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Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. It seems to me that the biggest contributor to this is the vulnerability of the electo

• GardenLetter27 8mo ago
  IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. We have a severe housing shortage, barely improved public transport since the 80s, a lack of energy production (in Europe), lack of reservoirs, an aging population and increased international competition, etc. And this all creates a huge pressure for ordinary people, just housing alone has a huge impact now - stunting the formation of families, and effectively taxing productive people to fund those who were lucky enough to buy the assets in the past.
  • grunder_advice 8mo ago
    Propaganda always builds on real greviences that the electorate has. It's good that you bring up housing. There are, to my knowledge no political parties that have made housing their top agenda item. They only use housing as a talking point to serve their message. For example the extreme right will just say, immigrants are occupying all the housing supply. The extreme left will say it's just capitalism that is to blame.
    • sseppola 8mo ago
      So many people have much of their capital in housing which makes it extremely unpopular to try to lower the prices, so neither side is going to make this their top priority.
    • ipsento606 8mo ago
      The problem with the housing issue is that real solutions to it are extremely unpopular, even amount people who agree with the scale and intensity of the problem. The regular voting public doesn't even agree that there's a connection between increasing the supply of housing and housing becoming more affordable. Their position is, roughly, "there's plenty of housing already - it just needs to be more affordable for regular people". Sometimes this even manifests in support for self-defeating demand subsidies like help-to-buy schemes for new homeowners This is a position that can never be satisfied because it is fundamentally disconnected from reality. It is equivalent to the meme of the dog with the stick in its mouth who wants you to throw the stick for them, but not take the stick from them.
  • watwut 8mo ago
    That does not explain radicalization and anti-democratic turn of billionaires. Ordinary people who are turning fascists are not turning fascists because of economic anxiety. They reject party that make economy better.
    • hojofpodge 8mo ago
      Business owners turn fascist over economic anxiety. Hitler's funders were afraid they would be irrelevant in an international context. The people have real grievances but tend to follow any *hole who has been the visible problem all along but can say the problem is that they were blocked from creating the ultimate vision of a perfect **hole. I don't know the answer to representational democracy but I think there is something in systems like the Scandinavian judiciary where the jury is professional and competent. A place like the US is a failure because there is a fear of setting any professional requirements on political positions. This is not irrational because the US has not dealt with its history of Jim Crow laws such that it will never happen again. The US is actually organized to make sure it happens again.
      • microtonal 8mo ago
        Business owners turn fascist over economic anxiety. The grandparent said billionaires though. Some of them may have economic anxiety (not being in the government's graces might damage your company), but it seems most see a possibility of operating in an environment where they are not constrained by 'pesky' rules. E.g. leveraging Trump's wrath to pressure the EU into dropping laws like the DMA/DSA that protects citizens against the power of large tech companies.
        • Spooky23 8mo ago
          They have alot of anxiety. More money, more problems as they say.
    • fc417fc802 8mo ago
      > They reject party that make economy better. I didn't realize there was a cut and dry "correct" answer. Has it occurred to you that perhaps you are subject to similar biases as other people without being aware of it?
  • lljk_kennedy 8mo ago
    Failure of the markets, and capitalism in general. Surely if the markets worked properly there would be ample housing due to demand?
    • _heimdall 8mo ago
      In much of the west we don't really have markets in any useful sense. Overregulation and financialization ruin markets, and we've allowed both to creep into effectively every market that matters.
  • AlecSchueler 8mo ago
    > Western governments have been mostly incapable of building housing and infrastructure. The reason we need non stop housing construction is because the underlying issue is capitalism's demand for infinite growth.
    • fc417fc802 8mo ago
      That doesn't really make sense. The population in most of the west is vaguely around replacement. A given individual can only make use of so much housing at once. Sure if you're rolling in cash throw in a vacation home or two. There's a pretty quick falloff in terms of utility, status, desire, any metric that's coming to mind as I type this. It seems to me that at least in the US the issue is location. There's cheap stock in places without jobs and ridiculously expensive stock where the good jobs are located. It doesn't have to be this way.
    • jcbrand 8mo ago
      It's not capitalism that requires infinite growth, it's our current monetary system. New money is created by lending it into existence, with interest. That last bit is key. In order to pay off the interest, you need money, which was also loaned into existence with interest. The only way to maintain this is through constant economic growth. Without it there's a deflationary collapse.
    • bell-cot 8mo ago
      Millennia before Adam Smith was born, pretty much every human societies which built "houses" (be they crude tents, igloos, lean-tos, thatched huts, or whatever) made a point of building enough of those to house all their members. Capitalism has financialized housing, and that seems to be a major cause of the "can't actually build housing" problem.
      • jhbadger 8mo ago
        In general, in pre-industrial societies families built their own houses rather than "society" building them for them. Of course this was because 1) many tribal societies had no concept of land ownership so you could just build wherever someone else wasn't using, and often these were temporary for a season or two anyway 2) later feudal societies where there was land ownership had land mostly owned by a nobleman who allowed his serfs to build their cottages on his land.
  • cycomanic 8mo ago
    This is one thing that I don't understand, take for example Germany, the population barely grew over the last 20 years [1], at the same time there has been a building boom that building costs have risen dramatically (more than doubled between 2010 and 2024). Compare that to the 60s and 70s where population was rising much faster in combination with the rebuilding effort. So is the growth of housing stock lower than the population growth? If yes how come that this was not the case when population growth was significantly faster (even 30 years ago). I don't recall there being more building going on when I was young than now, in fact if anything my impression is it's the other way around. [1] https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/germany-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/germany-popul...
    • laffOr 8mo ago
      Not German so I can only talk about how it is going in another country: - Massive change in the average household size: way fewer people live together now (delayed couple & family formation, divorce, etc.). If you go from 4 people per household to 2 people per household, now you need twice as many homes. - Massive internal migration: declining population in a lot of rural areas and increasing in cities & their suburbs. So lot of empty houses and super cheap houses in Dumbfuck, Nowhere but scarce & expensive homes where people want to live.
      • bell-cot 8mo ago
        Yes. There is also the problem of housing "lost" to the lifestyles of the well-to-do - whether that's 1%'ers who own multiple houses, or regular housing which becomes short-term rentals (Airbnb or whatever). In places, those are major problems. Overall - the biggest problem those cause might be that they're socially divisive distractions from bigger issues.
      • anal_reactor 8mo ago
        Makes me think of the typical example where building more wider highways increases congestion because more people travel by car.
    • dv_dt 8mo ago
  • antman 8mo ago
    I will agree but rephrase, they were not incapable limiting supply of housing or chinese imports or international information channels is the model. Artificial barriers, ethical redefinitions, rag pulling, tollboothing have been the way to divide and conquer to channel the decaying international and domestic market share to political affiliates. Most political , maga, lgbt, policing, race etc issues are highlighted and disproportionately promoted to noise out discourse about money. If money and safety is considered as a key factor of historical actions and current events, then countries grievances are eastbti explain. When I hear for the other side the media to claim “they went crazy”, “they are barbarian subhumans” I know I am being manipulated.
    • kergonath 8mo ago
      > When I hear for the other side the media to claim “they went crazy” Well, sometimes people do in fact get crazy or act irrationally.
    • AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
      > When I hear for the other side the media to claim “they went crazy”, “they are barbarian subhumans” I know I am being manipulated. You need to learn to recognize that when it comes from your side of the media, too.
  • atmavatar 8mo ago
    > IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. I can't speak for other countries, but in the US, a big reason the real problems aren't being addressed is because of propaganda. To my mind, the biggest problem is ultimately wealth/power consolidation in the hands of a shrinking group, resulting from massive consolidation of markets, repeatedly eliminating taxes on the most wealthy, and legalized bribery finally cemented in the Citizens United ruling. As a regular worker, you have limited job mobility because there are fewer businesses within any market you may specialize in, those remaining players in the market often act as cartels, and emboldened shareholders demand layoffs on the regular. It feels like you're drowning in costs because housing has long outpaced inflation while your typical yearly raise rarely meets or exceeds it. You can turn to your representatives for some relief, but voting Republican is guaranteed to make the problem worse (and they aren't shy about telling you they'll screw you over for the benefit of the wealthy), while voting Democrat doesn't actually make things better because they're controlled by the same special interests and merely present the illusion of an alternative. The consolidated media, owned almost entirely by wealthy individuals with explicit mandates to support right-wing messages (e.g., Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Sinclair Broadcasting group, and now Paramount Skydance) and constantly tell you that all your problems are really the fault of immigrants and other minorities - hence how we ended up with ICE-occupied cities, while simultaneously only making the problem worse with tariffs, which both increased prices and led to a slump in job creation.
  • zavec 8mo ago
    > IMO the issue is not propaganda at all, but real physical problems that are not being addressed. I don't think those are mutually exclusive. There can be real problems, and propaganda can magnify those and lead people to decisions that are for the benefit of the propagandist rather than things that will actually solve the problem.
• lazide 8mo ago
  It’s always been the case (people getting hi jacked with propaganda campaigns!) The difference now is how targeted, specific, and external said campaigns can be - for cheap. Previously, if you started to send the anti-every-other-group propaganda to each individual, you’d be clearly identifiable, it would be more visible (flyers, leaflets, etc.) and consequences could be aimed in your direction. What is going on now appears to be more like most people have ‘your own little narcissist’ in their pocket, poking their buttons in a way designed to drive them and everyone else crazy while deflecting the blame on everyone else. Also, as the peer comment noted - all of this distracts from people’s actual real needs being met, which makes them easier to manipulate. It’s a classic strategy for any Narcissist.
  • grunder_advice 8mo ago
    Thanks for making this point. I 100% agree. I think previously the way politics worked, there was an element of people keeping each other in check. Now everyone can become as radicalized as their individual limits allow them to become because they live in a personally crafted narrative.
    • lazide 8mo ago
      Yes, and not just politics - also day to day life. People would naturally average out with others around them, emotionally. Not that previously there weren’t real issues (including, quite literally Nazi’s), but it previously required a whole society to go through something like a wide scale traumatic event (like post-WW1 massive external payments, hyperinflation, and associated social problems!) to get the momentum going. Of course, then it was super dangerous because you had most of a society on the same page and working together. :s Here, it seems like it’s mostly chaos and navel gazing, with small scale specific targeting of high profile areas, for ratings. At least so far. The Overton window is shifting, and I’m not looking forward to where it is going so far.
      • AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
        The Overton window isn't shifting. It's shattering. Take gay marriage, for instance. There was a time when 95% (number made up, but I think it's roughly right) of the population thought that obviously gay marriage wasn't real marriage. There was a clearly defined window, and 95% of the population's position fit within 95% of the population's idea of what the window was. Now you have maybe 40% of the population thinking that if you don't support gay marriage, you're a fascist oppressor and persecutor. You still have 30% thinking that no, gay marriage does not fit what marriage is. And you have the middle 30% thinking some variant of "they can marry, but you can question that without being a nazi". And each of those positions holds their own idea of where the Overton window is supposed to be. In that landscape, there is no view of where the Overton window is that is 1) held by the majority of people and 2) the majority of people hold views that fit within that window. That's what I mean by the window shattering, not just moving.
• goatlover 8mo ago
  Who is responsible for these sustained propaganda campaigns? Some of it is foreign interference looking to destabilize, but a lot of it is sponsored by wealthy individuals whose interests are a lot different than the average person, and whose opinions are sheltered from the realities of ordinary life.
  • arethuza 8mo ago
    "There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." Warren Buffet https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26ever...
    • oddmade 8mo ago
      THIS
  • Spooky23 8mo ago
    The core are reactionary people who control resource extraction businesses. The Koch’s, Waltons, etc. Now there are many players. The useful idiots have enriched themselves enough that they are a force unto themselves,
• mikkupikku 8mo ago
  Even if everybody agreed on the basic facts (which is only possible if they're all drinking from the same well, eg impossible if the press is free) there would still be huge disagreement on what political course of action to take in response to those agreed upon facts, because different people have different values. Take your global warming example, and suppose we have a magic wand to make everybody agree that it's happening, that humans were causing it, that its happening fast enough to cause massive extinctions, and that action now might still prevent this. With all of these given as universally held beliefs, it should be easy to resolve right? Well no, because in this scenario the magic wand aligned just about everything except values. Does somebody really care about the long term ecological impact of the thing more than they care about how environment austerity would impact them and their family personally? Some will, some won't, so the political debate remains standing. In fact, many of those selfish people will probably decide to stubbornly insist on a narrative that global warming isn't real, even though they know it is (thanks to the magic wand), so you'll be left wondering if your wand even worked at all.
  • rahimnathwani 8mo ago
    Apart from facts and values, people differ in their ability to predict the outcome of policy choices.
    • grunder_advice 8mo ago
      Exactly. Most propaganda is about embellishment and fear mongering that completely destroys the ability of the individual to accurately access the topic at hand.
      • rahimnathwani 8mo ago
        You're assuming they had (or would have had) the ability in the first place. (s/access/assess)
    • pillefitz 8mo ago
      I'm currently building an app for that: https://causity.app/ https://causity.app/ It's more of a communication tool than one for exact modeling of system dynamics, but this could follow once the basic mechanics are agreed on.
• jonstewart 8mo ago
  I dunno monied interests leveraging newfound scale of propaganda through internet monopolies might also bear some of the blame.
• rolandog 8mo ago
  > You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That by itself is a hard ask. [...] Personally, I don't think it's that hard of an ask. The problem was allowing the platforming of disinformation sponsored by adversary nation states that led to the mental pollution and radicalization of so many individuals. Also, not protecting the neutral institutions and allowing that distrust be sown was a big mistake. Finally, not taking the reports of infiltration of police and security agencies by extreme right organizations seriously has been proving to be a nation-ending level of an error.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• XorNot 8mo ago
  > Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. No America is pretty uniquely having one, but because of American exceptionalism instead it can never just be an American problem it simply must be a global one.
• _heimdall 8mo ago
  In my opinion these types of problems always boil down to fear. When a person or people are afraid they act erratically. At a large scale it often leads to the wrong type of leader stepping up to use that fear for their own gain, in many cases they pull the majority together by pointing at a smaller group and claiming they're the cause of all the problems. The only reliable solution I know to that is for people to be principled. People need to know what core fundamentals matter to them and they need to stick to those guns consistently. Today it seems like we've lost that almost entirely. Most people hold strong views on certain topics or policies but they aren't driven by principles, that becomes clear when their strong opinions contradict themselves at a pretty fundamental level. There are plenty of symptoms of the problem and I'm oversimplifying here, but if I could wave a magic wand and change one thing it would be to restore principles back in the average person. I honestly don't care what their principles are, I don't think that's the point, we simply can't move in a good direction without people knowing what matters to them.
  • microtonal 8mo ago
    The only reliable solution I know to that is for people to be principled. ...and educated. Today it seems like we've lost that almost entirely. We replaced it by egoism. Through decades of neoliberalism we are taught to only care about ourselves, not our communities. Making money and buying things became our main philosophy. It does not matter if you are actually well-off, everyone is in a race with everyone else. As a result, we don't stand up against injustice as long as it does not affect us much. And the egoism makes everything seem like a zero-sum game, if an immigrant gets a house paid by taxes, then I must be losing something. This is also what permeates current US policy - you can only win if someone else loses. In this mindset it is not possible to have cooperation that is mutually beneficial. I hope we can heal as mankind and take care of each other again.
    • _heimdall 8mo ago
      For sure, I agree education helps and could be considered a prerequisite to someone really be principled to begin with. It takes wisdom to learn what matters to you and to see patterns behind any particular topic of the day, and wisdom only comes about through education and experience. I am always torn a bit on education as a goal though. I don't like centralized education, it makes it much to easy to lead to similar problems we have today when any small group of people can decide what and how every person is required to be taught. We need people educated by their own choice, going down whatever paths they find interesting and learning from that journey. Its my belief that people are generally good, and given the time and space to find their own core principles, and a Democratic type of system where our voices can be heard, things will generally work out for the best in the end. I'll always take the collective opinion of principled individuals over the strongly held views of the small few in power at the time.
• rsp1984 8mo ago
  The boring but true answer is that the only thing people should be protesting for is a change of the electoral law. Everything else is downstream of that. In the US, it's a de-facto duopoly on power, held up by a number of "winner-takes-all" rules. Politicians of either party will do everything in their power to keep "outsiders" (i.e. people/parties that are not entrenched in the two-party system and might actually drive positive change) from ever gaining a foothold. In Germany it's the famous 5% rule that virtually ensures that every new party must maximize populism or perish. I'm sure it's very similar in most other "democratic" countries. Laws aren't perfect. In fact they often are buggy as hell. The electoral law is certainly no exception. However it is ultimately the law that matters most as it determines who can raise to power and who can't. Ensuring it fair and democratic should be the #1 civic duty.
  • jhbadger 8mo ago
    I'm not sure "keeping out outsiders" is a bug. The US is experiencing what it is like to be governed by an outsider with no previous political experience and who thinks things like "laws" don't apply to him, and who thinks experts can't be trusted and puts unqualified people in charge of the military, science and health. Politicians need to develop -- they should start with a local position, and "graduate" to a national-level position before they even attempt to rule a nation.
    • fc417fc802 8mo ago
      Notably, we could do that while still abolishing first past the post. Requirements for holding a previous position could be added while simultaneously reforming the federal (and hopefully also state) systems to be compatible with multiple parties. I imagine it would be sufficient for each level to require a single term served at the previous level - city or county, state, and federal. The downside is encouraging career politicians, but the upside is that if you can't win increasingly high stakes elections over a period of 10 years or so then you probably have no business being the president of a country this size.
      • Atreiden 8mo ago
• racktash 8mo ago
  I think you've described the problem (or one of them) very well. We've seen how misinformation -- including ideas that were once fringe, believed only by a minority of cranks -- spreads and becomes acceptable, becomes a "legitimate alternative opinion". We've seen, too, how hostile states, populists within, spread falsehoods to sew havoc and division. My only hope, really, is that I think some of the younger generation are slightly more alert than some Gen X and millennials (my own generation) as to the dangers of misinformation online. I wish I knew the solution too. Like you, I feel quite helpless even in terms of what to WANT. Can the Twitters of the world be regulated? If so, are we as a society able to agree on how it should be regulated, or are we too divided to agree on anything? It's a mess. I don't know how we get out of it.
• raincole 8mo ago
  > You have individuals who at best completely a BSc in Business Studies, and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change. That by itself is a hard ask. But it's more or less the premise of democracy. A professor in our school jokingly said that the key of functional democracy is to distance average voters from decision making processes. Now I am not so sure whether he was joking at all.
• rjdj377dhabsn 8mo ago
  > Pretty much all western countries are experiencing a crisis of democracy. Genuine question: what exactly is a "crisis of democracy"? I see this term thrown around all the time now, but all I can conclude is it's just part of the hyperbolic rhetoric that dominates mainstream and social media.
• hackable_sand 8mo ago
  Then why are you propagating class divide in your very comment? Like what the actual fuck?
• SCdF 8mo ago
  > and you are asking them to decide on COVID or climate change In case you didn't mean this, do you agree that the propaganda you're referencing above is the "you" in this sentence? eg the propaganda is the thing that is asking them to decide on covid or climate change. I don't think anyone who is genuine expects the public to have expertise in these topics. The propaganda seems centred around a constant war against intellectualism and expertise, such that people think they should have an opinion on things they are woefully unqualified to have opinions on, and politicians just align themselves to what they think will get votes.
  • xtiansimon 8mo ago
    > “…do you agree that the propaganda you're referencing above is the "you" in this sentence?” ?? The op is making “propaganda” by some assertions in their comment?
    • SCdF 8mo ago
      Sorry I think I worded it badly. The OP is not the you, I mean the propaganda is. As in, a large part of the propaganda is the idea that people should have opinions about this kind of thing, as opposed to accepting the idea that there are people who are more well versed in these topics than they are. eg the scientific consensus is that global warming is real and it's a big problem. There isn't really an opinion to have there, broadly.
• redkoan 8mo ago
  Sometimes it seems to me that the general population should forsake the illusion of privacy on the web, and that mass interactions (comment sections, social media etc.) should embrace and enforce verified identities online more to curb the amount of influence being exerted on the public opinion. To much poison in the well without any (social) accountability
• kylecazar 8mo ago
  Populism tends to emerge from real grievances. Economic hardship, job insecurity, rapid social change. We're definitely seeing it. Simultaneously, propaganda is getting worse. If you read the NY Post/Facebook and watch Fox, you aren't just getting a different opinion from someone watching CNN and reading the NYT. You're getting different facts. I encourage people to do a comparison. Its wild.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• starryex 8mo ago
  I think one think we can do as engineers is refuse to build these propaganda machines. All the tools used to infect people with the propaganda are built by us. Refuse to work for the biggest offenders - Google, Meta, Twitter, etc. Engineers lust after these jobs and then complain about the fall of democracy. This is the biggest thing we can do. Refuse to build the tools of misinformation.