Democracy Is Not Enough
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Information or opinions might not be up to date.
People tend to think of Democracy and Freedom as one and the same. And yes, in the modern world you can expect more freedom from countries practicing democracy. And less freedom in any other form of government. And it's because the two are very much linked together. But since people do not understand both: what are the differences between the two; and what Democracy is really trying to achieve, they get sometimes very confused. ↩ Reply
Case and point - my boss. We had music playing on the background for as long I can remember. One day, he came to me with a proposal to decrease the volume. He claimed that some people didn't like how "strong" the music is playing. The problem was that the music wasn't strong at all. To be frank, I could barely hear it. But I guess it was a matter of opinion. ↩ Reply
He argued that in Democracy, all people's desires are being satisfied. And that some people find the music too loud. I knew on the other hand that he just put himself into a dead end from which he has no escape, since he first of all didn't understand democracy at all, and second of all I know a lot of people who would like the music to be even louder ( myself included ). ↩ Reply
If we should satisfy all people, I agree, we should satisfy those who want to make the music quieter. But then we also, in the same time, should satisfy those who want to make the music louder. We have a satisfaction collision. A paradox. Therefor we can't make our goal be satisfaction of everyone. Then who do we satisfy? ↩ Reply
The Film Moria's Race Is Out
I'm sorry for such a crude break of the flow of this article. But I just finished a 3 and a half years long project and want you to see the final result. It's a little movie about a girl who really wants to race cars. ↩ Reply
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We can't satisfy everyone
Since we cannot satisfy everyone's every desire, what amount of such desires could be reasonable to satisfy? Say that a person should have total control about everything. Well with more than one person it's impossible. Since we have collisions of control. I cannot be controlling one object in the same time that somebody else controls that same object. It's paradoxical. ↩ Reply
The movie "The Cat in the Hat" 2003 had just the right joke to illustrate how absurd it is. 3 characters were ridding in a magical car. And The Cat was driving it. But then the other character also wanted to drive it. So The Cat took out another steering wheel for that character. And then for the third character too. And the car went completely crazy and lost all resemblance of control. And they crashed. ↩ Reply
Technically speaking, even this is impossible. If one turns right and the other turns left, the car will not get confused. It will either go forward, since the two motions will cancel each other out. Or if each of the steering wheels controls separate road wheels, the car would stop, similarly to how you stop when ridding roller-skates. ↩ Reply
In other words, it's impossible that the same thing can be simultaneously controlled by two people. Therefor we don't do that and we invent ownership. One has his stuff. And the other has his stuff. And the first one does not control the stuff of the other. ↩ Reply
So we define our rules thus: Each person has absolute right for total control of their stuff and only their stuff. And this also includes their body since it belongs to the person itself. And we call this new arrangement: Freedom. ↩ Reply
If you want to control the stuff of the other person it could be arranged. The other person can agree to no longer own his stuff. But why would he do that? Maybe he wants to control some of your stuff too. Then, perhaps you can arrange an exchange of stuff. Or if the person really doesn't want to own something, or really likes you, he can just gift you his stuff, without demanding anything in return. All of those dynamics we know as a free market. ↩ Reply
If person A steals an item belonging to person B without the person's B consent. Person A committed a crime. Notice how it's not a matter of compensation, but rather a matter of consent. If person A kills person B. This would be an unwanted change to person's B body. Therefor a crime. If person A touched, groped or pushed the body of person B in such a way that person B didn't want to be touched, groped or pushed by person A, it is also a crime. I hope you could recognize the definitions of theft, murder and rape in these examples. And how the fact that those are crimes derives from freedom itself directly. ↩ Reply
I hope I didn't loose you. Please stop and try to grasp what I just explained. ↩ Reply
The role of government
If we stop at a conceptual level only, some people might disagree with it and deprive other people of their freedoms. So a system should be in place that makes sure that those boundaries of freedom are respected by every person. This is the role of the government. ↩ Reply
In an ideal situation the government would only make sure that people's freedoms are not violated by other people. But confusions and various freedom collisions happen and answers to those confusions should be provided. Thus the government has such structures as courts that decide upon strange or confusing situations where freedom and power aren't easily defined, law that records such court decisions for the future and police that enforces the law. ↩ Reply
In the head of this system stands another form of law-making governmental body, the parliament. Who's job is to make sure that the system underneath works properly. And sometimes they also suggest laws to the courts. ↩ Reply
If you look closely, the system is now a structure of power rather than a structure of freedom. For example law enforcement is there to force people to obey law if they don't obey law. Meaning it's a form of power. But we already saw that what we need is to eliminate all power so there will be only freedom. The problem is that here we have a yet another paradox. Total anarchy will allow people to have unjust power. But law enforcement even in good faith, to preserve freedom, is also a form of power. So the question becomes not how to make sure that everybody has freedom, but rather how can we make sure everybody has maximum possible freedom, while those in power has the minimum possible power. ↩ Reply
Democracy is a system that tries to solve that issue by making sure that people in power were selected by the people not in power. So at least the interests of people and rulers would meet in some capacity. And the only possible way to do it now is by voting. Basically the candidate with the majority of votes gets the power. We still have the courts and other subsystems to keep the ones at the top of the system from influencing it too much. But the system is under control of those who the majority of the people have selected. ↩ Reply
Notice how Freedom of Speech is not mentioned here. Because while it can be used to regulate government by exposing flaws in the government, Free Speech originates way deeper than that. It's a freedom to control the vocal chords and the mouth that a person owns. Or if that person owns paper and ink, it's a freedom of total control over that paper and this ink. And any form of censorship is either theft as with paper and ink, or rape as with vocal chords and mouth. ↩ Reply
The problems with Democracy
Problem number one stands with the fact that people themselves might not be interested in freedom that much, but rather in other superficial things that lead them to choose those who will lead the whole system to value those superficial things more than freedom. For example things like "The Greatness Of The Country" could be one such example. Which for example had completely ruined the Democracy of such countries as Russia ( which at this moment has less freedom than it had during the Soviet Union ) and nearly ruined the United States Of America. ↩ Reply
The other major problem is that Democracy by design undermines the opinions of the minority. And this minority are also people that should have as much freedom as any other person. Few legal things are done to prevent this injustice to be too devastating. For example, a constitution of many countries have strict unchangeable rights that are granted to all people. Such as Free Speech or the right to Privacy. That in theory should prevent any future government from eliminating those rights, even if the majority of the population wants otherwise. But with things like the Holocaust we saw that it's insufficient at best. Most people voted for somebody who wanted to not only to take freedoms of a minority group away, but eliminate the entire group entirely. And the majority of citizens in that country supported him. Which makes the decision democratic, but still undeniably evil. ↩ Reply
If you come back to the problem with the volume of the music at work. The decision was subsequently made to establish a semi democratic system that will decide the volume. Basically people vote for the volume. But even this was made with a twist. ↩ Reply
I programmed the player to calculate an average from all voted volumes. Giving each person his own dedicated margin of control over the volume. Rather than apply the most requested number. One problem was that even if the numbers were all integers, we still have 100 different variants of them throughout the volume nob. From 0% to 100%. If say 1 person sends a request for 99% and the other for 100%, a normal voting system would think as if those two requests have nothing to do with one another. While in practice we have here a linear system that can be calculated better than this. ↩ Reply
One idea was to limit the volume to say only 5 choices. Another idea was to develop a very complex weighted algorithm that would mimic the result of votes, but make it in such a way that 99% and 100% would be considered almost the same vote. Or from the other perspective I just could find the average. Which would make it so every person has an equal amount of control over the volume, but not more than that. Which meant that they would have freedom, will not have power, but it would not necessarily be a democracy. ↩ Reply
Conclusion
Democracy is very important and should be protected! But it's there only to allow freedom to exist. So if your system allows it, choose freedom instead. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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