"Who is to blame when democracy implodes? — the voters or the pied pipers?"

[SlackerInc]

An interesting question, posed by P.M. Carpenter. The answer is of course “both”, but the real question is whether either side is more to blame. I assign significantly more blame to the voters, but I get the impression that most people here, as elsewhere, lay most of it at the feet of the demagogue or “Pied Piper” (just as they blame Democrats for not inspiring their base enough to get them to come out and midterms).

This is related to why I can’t get too bothered by the notion of rich people “buying elections” as long as people have the free choice to vote for whomever they like. I believe, regardless of advertising or any of that, that people should research on their own and figure out whether they should actually vote for the candidates who are throwing billions of dollars into marketing their brands.

[panache45]

One problem is that “research[ing] on their own” includes paying attention to commercials paid for by the rich. Most people don’t have the inclination or resources for in-depth independent research. And in some circles, “fact-checking” is frowned upon.

[robby]

As
[quoted]
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lessons-to-learn-from-the-brexit/2016/06/26/2642481e-3a4b-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html) in Carpenter’s commentary:

@E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post

“Don’t trash democracy or the voters. Where complicated choices are involved — and Brexit defines complexity — leaders in representative democracies need the guts to make hard calls and submit themselves to voters afterward. They should not use referendums purely to evade responsibility.”

I’ve heard a similar point made by numerous commentators in recent days, as I discussed here earlier today:

@robby

…In any event, holding the referendum the way they did was simply breathtaking in its stupidity on the part of the PM and his government.

I heard a political scientist talking about this on NPR yesterday. He stated that it was lunacy to set up a situation where 43 years of treaties and trade agreements could be reversed by a simple majority vote in a glorified opinion poll by the general public. The general public simply does not have the background or the full picture to make an intelligent decision.

This is why true direct democracy (as opposed to representative democracy) is a recipe for chaos. Even the ancient Athenians realized this, which is why they set up a balance between the Assembly (where direct democracy was exercised) and other governmental institutions.

In a representative democracy, the people elect leaders who are expected to make good decisions, and who are then responsible for the consequences of those decisions. If you hand a major decision over to the people, especially one that basically boils down to maintaining or rejecting the status quo, some people will vote to make a change simply as a protest vote – even if what they are protesting has nothing to do with what is actually being voted on.

The whole situation was a recipe for disaster from the start, and should have been better thought out from the beginning.

If it was decided that a referendum was necessary for political reasons, at a minimum a high bar should have been set up from the start, which should have included a supermajority requirement for any change to the status quo.

[Tom_Tildrum]

Voters reaching a result one doesn’t like doesn’t strike me as a danger to democracy. Few people raised this sort of existential concern about the Scottish referendum, after all.

The fact that the views of 52% of the electorate on an issue of the greatest importance were wholly unrepresented in the legislature – that seems like a significant systemic problem, and the parties ought to be seriously exploring how they drifted so far from the public at large.

[mr_wolf]

@Tom_Tildrum

Voters reaching a result one doesn’t like doesn’t strike me as a danger to democracy. Few people raised this sort of existential concern about the Scottish referendum, after all.

The fact that the views of 52% of the electorate on an issue of the greatest importance were wholly unrepresented in the legislature – that seems like a significant systemic problem, and the parties ought to be seriously exploring how they drifted so far from the public at large.

I also suspect that few people would raise these concerns if the result had gone the other way.

I’m somewhat taken aback by the general mood here. It’s seems like a replica, dopers have an outlook more in common with the restricted legislature than that of the wider public.

[Buck_Godot]

@SlackerInc

An interesting question, posed by P.M. Carpenter. The answer is of course “both”, but the real question is whether either side is more to blame. I assign significantly more blame to the voters, but I get the impression that most people here, as elsewhere, lay most of it at the feet of the demagogue or “Pied Piper” (just as they blame Democrats for not inspiring their base enough to get them to come out and midterms).

The problem with blming the voters is that you can’t do anything to solve that problem (other than get your own Peid Piper), while you can possibly do something about and individual Peid Piper. Its like asking whose to blame for what happened in New Orleans, The Bush administration or the hurricane. The hurricane obviously caused more damage but you can’t exactly hold it accountable.

@SlackerInc

[
This is related to why I can’t get too bothered by the notion of rich people “buying elections” as long as people have the free choice to vote for whomever they like. I believe, regardless of advertising or any of that, that people should research on their own and figure out whether they should actually vote for the candidates who are throwing billions of dollars into marketing their brands.

I am less concerned with rich people buying elections than I am with rich people buying politicians by paying for their elections.

[SlackerInc]

@robby

If it was decided that a referendum was necessary for political reasons, at a minimum a high bar should have been set up from the start, which should have included a supermajority requirement for any change to the status quo.

This is a good point. Sixty percent seems reasonable.

@panache45

One problem is that “research[ing] on their own” includes paying attention to commercials paid for by the rich. Most people don’t have the inclination or resources for in-depth independent research. And in some circles, “fact-checking” is frowned upon.

I’m not sympathetic to this. Nearly everyone has access to the Internet. And if you are using it to stay in a silo that reinforces bogus information, that’s on you.