Comment by fabbari | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fabbari | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think that the fatal error is not going and vote for the European Parliament elections [0]. You don't get to complain when you decide not to participate in the democratic process.

Even if this was passed by the Council of the EU [1] it would be passed by ministers representing over 55% of the states - and over 65% of the EU population - and could be blocked by 4 countries. Now - we can discuss if a government is a democratic institution, but I guess it's a bit of a stretch to argue otherwise.

In other words: democracy requires information and education, either at the EU or at state level. That's not the issue here.

Your country is not a passive agent in this: your country has a say and you need only four countries to stop this. If you believe that somehow you can influence your government when it's emanating laws locally, but not when - the same government - is voting in the Council, you are just doing some magical thinking.

The EU has one main problem: it's local politicians stoking the fire of "It's the EU doing this, not us" - while at the same time passing legislation in the EU.

<Tyranny of the majority arguments go here>

[0] https://europarl.europa.eu/election-results-2019/en/turnout/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union

> You don't get to complain when you decide not to participate in the democratic process.

You can complain either way. Not participating means you are not participating, and is a kind of a vote too. If <50% people vote, then the vote is arguably illegitimate.

"If <50% people vote, then the vote is arguably illegitimate"

That's not how a democracy works. Unless you're forcibly prevented from voting - or are denied the right to - that's not the case. It is not an illegitimate vote if you decide not to vote.

In the EU Parliament elections it's just people deciding not to vote. As you yourself said: "is a kind of a vote too".

Let me make a practical example: we are having a pizza party and we have a vote for what pizza to order, you say: "I don't care - you guys decide!". When the pizzas show up you may say: "Dang, you got the anchovies pizza - I don't like anchovies!", but not "Why did you guys get anchovies? I don't like anchovies, you shouldn't have ordered that pizza!". They seem closely related, but they are not.

No that is a wrong analogy. The correct analogy to not participating in the vote would be: I would say "there shouldn't be any pizza party vote, because the options all suck, and I do not want any pizza, everybody go home".

If more than 50% of people in the room say that, the pizza party vote is illegitimate.

Nope - that's not correct: saying "there shouldn't be any pizza party" is a vote! If more than 50% of the people invited at the party say: "We should actually get salad!" - then, guess what? You would get salad.

Being silent - not voting - is NOT the same as voting against something. Not even close.

If the real reason for why over 50% of the people don't vote was because they don't like any of the parties then they could join up and create an alternative. But this is not what happens.

In the real world when you don't vote you're doing two things:

1 - you're saying you don't care because you find all the options not to your liking;

2 - you're also saying you can't be bothered with creating one.

As long as none is preventing you with addressing the second part: you are making a deliberate choice to not engage in the democratic process. You understand the consequences of that (in)action and you accept them. In no way that invalidates the choices made by the people who engage in it.

Saying that you CHOOSING not participate in the process makes it invalid is an offence to the people who fought to give you that choice and to the people that - to this date - are not given that option.

I'll say this one last time: this defeatist attitude towards the democratic process is exactly what the political establishment and the lobbies who enrich them are counting on, and this is why I considered it one of the main issues with democracy today.

The Official Monster Raving Loony Party [0] is doing more for the cause of democracy than people who decide that nothing is going to change, we are going to get anchovy pizza, so why bother with voting.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_...

Edit: Fixed typo - twice

Wow those are some assumptions.

> Being silent - not voting - is NOT the same as voting against something.

I never said it always is. However not voting does not mean being silent. I explained this in my analogy where most of the people said not interested in the pizza.

Similarly people who are vocal about politics in their life, online, participate in political fights in workplace, whether individually or through unions, other creative activities and so on are already participating in democratic processes. They are already not silent. The fact that some of them do not participate in a given vote they don't like does not diminish that.

> then they could join up and create an alternative. But this is not what happens.

Of course it happens, in general. Maybe you mean that in your country it does not happen, or it does happen but not everybody who does not vote is involved in that. So what? There are other ways to participate in democratic processes which I mentioned above.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com