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Help, I can't convince people who have more direct experience than me that they are wrong
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this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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An actually communist society where everybody has equal influence would be a direct democracy.
Authoritarianism is the enemy of the communist utopia the creators of the ideology dreamed about.
Communism has the same problems as the Free Market.
It doesn't prevent selfish people from fucking it up completely for everyone else.
Ok grandpa let's get you your pills.
The commies are gone, we won the red sca~ i mean marketplace of ideas
Can you give an example of this? I'm curious
The inspiration of Communism came from the idea of Utopian Socialism, which is the free, equal, classless, moneyless utopian society that is the end goal of Communism.
An authoritarian state controlled by a dictator, like the ones .ml tankes worship, can never be classless, free, or equal.
Yeah China produced more billionaires than the USA since the pandemic. Tankies go mum when this is brought up. This is hardly "classless and equal".
tankies seem wildly unaware of deng xiaoping's purge of maoism and leftism in China
Tankies on China are very much 'just trust me bro'
China is a state capitalist country. Russia is a capitalist country.
It is even worse then that with the Hukou system.
Do you tankies actually say this? Because the last time I looked on their channel they did not do that. They might be relative about how horrible America is, since we are a hegemon and we are imperialist in nature. Everybody knows China is a state capitalist country. Even tankies.
Communists believe in state capitalism, but billionaires existing under communism is oxymoron. USSR imprisoned and/or killed farmers who were deemed kulaks, or slightly rich, for simply owning two more animals or few extra inches of land. Mainland communist China is the complete opposite.
This framing is irrelevant.
Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaah direct democracy is pretty awful too. The problem there is that most of the people have no understanding of what they're voting on. You don't want every single person voting on every single issue, unless you want a society that's bogged down in details and backwards. What you want is to find experts that actually understand a subject, and appoint those experts to deal with the issue. Which, in theory, was what we had with various gov't agencies, before the systematic defunding of them. E.g., you can't rationally expect the average person to understand all the ins and outs of climate science/collapse, or what policies/steps are required to prevent it (minimize it at this point).
But the problem with that is that you can easily end up with a bureaucracy that doesn't answer to anyone at all. Which, if they're actually all experts in their given area, and genuinely working for the best public outcomes, isn't bad, but can seem bad. And if they're not experts, then it's actually bad.
What exactly is the basis for your argument? Sounds like US defaultism
My basis is: read what i fucking said.
No single person can rationally have a thorough understanding of every single issue facing a country of 1M+ people. An engineer with expertise in electrical systems shouldn't be expected to have a reasonable understanding of public health policy, and expecting people with no understanding of a <> to make good decisions about it is folly.
How do you feel about democratically elected parliaments and ministers?
Generally okay, but they shouldn't necessarily do the will of the people, when the will of the people is wrong. (Which is, BTW, an objectively slippery slope as well.) We can look at history and see that Bernie Sanders in the US has consistently been working for the LGBTQ+ people to have the same rights as cis- and het- people, even when it was wildly, deeply unpopular. (Which I'm old enough to remember; there used to be strong public sentiment against allowing people that were LGBTQ+ to be teachers.)
A good leader, IMO, is someone that is intellectually curious and honest, willing to change their beliefs when given new information, is able to incorporate new information appropriately into their worldview, and knows people that has the expertise they lack in order to get good direction. E.g., I don't expect all leaders to be experts in every bit of policy, but I do expect them to find people that understand the things being legislated, and can evaluate options as objectively as is reasonably possible.
But.
No system is infallible. Every system can be broken and abused, or function outside the intended parameters. The goal, IMO, should be to create systems that are highly resistant to being broken or abused, while still trying to serve the people as a whole effectively.
Bernie is also very consistent with his views
Take a moment and realize that "tyrrany of the majority" is literal propaganda to make stupid people throw away their freedoms and embrace a tyrannical minority.
You shouldn't repeat Capitalist propaganda, it has no substance
Human beings are perfectly capable of being their own masters.
That's an incredibly stupid take, esp. since RIGHT FUCKING NOW the majority of people in the US and UK are opposed to transgender people having equal rights, and it wasn't until less than 10 years ago that the majority thought that gay people should have the right to marry the person they chose. If you polled in Sweden, Denmark, et al., you'd probably find that the majority of people are opposed to Muslims immigrating to their country as well.
The tyranny of the majority is absolutely alive and well; what you're talking about is a utopia, which is literally 'no place'.
Lol where do I start?
The "majority" you think exists is the result of bias polling.
Your "representatives" decided for you that trans people arent real. So great representative democracy you got there.
You're now sitting there taking it instead of participating in reality. You now have to fight for the influence that would be guaranteed to you under a direct democracy.
Yeah, no, it's not. Multiple polls, from multiple different polling firms, shows that people broadly oppose things like allowing minors to have gender-affirming care, or allowing equal participation in gendered sports (e.g., having transwomen compete in women's divisions). It doesn't matter what the political leanings of the polling firm are. This is why Republican attacks on Dems regarding trans rights were so effective in the election. It's irrelevant that Dems are on the morally right side, because the majority supports the immoral position. Here's one source for you; raw data is here.
Under a direct democracy, transgender people would absolutely lose rights in the states that now protect them. 40 years ago gay people would have had it even worse under a direct democracy.
You realize most people approve of adults receiving the care right?
The majority did not support the JK Rowling law.
The law was changed by representatives that refused to represent their voters.
Sorry you have a hard time engaging with reality.
First: I gave you numbers for the US, so you're pivoting to the UK in order to avoid addressing the salient point. But okay, here are some UK numbers. The numbers weren't great to start, and they've been getting worse; people in the UK may be okay with allowing adults to get gender-affirming care, but they're not okay with the NHS paying for it, and they broadly opposed gender-affirming care for minors. And paying for your own health care in the UK ain't exactly cheap.
If the plurality of people are broadly unsupportive of transgender equality (it's not a strict majority because there is a percentage of people that don't have an opinion), then the MPs that voted against transgender equality were doing what their constituents wanted.
If you have hard data showing that this the polling on this is incorrect, now is a great time to present it.
And yes, all of the scientific data that's credible demonstrates that trans people fare better with social acceptance, with access to gender-affirming care, when they aren't discriminated against. But that doesn't significantly sway public opinion on the matter. The majority of people that have an opinion on the matter as simply wrong.
You're the one randomly refrencing cherry picked shit.
You are arguing in favor of being a slave with no rights because JKR paid to have a law passed.
The dictatorships of the world don't like trans people, in those countries trans people get sent to prison or death.
The places in then world where people vote on policy are the objectively safest for trans people.
Grow up
No, what I specifically said was that we shouldn't follow the will of the majority in all things, because the majority can and does act in tyrannical ways. Meanwhile, you're insisting that letting everyone always vote on every single thing would somehow result in a utopia.
Here's the thing: I live in the rural south. Our local high school has one transgender student. The superintendent consulted with an attorney, and then let the student us the bathroom of the gender that they identify with. The community as a whole fucking lost their minds. The school board held a public meeting about it where they explained why they took the steps they did, and then they let community members speak. In a town of 5k people, there were over 500 people attending. They cut off comments after three hours. It was roughly 10:1 against treating this poor girl like a girl.
If they'd taken a vote that very day, she would have been run out of town on a rail covered in tar and feathers, because the town is full of bigoted evangelical christians. But you think that people should always get to vote on everything, even when they have zero real knowledge about the subject? That's absolute nonsense.
Okay, and right fucking now those countries are voting for people that have explicitly told them that they're going to clamp down on trans rights, and then those people are doing it. So the countries where people vote are becoming less safe for trans people, even if it's still safer than being transgender in, say, Iran.
Tldr
Blocked
Jesus fuck. You argue that the tyranny of the majority doesn't exist, and when I prove that it does, with examples, you block. You can't even cite anything to justify your position.
What the shit, my dude.
That's one way it could be done. It could also be a republic or a parliamentary system.
Direct democracies suck.
Has there ever even been a direct democracy?
We could easily do it today with an app, but historically i don't think it's been done.
There have been very close contenders. I like Australia's democracy.
I think it's much too susceptible to populist authoritarians. One of the nice benefits of representative democracies is that representatives don't want to give too much power to the head of government, because that removes their power and let's the next party have more power.
Ok so no, we have no idea how a direct democracy would work becauase we've never tried giving that much influence to individuals.
Take a moment and realize that "tyrrany of the majority" is literal propaganda to make stupid people throw away their freedoms and embrace a tyrannical minority.
You shouldn't repeat Capitalist propaganda, it has no substance
Human beings are perfectly capable of being their own masters.
It was a thing in ancient Athens, and they tended to elect populist leaders who had a lot of power. Populism has given us people like Hitler and Trump, so I really don't think that'd a road we want to go down, because a sufficiently popular tyrant can just dismiss democracy.
My ideal is a small, representative government with strict constitutional limitations on power so people can just go about their lives and be their own masters, as you put it. Oh, and with a certain amount of wealth redistribution baked in to care for the poor.
What do you mean leader?
Direct democracies don't have representatives
A direct democracy can certainly have an executive, they just don't have a legislature, because they are the legislature.
When you have to keep making up different situations than I described in order to discredit what I described it feels forced and petty.
The tyranny of the majority will always be objectively better for everyone than a tyrrany of the minority.
If you think people need to elect rulers that will eventually stab them in the back for personal gain that says something about you, not human society.
People will elect rulers, that's how people work. That you can't show a single example of a leaderless, stable country is really strong evidence of that. The closest was probably Athens, and they elected a strong leader.
Ok so you can't even fathom not having a master.
You don't care about reading what i type.
I'm disengaging now.
I certainly can, but I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about people generally, and I don't think the quiet majority can handle not having a master.
Communism doesn't "work" with anything but totalitarianism
Totalitarian planned economies exist today, they're called "Walmart" and "Amazon". You think they'd stop functioning if people had more of a say and didn't have to piss in bottles anymore?
Lazy propaganda
Share the crack.