> If we want our respect for democracy to be taken seriously we need to respect democratic outcomes ... even when they are not the ones we prefer.
>> The question is, -- is it a deliberate democratic outcome, or is it an accidental consequence of local zoning codes and city planning?
>> If governments are involved in planning, it's legitimate to use laws and the planning process to try and push these processes out of local minima towards more globally optimal outcome.
In a democracy, government planning is supposed to push the process towards local preferences. It's not supposed to "push these processes...towards more globally optimal outcome," which when decoded means "what you or what some distant technocrat prefers."
> Governments should be working on multi-generational scales. Not "fads" of what people want because they saw it in a movie or they grew up with it.
If the people disagree with you, then you're not talking about democracy, you're talking about "benevolent" authoritarianism ("we know what's good for you, and that's what you're going to get, like it or not").
No, what we need is not "democracy" as in "we get what every idiot thinks is good off the top of their head".
What we need is a representative democracy, where our representatives genuinely care about getting the best outcomes, so they enlist experts who actually know what they're talking about, and make policy based on that.
Yes, sometimes that will disagree with what the masses want—and in most of those cases, that means that our representatives need to enlist some communication experts to explain why it's actually best.
Democracy isn't an end in itself. It's supposed to be the means to an end of better governance for all. We don't have to accept things that are actively worse for us just because 50%+1 of the relevant voters think they're better right this second.
Since when is government a democracy? Roman times or something like that? Most? Some? Or at least a few government officials are elected. Pretty sure most are hired.
Since today. We elect our representatives and they are supposed to reflect the people's wishes as they go about their duties. Some city government staff might be hired employees, even most. But they are still fundamentally accountable to the elected representatives, and thus to the people.
They run an election based on a platform. You are voting for the person and the platform. They aren’t there to do your wishes, but to accomplish their agenda the people “agreed” was the best of all options that election cycle.
Sometimes this agenda is altruistic, like reducing crime. Sometimes it is populist, or social, or even fascist. Even then, elected officials are supposed to have limited power, not unlimited power. In some (many, depending on where you live) cases, they’re not even accountable to the people — the people can’t recall them, to remove them is a political act by other parts of government.
> In a democracy, government planning is supposed to push the process towards local preferences.
In a representative, constitutional democracy, we're supposed to elect people who can more fully understand issues and possible outcomes, and work from there to create a system of laws and policies that is predictable and fair to all the parties.
This means that not every policy will be fully understood or agreed with by the populace. If we wanted to just implement what the public wants, we could just directly vote on every issue.
Orthogonally, there's a whole lot of the fabric of our daily lives that is just a certain way because that's how it's been so far. It works, but is neither popular nor unpopular-- it just is. That doesn't mean it couldn't be better.
>> The question is, -- is it a deliberate democratic outcome, or is it an accidental consequence of local zoning codes and city planning?
>> If governments are involved in planning, it's legitimate to use laws and the planning process to try and push these processes out of local minima towards more globally optimal outcome.
In a democracy, government planning is supposed to push the process towards local preferences. It's not supposed to "push these processes...towards more globally optimal outcome," which when decoded means "what you or what some distant technocrat prefers."