Geoffrey MillerVerified account

"But I want to be petted and coddled and told that everything will be rainbows and sunshine forever! Can't we all just vote for that?" - How democracy works, in practice.

I had a curious twitter convo: I claimed Action A had bad consequences C which could be mitigated by doing D. A twitter troll assumed I was opposed to A and, hence, pure evil. They perhaps think that policies must be all good or all bad, so any criticism implies opposition?

First, constituents have to recognize that the real world requires trade offs. This is a proposition most voters don’t seem to accept

How US Democracy works: we have rent-seeking party apparatuses that assure no such candidates are ever presented.

Here too: if you do, but a majority of the voters around you do not, then you will still get elected officials who are not honest about heartbreaking tradeoffs.

A power grab is never "heartbreaking" to the powerful.

Also: democracy doesn’t serve your interests if you only vote for candidates that have “earned your vote”.

Can such politician afford to run and go against the establishment?