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All I ask is object permanence

Individualizing systemic problems never works.

Being loving at all times is hard. Taking ten seconds to Google a candidate's platform is bone-dead-easy.

"the idea that voters...SHOULD BE smart and informed people" (emp mine) You said yourself you don't think people should fulfill this moral obligation.

I mean, in a perfect world they would be, but alas... This is where West Wing brain does some real damage

The only other solution for making liberal democracy a rule by an informed voter poil is by restricting the franchise, which has all sorts of problems and didn't really work when it was tried, either.

This also shows the problem with an American system where most voters only pay attention to voting for President. You can afford to have way dumber and more parochial voters for mayor and House, but low propensity voters don’t show up for those.

Don't call me a liberal.

I don't believe that though Those are your assumptions not mine

So many people who get mad at me for practicing ought with electeds, and then turn it around and practice ought with voters.

It is because the people running the party, the elected officials & all the consultants are college educated or Masters level. They focus on the issues that ‘matter k to that level of education, speak as if voters are all that level of education as well. We need more union and real regular folks.

The trick is, in practice, this isn't actually an issue. Wisdom of crowds, etc. Every dumb person is even out by a smart person. Plus, the mere act of negotiating, arguing, and consensus building makes people smarter.

Voters should be smart and well informed. Most people probably shouldn’t vote.

I have to vote for state mine inspector and precinct constable.

Even as citizens! Like, I know plenty of folks who volunteer a lot at church. Few of them ever want to have to care about diocesan convention or vestry meetings. You need to be able to pick people to do those things, and trust them to do it well.

Like, that’s aspirational. Orienting society as directed to that goal DOES NOT mean that every individual in the population is going to be smart and informed. That is an entirely different kind of goal.

Am I not allowed to be mad at people who vote based on their diet consisting entirely of AI Facebook slop

Well, sure, but it's never not going to chap my ass that you must pass a test to drive a car, but not the ship of state.

The reward for intelligence is not grievously harming yourself or others. Second I'm dumb too but never so dumb is vote for a fascist. Knowledge exists. If you don't seek it out before casting your vote your dumbness is a choice and moral failure that you should be mocked and insulted for.

Political activists must embrace the Cardale Jones mindset

This is why I am an unironic sortition guy. Meritocracy is bollocks we should be assigning decision making based on lottery if we actually want rule by the demos, with the attendent requirement to actually care about the political education of the demos

I'm all for letting the knuckleheads vote I just don't think they should run political parties with a ballot line

What a decentralized mess in year 1.75, but my guess is it gonna run better than the other side by year 5

Yeah so like peoples' lives shouldn't be sacrificed so that knuckleheads can be taught a lesson that they could have learned beforehand and won't learn anyway.

"Monarchy with aristocratic features" is probably the most common form of government historically (more so than straight up tyranny) and it doesn't have a great track record.

Disenfranchisement of any group creates an underclass. Create a large enough underclass and you just end up making a protected elite/nobility in inverse.

no shade for it! i'm not exempt from this fallacy, i think i just broke through it to a level of "oh yeah, remedial stuff will be in order, we ain't who we thought we were, all over the place"

A lot of Americans are literally babies when are they supposed to get a degree

But none of the basic expectations we have of voters are things that you need a university or even high school degree to know or be able to find out.

Both of my parents do tho

Granddad 1 - Some college (no degree), radiation safety officer at a nuke plant Granddad 2 - Attorney and aborted seminarian Grandmothers - Zero

Immigrated from the Pale of Settlement. We have his letters, you can see him getting angrier and angrier about not attending college over the years. He owned a dozen bowling alleys and many dry cleaners. Angry he wasn’t a bigger deal. Went into commercial real estate, lost money.

"Oh shit, im in a bubble"

I was one of the maybe 25% from my semi rural Oregon HS who did. Most of the guys I went to HS with are on FB posting a mix of the worst MAGA memes and selfies of themselves in camo standing in front of a dirty F250 with a dead deer or elk in the back. Sometimes it is their 12 year old kid in camo

The electorate is divided into 3 roughly equal groups: Partisan Dems, Partisan GOP, and disengaged "independents" whose level of political engagement is to basically to "pick up the remote and change the channel" when they are disgruntled. In few instances will more information change any of that.

The commies solved this bu making political education a prerequisite for political participation.

It's important to understand that online libs are the people who have fully embraced their abuse enabler status. Their statements cannot and should not be taken at face value; they are strategic statements meant to hide their actual beliefs and motivations - often even from themselves.

"Are" -- it's easy to observe that they aren't "Should be" -- it's not obvious that liberal democracy is viable below some threshold of "smart and informed." That threshold is quite low, but if we aren't below it we're closing in.

If only there were a way to know that jumping off a cliff is a bad idea without having to actually jump off a cliff and learn from the natural consequences. Oh well. Maybe some day someone will invent a way to transmit knowledge.