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Comment by kitsuac | Hacker News Reader

But that's a reflection of "The People" and their will. People want their existing jobs and status quo. They care about next week's pay check. Not a theoretical tidal wave that people they don't know say will happen if they don't stop working on fossil fuels and switch to being a cashier at Wendy's. To separate that reality of will from democracy would make it no longer democratic.

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Campaign Contributions are imo clearly not a reflection of the will of the people. They are a reflection of business interests, protecting the status quo and working against balanced arguments on public policy.

A reflection of The People would be simply their democratic vote, informed by balanced and unsubsidized arguments from both sides.

> What if The People's democratic vote is to commit collective long term suicide for short term gains?

I mean, obviously, individually, it's up to each person to choose. But when the majority chooses for everyone (including the minority), is the minority bound to respect that decision?

> But that's a reflection of "The People" and their will.

I don't think so. I need to heat my house or I will die, so I pay the energy company. But, my "will" is that climate change is the most important issue today, and I would greatly like to increase subsidies for alternative energy and funds for climate science. If the energy company lobbies against that, then they are using my money to lobby against my will. It's easy to extrapolate this to the majority of the energy company's subscribers. You can't say that corporate lobbying is a reflection of the country's will.

"A third objection is that Easter Islanders surely wouldn’t have been so foolish as to cut down all their trees, when the consequences would have been so obvious to them. As Catherine Orliac expressed it, “Why destroy a forest that one needs for his [i.e., the Easter Islanders’] material and spiritual survival?” This is indeed a key question, one that has nagged not only Catherine Orliac but also my University of California students, me, and everyone else who has wondered about self-inflicted environmental damage. I have often asked myself, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood”? Or: “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering”? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment."

- Jared Diamond, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"

(A must read book, by the way.)

> 'They care about next week's pay check.'

And whose fault do you think that is... There can be no talk of the will of the people when they are beholden to the coercion of the elites through structured economic insecurity.

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