They are stupid people. That’s true. But they’re not wrong about this.

Trump’s insanity is kind of like the US gun violence epidemic. Most reasonable people know it’s an extremely fucked up and unacceptable situation, but no one’s really sure what to do about it, so we’re just gonna kind of ignore it and become desensitized to it. I mean, most decent people thought Sandy Hook would be the turning point. That had to be a red line, right? Nope. Similarly, Trump threatens the existence of an entire civilization. That has to be it, right? Like, that’s gotta a red line, right? Probably not.

I think that sounds great. I mean, who doesn’t want to have their cake and eat it too, right? Except, it’s not possible. You can’t both have the full piece of cake remaining on your plate and have eaten it too. If you eat the cake, you don’t have it on your plate anymore, and if you have your cake on your plate, you haven’t eaten it yet. The two things are mutually exclusive.

But, maybe individual autonomy and community aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. I’m willing to entertain that, even though I’ve been conditioned my whole life to believe that they are. But just because propaganda is effective, that doesn’t mean it’s true. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little skeptical.

In these communities of individuals, would there be any limits placed on individual autonomy? It seems like there would have to be. The community would have to have some rules and laws that everyone was expected to follow, I would assume. How would those rules be enforced? How would the rules be enacted? Through direct democracy? Would it require a unanimous vote or would a simple majority do? If the latter, what about the dissenters? Would the people who didn’t vote for the rule be expected to adhere to it?

I just don’t know what change you can get people on board with. I mean, of course, people don’t like that everything’s getting more expensive and that the traditional middle class lifestyle is getting further out of reach, but for most of those people the only solutions they want to hear are the ones that involve them making more money. They might also listen to the solutions that would bring prices down, but not if it means recession, higher unemployment, lower wages, and a debt crisis.

Everyone’s just trying to make enough money so they can escape. It’s like the ship is sinking and everyone’s scrambling for a lifeboat. Everyone knows there aren’t anywhere near enough lifeboats for everyone, they know most people will go down with the ship, and they’re hustling and grinding out of a hope that maybe, maybe they’ll be one of the lucky ones.

How do you fix that? How do you “fix” a sinking ship? Isn’t it kinda too late at that point?

Edit: Americans are just not interested in collective solutions to our problems, and I think part of that is because most of us associate working as a group with a loss of individual control. I think our intense focus on hyper individualism really comes down to a desire for control. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be a part of a group and in total control, simultaneously. Unless you’re the head of the group. We can only accept a group if we can run it. It’s really just all about control, and a fear of losing control.

That’s why we’re so obsessed with rugged individualism. That’s why we want to be our own sovereigns. We each seek to be the kings or queens of our own little kingdoms of one. Telling an American to abandon their sovereignty and join the group is sacrilege. It’s asking them to willingly apply shackles and chains.

Right, so for most people there’s no such thing as enough. I didn’t say it was “human nature,” necessarily. Perhaps it is cultural, idk. But as of right now, it is true that if you asked most people how much money is enough, they would answer, “more.”

Now, maybe we as a society need to say to some people, “sorry, but you can’t have any more.” I would agree with that. But, it doesn’t seem like enough people are on board with that. Maybe because a majority of people see the very rich and high income earners as aspirational figures. Regardless, this is where we are.

There’s no such thing as enough. Most people only want more, no matter how rich they are or how much money they make. The person making $25K a year, wants more. The person making $50K a year, wants more. The person making $100K a year, wants more. The person making $500K a year, wants more. The person making $1M a year, wants more. The person making $10M a year, wants more. And so on, forever.

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You’re 100% right. I’m wrong, about everything. Ever. Please leave me alone now.

Oh my god, I am so fucking sick of this conversation. Ok, some leftists want to build a leftist program, some don’t. Some want to build a coalition with non-leftists, some don’t. Or whatever, who knows, I don’t fucking care anymore.

All of that shit happened before I was born. All I can tell you is I never wanted you or any other leftist to be subservient to anyone. As far as I’m concerned you can think and vote however the hell you want. I can’t speak to what other people want, I don’t control other people.

But let’s be honest, you never wanted a coalition, you just wanted leftists to be subservient to liberals.

That’s not true. You can vote however you want, you can advocate for whatever political movement you want and you can try to build the world that you want. That’s always been true and that remains true.

you think they are on the same “team”. Leftists are not your “army” to command

I don’t think that. I did think leftists wanted to build a coalition with other groups to take on the far right, but I know better now. Don’t worry, I won’t make that mistake again.

There are leftists attempting to build a program. And the people who think they are leftists (but aren’t actually leftists) don’t like the program and instead attack the program and argue for defeating the right at all costs.

I agree. “Left unity” is a myth. Non-Leftists really need to stop trying to build a coalition with the Left. Leftists are not interested in coalition building, they’re only interested in building their program. We non-Leftists need to finally realize this.

…you’re not the left.

You’re right, I’m not.

And the right wins again. By default.

The right has such a huge advantage. All they have to do is sit back and wait for the left to destroy itself through purity tests and infighting.

It’s like if two armies met on a battlefield, but instead of fighting each other one of the armies just fought amongst themselves while the other watched.

There are many smaller democracies that don’t score well, such as most of South America, the Caribbean, much of Africa, etc.

Sure, I acknowledge that. I’m not saying that a smaller population guarantees a successful democracy, nor a social democracy, but I think it is one of the requisites. Those other things you mentioned are probably requisites as well.

Again, I think it comes down to simple math. A single representative can’t represent 600,000 people as effectively as 30,000. More people means greater diversity of thoughts and ideas, beliefs, ideologies, interests, etc. And that’s especially true if the people hold mutually exclusive ideas. For instance, a representative can’t represent both a white supremacist and black civil rights leader simultaneously. Their goals and world view are diametrically opposed. A representative can’t represent both at the same time, at least not on the matter of civil rights. Similarly, a representative can’t represent both a social democrat and a neoliberal capitalist simultaneously. Their goals are in direct opposition to one another. The social democrat wants higher taxes and a stronger social safety net, the neoliberal wants lower taxes and a smaller safety net.

You pulled numbers out of your ass and pretended they’re the right ones with no further consideration or evidence given.

No, I researched the numbers of the Norway government and US government. Feel free to verify them on your own. You will find they are accurate.

I could as easily say that 10 million per rep and 1000 reps should work with the right system and infrastructure.

Ok, well, can you provide a single example? I’ve provided one, and I could provide more. Every one of the top ten democracies have a significantly lower number or represented people per elected representative than the US. There’s only one democracy that has a higher number of represented people per representative than the US, and that’s India, with a total of about 1.7 million people per representative. I should note that India ranks 41 on the democracy index, and has the classification of “flawed democracy.” Also, no one considers India to be a social democracy, that I could find.

Social democracy can, and does work, under the right circumstances. One of those is a reasonable population level. For social democracy to work, you need democracy. It’s in the dang name. But a representative democracy where each representative needs to try and represent 637,000 people is unreasonable. If you want social democracy to work, you need to get the democracy part working, and that requires a manageable population.

So, let’s say each representative would represent no more than 50,000 people. It’s an arbitrary number but I’m just picking something for the sake of argument. We also wouldn’t want the legislative body to be too large and unwieldy, so let’s say it shouldn’t have more than 200 seats. That means the total population shouldn’t exceed 10 million.

Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence.

I was thinking about it and it came to me. It’s actually simple math.

Norway is the world’s top democracy, according to the world democracy index. Norway has a total population of about 5.6 million people. Their parliament has 169 seats. That means each seat represents about 33,000 people. The US, on the other hand, has a total population of about 341 million people. The US Congress has 535 total seats (435 in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate). That’s about 637,000 people per seat. For each US Congress seat to represent 33,000 Americans, our Congress would need to grow to about 10,300 seats. Obviously, that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to act like a representative can represent 637,000 people as well as 33,000 people.

There’s your evidence.