Democratization

[Cognisant]

Democracy is the democratization of political praxis. Yeah no shit Sherlock it's right there in the name.

Democratization isn't just giving people the ability to vote on things, though that certainly is a method of democratization, democratization in of itself is the redistribution of power away from a centralized authority by giving that power to the people.

Voting based on the policies of the available political parties is the democratization of governance but the ability to vote is itself the democratization of political praxis and that is very important because even if you're a complete idiot who doesn't vote or you waste your vote by drawing dicks on the ballot paper the fact that you can vote makes it harder to exploit you.

From a purely capitalistic perspective all human activity is essentially a form of trade.

Spoiler: Pictured: A pure capitalist

And in every trade we are always seeking to get more than we give, this is actually a proven fundamental aspect of human psychology, I forget exactly what the study was called but it involved trading chocolates and when people were given chocolates which they were told were valuable they wouldn't trade for another person's chocolate unless they got more chocolate in return, even if the chocolate they had was the kind they liked the least and the type the other person had was the type they liked the most.

Point is people HATE coming off second best in a deal even if the deal is still beneficial to them, now if we consider that all human activity is essentially a form of trade and everyone is always trying to get the better deal that brings us to a conclusion, everyone is always trying to screw you. But don't take it personal, you already knew this, you know whenever you buy something there's a profit margin involved and if you find a vending machine on top of a mountain you'll neither be surprised nor upset to discover that the drinks within it cost more. We always want the better deal but that's relative to what we consider to be fair, we expect convenience to come at a price, we expect shops to be operating for profit, we expect new goods to be more expensive than second hand and we expect the name brand stuff to cost more too.

So what does this have to do with democratization?
If all human activity is essentially a form of trade then when you vote you are making a trade, specifically you are trading your support (or indifference) for political representation and the people you're making that trade with want to screw you, they don't just want your support, they want to get it for free. Your vote is like currency in that it can be devalued, a two party system devalues your vote by removing choice, when there's no candidate representing what you want it doesn't who you vote for because you won't get it. Gerrymandering further devalues your vote because it enables politicians to appeal to voters strategically rather than holistically, remember it's not so much your vote that matters as the fact that you can vote because insofar as you can vote (and that vote isn't a worthless farce) politicians cannot exploit you for fear of rallying you and your peers against them.

Violent protests are indicative of a breakdown in democracy, in theory a civil conflict should be all but impossible within a democratic country because if people feel they are actually represented by their representatives then they can engage in "combat" with their opposing viewpoint via debating, rallying and lobbying. Get people on-side and by growing the movement you obtain more voters and thus more representation, there's no need for violence indeed within a democracy violence is counterproductive, you want people to listen to you and they won't listen if they fear you. But if you don't think you have representation or rather your representatives represent you in title only and you don't believe they have your interests at heart then the only alternative is violence, when you can't vote with a pen you have to vote with a brick.

I'm personally not a fan of civilians having access to high powered automatic weapons as I think it's rolling dice that are better left alone, but I can see the justification for it in the face of a breakdown in democracy, civilians having access to such weapons is a democratization of force. I don't think a militia comprised of armed civilians poses a credible threat to a national military much less the American armed forces, but I can see its value as a deterrent, i.e. "Don't step on me"

What brought me around was the revelation that the democratization of manufacturing (at home 3D printing and CNC machining and the ever increasing capabilities of the maker community) was facilitating this democratization of force, so the only way the democratization of force could be truly stopped would be to suppress the democratization of manufacturing and I'm REALLY not a fan of that.

In fact I've come around to the idea that we need to democratize everything, that if all human action is essentially a form of trade it behooves us to ensure that we are all able to engage in that trade without being exploited, not that every trade needs to be completely fair, rather that the consolidations of power formed by wealth begetting wealth (and for "wealth" you could substitute "influence", "power", "knowledge", etc) need to be deconstructed.

Paywalls on scientific articles? Yo-ho me hearties it's a pirate's life for me!
Institutionalized education? Give them nothing, but take from them everything.
Y'see it's not about voting, it's about taking power and redistributing it and knowledge is power so we shouldn't let anyone hoard it unless they are participating in the hoarding of knowledge by everyone for everyone.
Wikipedia is a great example of this.

The news media is the true white whale of the moment, everything they produce should be picked apart and criticized mercilessly, let not the news go unquestioned, support independent journalists, do not allow a self proclaimed authority to tell you what is and is not the truth but instead reach out to your fellow human beings through the internet (forums, reddit, imgur & youtube comments, whatever floats your boat) and be exposed to a myriad of perspectives and from that make up your own damn mind.

This recent Wallstreetbets thing? Democratization of stock market analysis, for decades only major players have had access to the information, the expertise and the computing power power to perform in-depth statistical analysis, that is changing and now they know the world has its eyes on them.

If there's gerrymandering occurring in your state rally people against it, everyone should be mad about it because it's essentially the politicians trying to screw them, it's a defilement of democracy, and if you do all the right things and change still isn't forthcoming start bricking windows and lighting fires, I mean are you just going to let them screw you?

 

[Cognisant]

Democratization is how we go from late stage capitalism to that Star Trek kind of future, it's not an overthrowing of capitalism but rather taming the beast of capitalism for you see in capitalism all that matters is power, who has it and who doesn't.

Are you attractive? That gives you power.
Are you skilled and/or knowledgeable? That gives you power.
Do you have money? That gives you power.

Capitalism serves whoever has power which unfortunately results in power begetting power but if we collectivize our power and use that power to gather more power for the collective then we can avoid ending up in some transhuman feudalism nightmare.

This is not communism, in communism power is centralized in a governing institution, democratization is the decentralization of power and as an ideology it is the deconstruction and redistribution of all powers.

Wikipedia is a perfect example.

Manufacturing services like Shapeways and Protolabs are not free services and they are for profit but what's important about them is that they give the average person access to manufacturing infrastructure that they wouldn't otherwise be able to obtain. Again this is not communism, this is not in opposition to capitalism, you're not working for the state and getting paid by the state, you're working for yourself or an employer and earning money which you can used to access these services.
What's important is that you can access them.

Likewise you may not be able to understand a scientific journal on theoretical physics but you and everyone else should be able to access them because it is by being able to access them that we can outmaneuver anyone trying to use their privileged access to such information to exploit us.

Imagine if one man, one company, one nation, obtained artificial general intelligence years before anyone else could figure it out, what would that do the world? I'm all for AI but I don't want to see it used for tyranny.

 

[The Grey Man]

A trade by which I don't gain more than I lose is a bad trade, but I don't need to make sure that my trading partner loses more than he gains to make a good trade. Trade can and should be a positive sum game, meaning that both parties gain more than they lose. If I find myself a store that sells TVs, I can be damn sure that its proprietor has more use for the money in my pocket than any of the TVs that line his shelves, but I probably wouldn't have have walked in at all if at a TV was not worth more to me than the same money (unless I just wanted to look at the merchandise and perhaps decide that my money would be more prudently spent elsewhere). If I choose to buy a TV, the difference in the value of the TV to me and to the proprietor and the compensating difference in the value of the money can make the trade both fair and mutually beneficial.

The problem with democracy is that it tends to be a negative sum game. The individual member of a democratic society obviously loses something since he is forced to pay taxes and obey onerous regulations by representatives of 'the people' (i.e. an electoral majority), but the people owe him nothing in return unless their tyranny is mitigated by a mechanism for the enforcement of individual rights that no decree of a majority can abridge. Democracy does not in fact decentralize power, but concentrates it in the hands of demagogues, whose authority is the mandate of the biggest mob.

A monopoly remains a monopoly, whether its predatory gains are enjoyed by businessmen or politicians. Allowing people to keep some military-grade weapons is not so dangerous as allowing 'the people' to keep all of them.

 

[Cognisant]

Keep in mind democracy as we know is not how it's supposed to work, in a healthy system there would be many parties or even no parties at all only individual politicians. The government would be an emergent entity like how the scientific consensus is an emergent outcome if the peer review system, rather than the almost oligarchal system we see now.

But this can be fixed we just need to democratize the media so as to create an environment that is dynamic and where politicians are subject to intense scrutiny, in such an environment we can make political partying behaviour a liability.

We should as a matter of principle be extremely critical of political partying and hold the largest parties in contempt.

 

[The Grey Man]

I agree. Part of the problem is that people vote for the largest parties because the largest parties are what people vote for. If this seems tautological and defeatist, it's because it is: people vote for Party A or Party B because no other party has a chance of winning without realizing that this very reasoning is itself the reason why no other party has a chance to win. If more people vote for what they actually want instead of what they think others will vote for, there will be more votes for alternative candidates. Democracy fails when the voters don't take their duties seriously and the electorate degenerates into a rabble. It's the 'tragedy of the commons' on a vast scale.

 

[BurnedOut]

It has been a forever debate about whether democracy really is necessary because the governed are getting increasingly more and more stupid. The situation is clearly not like what it was back in Athens when democracy was so much of a cherished ideal that people considered it a normal thing to participate in the political affairs.

If we talk about statistical thinking, democracy serves a good starting point for intelligent decision making and proliferation in science, welfare, etc. Therefore statistics dictates that democracy is the singlemost most capable form of government that can ever exist. However, there are certain conditions that need to be fulfilled which cannot be fulfilled by human beings till eternity:

1. Critical thinking skills
2. Maximum availability of all kinds of information
3. Ability to be rational in elections.

It looks like utilitarianism was built on this premise but utilitarians forget about the fact that as long as the agent is biased, he can never derive the max utility that he can if he is not.

---

Let us talk about another problem of democracy.

Perhaps, this is the irony of having the ability to experience emotions: personalizing mistaken for choosing

There is a widespread misconception that the freedom to choose is the embodiment of freedom and maximum happiness and boundless happiness. The problem is that our choices are only as good as others when they are concerned about the most basic things which will statistically yield no different outcomes: Preferring apples over oranges but having both of them in more or less quantities.

The more abstract things get, the more personalization we start putting into our choices. In other words, we increasingly start relying on past experiences to determine the current choice while ignoring the randomness that is present around us. This is where the problem begins and it never ends.

Technically speaking, the ideology of Democrats is perhaps just as powerful as those of Republicans. It is a tooth and nail battle. I don't see how a leftist is necessarily more superior to a rightist. It is very much possible for a rightist government to not have social security in the form of cash transfers but in the form of business opportunities and job availability which should directly counter the proposal put forth by leftists. Anyway, my point is that, it is impossible to determine the better of the two in a situation where there are no emotions involved.

What is more ironical is the fact that humans are capable of extremely rational decision making but simply because it takes much more effort, they shun doing the same. We can easily start recognizing that many of the choices we make with the given information could have been just as good as their immediate counterpart but then the fear of losing control on the thing at hand, we want a reason to believe that the choice we have made is the correct one and hence we end up getting emotional about it. Then we come up with myriad reasons to justify it and one of the reasons that keeps working is this: warmth and familiarity. Again, if we go out there and analyze the action plans that every politician is likely to draw based only on his ideological position, every politician of either side will be nearly identical to each other. Now who would want to select from a bunch of clones? That is really unnerving. But that is the reality.

But we need to understand that the illusion of control is very important in the lives of most people. You take that away and you are calling for systemic riots. To understand this, imagine if palette swapping was not done in Mario or Road Rash, you would rip the CD in two and hurl abuses at the developer for making everything seem the same.

The last irony that I would like to point is that we also don't want our choices to differ radically from one another. In other words, we all fall for price differentiation all the time without realizing.

What do you expect from a species fit into a system? They have to behave uniformly in one manner or the other. If living things had the capacity to create custom-tailored situations for all of their concerns...

To end on a positive note, democracy can be harnessed very positively even in the presence of selfish politicians. The only sacrifice is our humanness for science. Are you going to do that? But that is where we are heading.

 

[Cognisant]

It's not that complicated, just factor in party size against your choices when voting, as it is now with essentially two party systems in the US and Australia we should all vote for independents just to break up the system because when we don't have choice our votes don't have meaning.

I think it's an education problem, I think the vast majority of people don't really understand what voting is and what power they actually have, specifically the power to take back their power from the major parties. If we can educate people about this we might be able to achieve some actual change and I don't think it's impossible to do, I'm certainly smart enough to understand this and so are you unless you're willing to admit you're dumber than me.

The only sacrifice is our humanness for science. Are you going to do that? But that is where we are heading.

I'm very concerned about concentrations of power which are being facilitated by technological progress but the democratization of that power can just as easily be achieved by technological progress as well.

As for "sacrifice is our humanness for science" do you have a point to make or was that just hippy talk?

 

[BurnedOut]

As for "sacrifice is our humanness for science" do you have a point to make or was that just hippy talk.

Of course I have a reason. We are getting more and more disenfranchised because of the usage of voting statistics and behavioural analysis of voters treats our choices as maths and presents them in condescending texts. Then politicians themselves plan their election campaigns not on the basis of actually benefitting everybody but tailoring their campaigns to each demography.

To know someone after prolonged contact and consent is respectful and quite honestly, very heartwarming but to be Dr. House to them is unethical and wrong. By enabling science to decode our behaviour and have capitalists and governments exploit it is more disenfranchising than being in a totalitarian regime. There is a certain pleasure and feeling of security of being somewhat indecipherable but if you take that away, how will the systems in the world be human-centric anymore? Democracy will be reduced to means and modes. Then what is the point of a democracy anyway when you can hack the population?

 

[Cognisant]

I'm here now using that same technology to propose how we could take back control of our democracies, I think the idea of "vote for the independents" is one that could take off especially in this time of frustration and disillusionment, indeed it may be inevitable.

A coalition of independents from both extremes of the political spectrum could rally a movement of condemnation for the traditional power parties (giving the people someone to blame) and politicians themselves aren't loyal to their parties, as soon as they see which way the wind is blowing they'll abandon their party if it has become a liability.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Yes, activity, the transportation of energy is all the universe is. Characterization and individual agency give us this idea of trade. One sees it as a trade, another sees it as opportunity, and another might just see nature. What is the best characterization of this phenomena that will make people realize that they are being railed and are actively complicit of it? Rape is out of the option these days but I find it suits what I see very well. (NO YOU CANT USE THAT IT OFFERSAIVE TO PEOPEL THAT HAVE BEEN RAPED!!?!@JK#KL)

They way we disseminate messages, especially to younger people are strongly within the grips of power. The youth are completely brainwashed until they can form their own thoughts and 90% of them mimic the other 10% The 10% are mostly aware of this and have some sense that using the system to their advantage will benefit them, and it does. I wonder how many of them spew altruist shit just for a positive reputation.

I do agree that we must use technology against the tech overlords, but we would need a tremendous amount of understanding of how to disenchant the youths at multiple levels, especially those who have alluring opportunities that just more deeply fuck us. The youth are the future. Too old and you become an alien to the youth until they reach a point where they understand you, by then they are aprocahing mid 20s and spent their life beliving they were born to be comforted when in reality they will wake up and have to work for the next 60 or so years. Parents are less and less becoming gods in their children's eyes, now it's the algorithm that only shows them what they want to see (for now.) If you ask me it's a very high level of abuse, the cruelest thing humanity has done to itself. I'm still debating if this is a bad thing.

Cultural warfare something no one wants, but if entropy is allowed to act on systems of liberty, why wait until it's too late? It's in everyone's interest that this is maintained because letting everything fall apart and having to put it back together will be such a pain.

I'm one of the most stubborn and disagreeable people I know, just look at my name, and I think the level of apathy I have of this is fucked. Any organized effort that directly challenges this will not be sustained unless funded by capital, because that's another god of the day everyone loves, and for good reason too. Even if there was enough capital your better off just siphoning off resources to a smaller community where you can have more attention on fewer things and thus higher quality things that might actually manifest something in the future of our cultural landscape. More personal and maybe more selfish, but if you try to do everything you will end up doing nothing.

But if you did want to start some large scale change, where would you start? The kids, but what construct would you want to dismantle? It's not arbitrary, tradition is around for a good reason. Ironically, I'd probably start with self righteousness, but it's a total chick magnet, and that's sex so good luck dismantling that.

 

[Grayman]

Yeah, democrats think the Federal government has to have all this power an run every thing instead decentralizing as much authority as they can to states and localities.

I am buying my decentralizing money, cryptocurrency, on cheap today. Also going to work on getting solar to decentralizing my power from the grid. Don't want to end up like Texas.