Conviction is important because you’re electing people with a mandate. If that someone runs with View X, gets elected, then switches to View Y, they have (potentially) invalidated the mandate that got them elected in the first place.
Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy.
1. It signals that the candidate has a lack of interest in doing the actual job. In fairness, you may share the same lack of interest. It is certainly the easy way out, but nobody ever said that democracy is easy. If you really don't want democracy there are better options than trying to pretend.
2. Even if you buy into the mandate presented during an election campaign, it is going to be woefully out of date before it can be executed on. The state of the world is constantly changing. Which means you still have to put in the work to oversee the employee you hired, buying you little if you thought #1 would be a shortcut.
(1) is what elections are. It authorizes the mandate proposed by the candidate during the election cycle. Democracies aren't really about giving individuals authority to exercise their will, they're about authorizing individuals to execute the will of the people who elected the individual.
I.e. it would be more proper for a candidate to pursue a platform they were elected on but which they no longer personally believe in than it would be for them to get elected on platform X then pursue platform Y. One obvious reason is that you actually can't know whether they changed their mind X -> Y or whether they knew X had a higher chance of election than Y. In either scenario, their mandate is for X, not Y, and they ought to be somewhat beholden to that. Of course not beholden against all new information, compromises, or circumstances. All of this wiggle room and the individual's propensity for wishy-washiness is considered during the election and is, in fact, part of the mandate. Some people prefer a candidate who has shown willingness to compromise, others do not. Again, in either case, candidates are expected to behave similarly to how the electorate expected them to behave.
Point (2) is a valid one. The modern world changes very, very quickly and this is indeed a problem for democracies, but it's a problem only because all of this^ is true. We could simply elect tyrants (not in the pejorative sense) and they can react reflexively to the changing world, but that's not really how democracies work. This dynamic is exactly why crises (a fast-changing world) push democracies toward tyranny.
> Democracies aren't really about giving individuals authority to exercise their will, they're about authorizing individuals to execute the will of the people who elected the individual.
Yes, but the election is merely the hiring process. Democracy takes place when you visit your hired representative on the regular, to keep them informed of where you are at with the changing state of the world. That does not mean the employee has only one boss, but it also doesn't mean you can just disappear and never speak to your employee again. I mean, you can, but don't expect favourable results. They are certainly not mind readers.
If you don't want to put in the hard work of staying on top of your employee, that's fine, but if you are not going to engage in democracy why keep up the facade? Certainly, if you are going to sit back and not participate, interests will go towards those who do (e.g. lobbyists).
>If you don't want to put in the hard work of staying on top of your employee, that's fine, but if you are not going to engage in democracy why keep up the facade?
I don't participate in democracy because I believe the whole thing to be a facade itself, an illusion. Sure, it exercises the will of the people more than exactly zero, and has served us reasonably well historically (at least on a relative basis, according to the flawed methodologies by which we measure / hallucinate such things), but on an absolute scale how good is it really?
I think it would be interesting if some way could be found to enable people to be curious about such things. Perhaps a good start on that would be to first investigate why people are currently not able to be curious about this, because it seems very counterintuitive and it is plausibly quite harmful.
>Certainly, if you are going to sit back and not participate, interests will go towards those who do (e.g. lobbyists).
For now, but it would be a shame if a movement of some sort materialized with the goal of putting an end to this little party.
That's why the elected mandate is important: the election cycle is the closest we have to population-scale mind reading.
The dynamic you're describing (people with more time or money being "heard more") is an antidemocratic bug, not a feature. And yes, I'm aware that this is the reality, "if you want X you have to go fight for it" etc. etc; that's not what we're talking about here.
It is not about fighting. The job of your representative is to literally listen to what you have to say and take in that information to bring to the central meeting place. This is what you are hiring for. Indeed, they have to collate it with the information given from everyone else – it is not just about you – but it does include you. If someone comes telling you that they aren't going to listen and only shove through what they want, you know you've got the wrong person for the job. You want to hire someone who you can trust, not someone who is determined.
If there is a bug, it is people being too lazy to show up to speak to their employee. No doubt it is easier to show up when you have more resources. Most things in life are easier when you have more resources. But that brings us back to questioning: Why keep up the facade if you don't want to participate in democracy? There are other systems. Democracy is not the be all and end all. It can work well when the people are ready to put in the hard work, but if all you can muster is casting a ballot (if you can even manage that), why bother?
The answer is self-evident and I’m pretty confused by your confusion: because casting ballots are the best way we have to take account of the electorate’s opinions, and they specifically mitigate the exact dynamic you’re talking about.
A person who can camp out every single day in the lobby of a leader shouldn’t have greater say in the direction of society than a person who is working 12 hours per day in a factory.
To the extent that they do, it’s exactly a bug!
At this point I’m not even sure what you’re arguing. Seemed to go from “democracies aren’t about mandates” to “people with more free time have more influence” to “in any world where people with free time have more influence (all of them), democracy isn’t the right system?”
Sounds to me like just a convoluted argument for “I don’t like democracy.” Which, fine by me!
> casting ballots are the best way we have to take account of the electorate’s opinions, and they specifically mitigate the exact dynamic you’re talking about.
The electorate's opinion is not static. In fact, the matters the electorate will be interested in largely won't even be apparent during the election cycle. There is simply no way for a representative to know what the electorate is thinking without speaking to them. Which is why their job is exactly that.
> To the extent that they do, it’s exactly a bug!
They don't have greater say, but they do have a say by being willing to show up. The factory worker who doesn't find the time to speak to his representative certainly will not have a say. There really isn't much way around this. The hired employee is certainly not a mind reader.
> At this point I’m not even sure what you’re arguing.
What leads you to b believe that I am arguing? What is the value proposition in arguing? Sounds boring.
> Sounds to me like just a convoluted argument for “I don’t like democracy.” Which, fine by me!
Strange that you would attribute feelings to the words on the page. What in this suggests like or dislike towards democracy – or anything for that matter?
> [Lobbyists] don't have greater say... but they do have a say... The factory worker who doesn't find the time to speak to his representative certainly will not have a say.
Party A has a say, Party B does not, yet Party A does not have more of a say than Party B?
Will leave it at that logical incoherence. Have a good rest of your week!
Lobbyists are just people. They don't have greater say than other people who provide their say.
Those who haven't said two words to their representative certainly don't have a say. How could they? Quite literally, you have to say something to have a say.
Lobbyists can certainly say a lot more than most people, on account of that being their job. That's the point. A factory worker may or may not be able to say anything to their representative, but they certainly can not say as much as the lobbyist. Now, what the lobbyist says may be counted equally or even less than what the factory worker says (though cynically I would say they could well be counted more: if they represent a donor, for example), but that doesn't make up for sheer volume.
In a democracy, it is the duty of everyone to make it their job if they stand by the democracy. You don't get to go work at the factory above talking to your representative if you have something that needs to be said.
Lobbyists are just another layer of representatives for those who have chosen to pay to have someone show up instead of showing up themselves. The factory worker can equally assign a representative to talk to the lower-tier representative on their behalf if they find going to the factory is more important.
Of course, you can opt out of the democracy and let others dictate your life. I did question why one would want that, though.
Ah, so the issues in the system which make those without much resources much less well represented in deciding policy and those with lots of resources massively overrepresented are the fault of those who have less say, because they have moral failings which put things like eating and having shelter over participating in the system?
Alas, it’s too easy judge conviction incorrectly — by mannerisms, posture, swagger, tone of voice, etc. and are misled by well-coached imposters. Worse, many seem to prefer candidates with loads of apparent conviction in terrible things. Adolf didn’t exactly lack conviction, recall, and people were drawn to it.
