“We need to hold a referendum”
Get fucked.
We don’t hold referendums on building codes. We don’t ask neighborhoods to vote on whether restaurants should have to refrigerate meat.
Yes.
I’m reminded of a similar problem at work. It’s software stuff. I was trying to get people to adopt some easy standards so we’d stop having so many preventable problems. Just a basic linter and formatter. Takes like 30 minutes to set up.
Naturally some people opposed it. It’s change, they don’t understand it, they don’t mind the occasional bug, blah blah.
Someone said to me that achieving consensus is folly. There’s always going to be idiots and unqualified people who want to have their way. But they don’t know what they’re talking about, so if listen to them it’s going to be a bad time. He said to me just thank them for their input so they feel heard, and do the right thing anyway.
I don’t know how to square this with the ideals of democracy. But I’m really tired of the stupidest people on earth thinking their input is worthwhile. Unfortunately, I’m sure sometimes I’m the idiot.
I think some people mistake consensus for democracy. Consensus is a a higher threshold of harmony, definitely something we should strive for and could achieve given sufficient organizational foundations. But a hierarchical profit-motivated company or even a hierarchical municipal institution are not that necessary foundation.
In a world of power disparity and ulterior motives, committing to improvements despite marginal criticisms is usually the right thing to do and usually the only way anything ever gets better.
They also ask different things. Democracy asks what the majority wants to do. Consensus asks what everyone can at least live with.
Yeah my experience with community boards are that they’re effectively the municipality saying “No, you cannot do direct democracy. Unless you’re doing it to veto safe streets planned and proposed by the dedicated tax-paid professionals in the transportation department.” And surprise surprise the chairs of these CB committees are always car-owning boomers appointed for life by city council members. So very democratic.
