that the tiny topic didn't matter in the greater scheme.

[Joker_vD]

This is such a brilliantly self-defying argument, I am honestly impressed. "If people were better informed, they wouldn't care". People are uninformed/misinformed because they care enough to listen to what they're being told, but not enough to actually go and check if things they're being told are accurate. And again, most people prefer to believe things that align with their world-view and self-interest.

[amelius]

> "If people were better informed, they wouldn't care"

That is not what I said. They might still care, but the point is that the elections should not be hijacked by one topic (this is not in the interest of those voters, but since they are uninformed, what do they know?) I hope that clears it up.

[iamnothere]

What if the people decide that the one topic is the only thing they care about at the moment? Do you dissolve the voting public and elect a new one?

Many people seem to want democracy, but only if the public votes in the way that is acceptable to them. That’s not democracy! That’s rubber stamp technocracy!

[Joker_vD]

> Many people seem to want democracy, but only if the public votes in the way that is acceptable to them.

Well, many people claim they want democracy, due to how our modern political discourse is shaped. But the amount of arguments of essentially "of course you can have any opinion, as long as it's the correct one" I've seen is quite astonishing.

[phendrenad2]

Ah, that makes sense. Today, people are pulled in a million different directions by targeted misinformation, trying to rally them to be unwilling soldiers for some malignant cause. Before, when people were primarily uninformed, only one malefactor could pull on them at once. Thank you for the clarification. I guess things have improved then, since people can't really devote themselves fully to any noxious cause, and have to time-share.