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Cake day: July 28th, 2023

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  • Well I was not even focused on the USA in my reasoning of why in Mexico it is a bad thing to extend the democratic process to the election judicial branch of government or generally every decision to the public.

    The USA has issues in their democratic elections, gerrymandering in certain states being one, the electoral college giving most or all the electoral votes to the winner and not a portion in relation to votes, propaganda being openly discussed on “entertainment” news channels. Then there is even lobbying that is allowed, politicians being able to buy and sell stock based on insider information, paid speaking events.

    And the ruling by elites will in any system be an issue, even oppression by the majority can be an issue, that is usually why you have a good constitution, that lays the foundation of how government should work, the different spheres and how it should protect the most vulnerable in society. It has mechanisms to protect against an interest group gaining power to basically twist the system to their will and finally the last resort is the democratic vote of the people to ensure accountability.

    After these mechanisms have failed there is no pretty answer on how to easily get back to a fair system. In my country South Africa, where we had a system that disenfranchised the majority of the population, I am glad that we had a bloodless coup d’etat and now we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but even that wasn’t enough again from a connected small majority from almost ruling the country. Luckily in our last election, in the first time in 30 years the ruling party lost their majority and now we have a 10+ party coalition ruling majority government, and in my opinion things are going good, but we know how fragile our democracy is and try to be as engaged as citizens can be.



  • This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

    Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.


  • This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

    Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.


  • My opinion is, not based on Mexico, that the public is uninformed in the majority of decisions. Basically delegating power to the common person, especially technical decisions to the public will mean the most popular choice will win mostly, not the best choice. That is basically populism in a nutshell. Imagine you had to choose in this example a food policymaker, the one is the charismatic Willy Wonka that will say he wants everyone to eat sweets all the time, he wants you to eat whatever you want to eat, give you choices by subsidising all the sweets, worse he will attack Dr. Grouch, because he wants to tell you what to eat, force additional taxes on sweets to try and guide people to eat more gross vegetables, in fact basically force you, the poorest to have no choice but to eat these “healthy” foods. And unfortunately Dr. Grouch will agree, he wants you to eat "healthy food because in a couple of years you and your children will reap the benefits.