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Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

Instead of blaming yourself for the actions of the elected officials you voted for, consider that you have absolutely no control over what that official does, beyond literally one bit of data you’re allowed to send every 2 or 4 years. That’s one of the problems with democracy: it gives illusion of control and provides legitimacy that politicians need to do what they want.

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It's one of the problems with what is commonly called democracy. It wouldn't be a problem in "real" democracy (i.e. government by the people).

I can imagine many more problems that would cause. Apparently I don't have as high an opinion of the average person as you. It would certainly lead to a different incentive structure and outcomes, but not necessarily better ones. The book "Democracy for Realists" covers more details about how people vote. Spoiler; they tend not to be very rational, objective, realistic, or nuanced.

Imagine a restaurant whose menu and prices were voted on by the people at large. What would happen? The menu would look deranged and prices would be too darn low for the restaurant to function in an economically viable manner. The whole restaurant operation would collapse! Who said democracy is a good way to bring about stability and prosperity to an organization/operation in the long run?

Struggling to see why the people would decide on deranged prices rather than sensible prices. Do they not like the restaurant?

Regardless, seems like a wildly inaccurate and unhelpful metaphor.

Because the self interest is to have cheap food. No majority would vote to have high menu prices.

Surely the self-interest is to have a nice restaurant? Having cheap food for a week or two, then not having the food at all, doesn't seem like something people would want.

That would require people to constantly educate themselves to deliver a proper vote, which is unfeasible (because people have to work and live, and large parts of any country are too ignorant/uneducated/outright dumb).

Representative democracy was invented to solve that problem by having the representatives and their staff do that education, but they took the easy way out and listened to those with the biggest campaign contribution coffers.

I can imagine all sorts of horrendously terrible problems with real democracy.

You could become a representative yourself, like AOC did.

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