Thinking about the fact that the vast majority of "our" "leaders" are willing to accept and even support genocide and realizing that representative democracy tends to elevate to the top those who are most willing and able to say whatever they need to s...

[freakazoid@retro.social]

Thinking about the fact that the vast majority of "our" "leaders" are willing to accept and even support genocide and realizing that representative democracy tends to elevate to the top those who are most willing and able to say whatever they need to say to get people to vote for them. In other words, people who are utterly without conscience.

Our societies are upside down, with people at the top who belong in the ground.

[rgegriff@hackers.town]

@freakazoid I don't think it's inherent to representative democracy, though. I think that's something fundamental to the nature of power, and the process of obtaining it.

Anytime you have someone with power, you have a whole cadre of people and institutions that are required to enable that power. It's like a currency a leader can spend to keep themselves in power.

And that currency is earned by spending resources on those power enabling entities in order to buy their loyalty.

This applies to dictatorships as it does to democracies. The difference, in theory at least, is the number of people and institutions that are required to be kept happy.

In a dictatorship, you might need to just keep your military happy, one or two extractive industries to build wealth, and a handful of people who can run interference for you if someone wants to take a run at the top.

In a democracy, the idea is that everyone is able to contribute equally to enabling power, and so those resources get distributed more fairly.

Realistically, though, those power enablers tend to consolidate. They form blocs; which makes it easier to selectively ignore some, while others can multiply their own stake by spending money to influence other blocs.

Capitalist or communist, democratic or authoritarian; all power structures seem to have some sort of convergence point, a sort of shit event horizon. Where the people directly in power start using oppressive tactics to prevent others from usurping that power, and the key enablers doing the same in order to keep that sweet flow of resources coming.

The only difference seems to be how fast they get there, and quickly you ramp up the strength of the oppression and how quickly you become less selective in who you are oppressing.

This all tends to end with those directly holding power making a fatal mis-calculation about how much enablement they can marshal behind themselves, and then a bunch of murders happen, then a power grab, and then you start the process over again.