> Except that these oppressive acts are law-making: the oppressive act under discussion is the vote.
I don't understand how is voting oppressive. Bad laws can be changed; what cannot be changed are things like loss of human lives, that's irreversible. You are arguing very abstractly; perhaps more specific example of oppression (ideally from the real world) would help? I would like to see a historic example of law promoted by majority (and if possible, opposed by elites) that had extremely negative consequences for some minority.
> How is this anything but tyranny by majority?
No, you're misunderstanding. It's that majority will change their vote to conform the minority view (if the idea is good, of course), not other way around. Just look at my example - unemployment. Even though unemployed people are in ephemeral minority, unemployment is a big topic for everybody, the majority. Because many people have been unemployed in the past or know someone, who was. So if someone is proposing to help the minority of unemployed, majority will probably vote for it. Neither they are probably going to support harming unemployed people.
> the first thing it says is that it's "half-direct"
The half-direct is more precise term, direct democracy is not quite practical, but it has important advantages to representative democracy. Half-direct democracy is a good compromise between those features.
> Personally, my conclusion is that, for the United States to more likely attain a "consensual result", it needs a higher degree of homogeneity, not direct democracy.
Well, the causality is the other way around - Swiss are homogenous because they have decades of experience in building consensus. But think whatever you want.
> It's probably very difficult to understand my point when you aren't really reading what I wrote in good faith.
The point is, in a real democracy, you don't have to pick from (as little as) two packages of issues that some clever marketers designed. That really means that there is no clear minority and majority - in some issues you may be minority and in some majority. In other words, being in minority is an artifact of the representative political system (and the majority voting or two party system makes it worse).
> As far as I can tell, our actual difference of opinion can be demonstrated with this thought experiment.
You don't have to do thought experiments. There have been quite a lot of cases where Swiss people changed the majority view from conservative to more progressive one. It's a little slower process (may take several years), but it happens. There have been also some regresses (I think some anti-mosque laws and such), but these happen at the same glacial pace, and are no worse than anywhere else.
You know, Switzerland and U.S. (not on federal level, and in all states, unfortunately) both have half-direct democracy, and they have some highest living standards in the world. Is that just a coincidence? (I certainly don't see much oppression going on there, and that's why this "tyranny of the majority" argument always seemed to me as some ivory tower bullshit.)
I'm interested in having this discussion, but you keep changing your position completely with every post. Now I'm at the point where I'm imagining we actually agree with each other, but neither of us seem capable of actually communicating anything useful.
Assuming that we are in agreement, there isn't really any point to our discussion. If we aren't, then we can't get anywhere because I can't even comprehend your position.
I don't understand how is voting oppressive. Bad laws can be changed; what cannot be changed are things like loss of human lives, that's irreversible. You are arguing very abstractly; perhaps more specific example of oppression (ideally from the real world) would help? I would like to see a historic example of law promoted by majority (and if possible, opposed by elites) that had extremely negative consequences for some minority.
> How is this anything but tyranny by majority?
No, you're misunderstanding. It's that majority will change their vote to conform the minority view (if the idea is good, of course), not other way around. Just look at my example - unemployment. Even though unemployed people are in ephemeral minority, unemployment is a big topic for everybody, the majority. Because many people have been unemployed in the past or know someone, who was. So if someone is proposing to help the minority of unemployed, majority will probably vote for it. Neither they are probably going to support harming unemployed people.
> the first thing it says is that it's "half-direct"
The half-direct is more precise term, direct democracy is not quite practical, but it has important advantages to representative democracy. Half-direct democracy is a good compromise between those features.
> Personally, my conclusion is that, for the United States to more likely attain a "consensual result", it needs a higher degree of homogeneity, not direct democracy.
Well, the causality is the other way around - Swiss are homogenous because they have decades of experience in building consensus. But think whatever you want.
> It's probably very difficult to understand my point when you aren't really reading what I wrote in good faith.
The point is, in a real democracy, you don't have to pick from (as little as) two packages of issues that some clever marketers designed. That really means that there is no clear minority and majority - in some issues you may be minority and in some majority. In other words, being in minority is an artifact of the representative political system (and the majority voting or two party system makes it worse).
> As far as I can tell, our actual difference of opinion can be demonstrated with this thought experiment.
You don't have to do thought experiments. There have been quite a lot of cases where Swiss people changed the majority view from conservative to more progressive one. It's a little slower process (may take several years), but it happens. There have been also some regresses (I think some anti-mosque laws and such), but these happen at the same glacial pace, and are no worse than anywhere else.
You know, Switzerland and U.S. (not on federal level, and in all states, unfortunately) both have half-direct democracy, and they have some highest living standards in the world. Is that just a coincidence? (I certainly don't see much oppression going on there, and that's why this "tyranny of the majority" argument always seemed to me as some ivory tower bullshit.)