re: Is Voting A Form Of Violence?

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Voting is useless.

If it made a difference, we wouldn’t be allowed to do it.

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There is some validation to this. It really doesn't matter who wins, corporations and the lobbyist they pay along with the special interest groups is who really has the power.

And all these politicians who are promising everyone they will do this or that.. They are all full of shite, yeah they will do enough to keep you voting for them, but most of them are all after their piece of the pie.

That's why its funny when people who think that if only one party gets elected things would change..

Its best to pay less attention to all of that shite and just live your life, but some people are ate up.

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When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force my friends is violence.

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False equivalency.

This shite is why we need to add philosophy/reasoning to elementary curriculum.

that’s a really dumb quote

Government is force/violence, no matter how the leaders are chosen.

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Parliamentary systems in particular are very good at diffusing power proportionally

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Like Westminster-style Parliamentary systems, or do you have something else in mind?

Absolutely.

Particularly today, when people seem more bent on punishing the other guy.

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Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can. Benjamin Martin

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there are very good reasons to suggest that democratic systems are good

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Its a race to the bottom.

Democracy sucks, but even relative democracy has its limits. I think 360 million people are ungovernable by one government and 2 parties.

Democracy is cool on a local level, it sucks at the federal level. Its mob rule (by definition) and this country is FAAAR too diverse for it.

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Republics have little do with who holds the executive power and everything to do with how the law is applied to everyone within its jurisdiction.

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Then we don’t have a republic any more.

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Why?

Historically they are an aberration.

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We are entering into a completely new age with respect to demographics. I can't state that enough. Imperial systems were excellent at dealing with small, orphaned populations which did not have a large population base, and could be adequately represented by each individual group's elite. That is absolutely not possible given current population pressures, and unless something changes in a massive way, won't ever be possible again.

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And they emerged in the West, because the bourgeoisie, the rich upper middle class, wanted to replace the aristocracy, and rule in their place. There was no higher moral value, it was simply raw power.

And when you look back at ancient peoples, be it the Greeks, or the Hindus, rule by the rich, the oligarchs, has always proved to be unstable and short lived. They have all the wrong values, and are incapable of building systems that endure.

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Well, there are meaningful differences between imperial polities too. It was a matter of good fortune that Arab conquests did not upend preexisting institutional structures, instead adopting Byzantine, Persian and Indian systems, because their interests were only taxation, for the most part. That fact saved a lot of familiar imperial structures that otherwise would not be stable or be able to deal with change very well, as the development of imperial polity in Japan, for example, isn't exactly a picture of stability.

I don't think people can fathom the immense population changes you saw after the 1920s. Parliamentary systems can play interests off one another to ensure a status quo while at the same time making parties aspirational. Imperial systems could not deal with the same population pressures in areas with incredibly diverse ethnic populations, as the end of both the Austrian (and then the Austro-Hungarian) and Ottoman Empires make clear.