Im reflecting from the pov of a parents role re: the kids. If you give the kids what they want, its going to be soda and candy every day of their lives. Some deciaions are tough, e.g. delayed gratification, and holding ones ground, but do voters even care about stuff like that?
Can we even hope on common sense, when the population is concerned?
Good for the country.
Most people are assholes. The government shouldn’t enact racist policies just because the people want to.
That feels like a false dilemma to me. The country and government, ideally, are the people.
The role of the government is to thread the needle of identifying who has power (including your common labor) and creating a consensus among them that prevents a civil war. It however usually becomes captured and ossified and is unable to identify when certain power blocks have reached their red lines that will topple the whole damn thing until a new government forms. Mandate of heaven essentially. Paternalistic or will of the people are legitimacy building frames but the reality is always material.
The role of a government is to collect taxes, then use those taxes to provide the most good to the greatest number of people.
In general, voters will have many ideas as to what that implementation should look like, which is why we elect representatives.
They are also supposed to limit freedoms, where they infringe on the freedom of others.
For example the freedom to shoot people infringes on the freedom to be free from physical harm. So it should be limited.
Last I checked, I’m not free to shoot anyone who isn’t trying to kill me.
Exactly. Because the legislative arm of the government did their job in that case.
What’s right for the people.
NOT the will of the people, because that’s just mob rule.
My mother always did the former and despite pretty much ignoring the “will” was reelected for decades.
All we can do is try our best to follow the middle path between the two. A dictator is bad but a benevolent dictator might guide us with a firm hand that benefits most while negatively affecting the least. Of course, based on human nature, all power eventually corrupts so who knows? I’m surprised we made it this far.
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It is to extract wealth from its residents to provide a steady steam of transfer towards the rich.
Yeah, sometimes what the people want isn’t what is best for them. But having the people in power decide what is best for other people can sometimes be dangerous. I’ve had people in power make decisions for me that they said was in my best interest and I don’t think it was. There is no answer that fits every situation. It’s a real big grey area deciding when it is and isn’t okay for someone to have someone else make their decisions for them.
Anakin: we need a system where the politicians decide what’s in the best interest of all the people and then do it
Padme: that’s exactly what we do; the trouble is people don’t always agree
Anakin: then they should be made to
Padme: sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship
