The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic US

by negativelambda • 9 months ago

60 21 9 months ago

Democracy can have many forms, some more authoritarian than others. And it being able to morph into a different form as the conditions change is very much a feature, not a bug.

WastedCucumber• 9 months ago

In principle I agree that change is possible and good under democracy, but your comment seems wildly out of touch in the present context.he change that I see happening in the USA now does not seem like a change of democratic form, but a move away from democracy, because a lot of core rights/freedoms/structures are under threat: freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, right to protest, and maybe we'll see free and fair elections get weakened too before this process is done.

And none of that seems like a feature to me.

johncoltrane2• 9 months ago

You can have the core things you mention in other political systems and you can have democracy without them. Those are characteristics of the particular form(s) of democracy currently in place in most of "the west", not of democracy itself.

maybe

I know, it's more exciting to play the worst scenarios in one's head, but… _maybe not_?

sph3• 9 months ago

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, from dēmos 'people' and krátos 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state.

I would go so far as to say few of our so-called democratic countries are actually so. But one thing is for certain, a democracy can't be authoritarian by definition.

kannanvijayan• 9 months ago

One thing that's worthwhile to understand, but very difficult to mentally reconcile, is the way in which Americans have the ability to redefine words to meet the need of branding.

In a very real and genuine sense, to most Americans "democracy and freedom" is simply whatever the USA does. This sentiment is then, after the fact, stitched into acceptability by these sorts of intellectual deflections.

ImJamal3• 9 months ago

This makes no sense. Why can't a population democratically vote for authoritarian laws? As long as the people have the ability to freely vote, the laws actually passed are irrelevant.

Second, only men could vote in Athens. Do you consider that to be acceptable in a democracy?

lemnossos• 9 months ago

The problem with this etymology based political argument is twofold:

demos in Ancient Greek demokratia were blocks of assigned citizenship, so it is operationally closer to an electoral college than some idealistic "power to the people" interpretation of the term

who are the people? in Ancient Athens, "the people" ruling the demokratia were the male land owners... about 60% of the people in the city were excluded, most of them being slaves

Democracy now is a hugely complex ongoing negotiation, not some simplistic "dictionary says" naïvité. Go read Democracy in America, Aristotle is a bit outdated.

whattheheckheck• 9 months ago

Yes governance power can take many forms but when it changes, it's no longer democracy.

If anything a better analysis comes from the book Logic of Political Survival. The selectorate and the winning coalition are much smaller than previous generations because of the massive accumulation and consolidation of wealth. So they dont have to do jack shit for the majority of people because theyre irrelevant in gaining or holding power. The majority of Americans hold and wield absolutely no political power in placing anyone in power. And then are surprised when they get wrecked. Or maybe theyre not surprised because they simple dont know how much theyre country is getting looted

slices• 9 months ago

David Sacks might be interested to know his title is now "Zar".

xof_research2• 9 months ago

Fixed

potato3732842• 9 months ago

They couldn't hoodwink the population into voting for whatever they consider optimal, so they've gone all in on force multipliers for government, because they can still just buy the government.

xof_research2• 9 months ago

Thanks for linking this. Any comments, feedback appreciated. We are part of team behind project.

The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic US

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