When people say democracy, they usually mean direct democracy.

This just isn't true. The majority of democracies around the world today are representative democracies, and people colloquially refer to them simply as democracies.

And even at that, the party establishment control who we can even vote for. So we only get to choose from the representatives they give us for the most part.

That's partly true to varying degrees depending on what country you're referring to, but it also isn't that simple. The methods the establishment uses to control who gets party nominations are mostly indirect (i.e. media manipulating the narrative, PACs and dark money to campaigns, etc.). I think you're being overly cynical - which is fair - but we have more power than you think we do, we're just not very good at using it. Cynicism itself is one of the ways that the establishment controls who gets elected.

In short: the establishment has a stranglehold on democracy not because our democracies are fake (flawed, maybe even rigged a bit, sure, but not fake), but because they have us out-organized.

A republic is a type of democracy. Specifically, it's a representative democracy.

What I wonder is how exactly are they going to enshittify it? It's extremely barebones and modular in a way that anyone can design add-ons and accessories for it. I can see them doing subscriptions and the like for various add-ons but you can always just get the base model and get add-ons elsewhere.

They've been promoting it recently and have several working prototypes that they've been driving influencers around in. There was one video with Marques Brownlee and they even let him drive it himself.

The future doesn't have to be set in stone. We can create the future we want by demanding it and taking action. I can see a future where a progressive is elected president in 2028 and a critical mass of people successfully petition that president to issue pardons.

The GOP old guard didn't die, it capitulated. They then proceeded to work with Trump to advance their agenda and found him more amenable to it than they expected. Remember how Trump used to promise an end to forever wars? That's why the GOP old guard fought against him; they believed him. As soon as it became obvious (to them) that it was a lie they were enthusiastically on board. His administration is an alliance of the GOP old guard and Trump's personal sycophants.

Historical revisionists like to find exceptions and present them as if they were the norm. There was a particular subset of slaves who served wealthy families as teachers, cooks, nannies, etc. that enjoyed a decent standard of living and were often considered a part of the family. This kind of slave contract was closer to being a sort of patronage and people with high social status but little wealth often sold themselves to wealthy families they had social connections to. The philosopher Diogenes did this and it shaped the way he viewed Roman slavery (he remarked that slaves should not try to free themselves because it's worse to be poor; easy for him to say in his position as a well-liked and respected teacher serving a wealthy family). This kind of arrangement made up an incredibly small minority of Roman slaves.

So I looked back at where I got this from - an episode of Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff about Diogenes - and it seems this is more of an interpretation of Diogenes' teachings by Margaret (the host) rather than something he said directly. Here's the relevant portion:

Speaker 2 (27:57): Because he also wrote books, so he clearly owned more than and just these things. You know, at various points, maybe he's like borrowing a pen to write a book. I don't know whatever, And basically he's like, hey, sell me to that guy, and people are like, oh, it's because he believes so much in this philosophy. I think Diogenes is being canny and knew it would go better with that guy, probably because he knows he's educated, like

(28:20): he himself is educated, and he's like, oh, I can get myself into like a teaching job instead of a fucking mining job, you know, right. He works for Zeniades for a few years, running the man's household and tutoring his kids, who apparently all loved him, and then he was freed. Letting people buy their own freedom was a

(28:41): way to recoup capital costs. You steal a few years of someone's life and then you let them pay you back. Your upfront cost. And also if you promise the slave you're going to free them, they're much nicer to you.

Speaker 1 (28:53): Yeah, and you are able to extract their labor.

Speaker 2 (28:55): Yeah, totally. And so it's technically hypocritical of him to want to become free again and to like buy himself this freedom. And I do not blame him for this hypocrisy at all. This is a completely natural thing. He taught that if you desire to better your station in society, like a slave who wants to be free, as the example uses, it'll never be enough. You'll get free, and

(29:15): then you'll want to be a slave owner, obviously, naturally, that just happens to everyone, and then you'd want to be a landowner, and then a citizen, and then an officer, and then a king and then godhood. Where does it stop?

Speaker 1 (29:28): I know, it's just too much slop, very slope.

Speaker 2 (29:31): But like whatever is a philosopher, he's going to make random as philosophical points, and he sharees oak the freedom that was offered him, and he didn't go and buy someone, so good on him.

The transcript is kinda terrible so maybe just skip to this part and listen, but that's where I got it from. There are sources linked in the first episode description but I couldn't find the specific quote about not improving one's station in life after a quick search, so ¯\(ツ)/¯.

Too much avocado toast.

Ah, that makes sense. Even more hypocritical of him then to suggest slaves shouldn't try to free themselves. He leveraged his privilege to obtain a favorable outcome for himself and then allowed that experience to paint the way he viewed the institution of slavery as a whole.

You probably know more about it than me, I'm just repeating it how I heard it. My understanding is that Diogenes sold himself to a wealthy family who admired him for his philosophy and wanted him to teach their kids. This was before he decided to live on the street in a clay pot, and after he fled the previous city he lived in due to being caught committing fraud (counterfeiting coins).

I'll see if I can find a source for that and get back to you. I could be misremembering.

Yes, he's very good at directing attention. The media is happy to follow along because it's great engagement bait. Can we try talking about the important things more than petty bullshit, or are we just going to let ourselves be misdirected forever?

He is incredibly dumb, but he's a talented performer and conman as well. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

Also I have no idea whether this comic is progressive or conservative...

Neither, it's just cynical. Signs in the background suggest the artist may be progressive (or at least supports unions), but the message of this particular comic is an exclusively cynical one.

They're already relevant. That party of a hundred thousand has become a household name among the Democratic voting base because of the insurgent campaigns they've been running and winning against the DNC establishment.

Why the fuck do you think they're endorsing candidates in DNC primaries, genius? They're literally doing exactly what you suggest.

I'd say there's a difference in the libertarianism of the charlatans and their marks. One is simply a facade for technocratic fascism, the other is an incoherent fantasy that thinks capitalism will create a utopia if we just stop regulating it.

I would add that this isn't just speculation, it has historical precedent. The US created a powerful welfare state under FDR and it was slowly destroyed in exactly the way that you described. It's also important to note that it was racism that provided the owning class with the narrative they needed to convince the working class to support the erosion of their own welfare. The creation of the welfare state began with the compromise that the benefits would not extend to non-white Americans. When the civil rights movement successfully forced the issue and demanded that the benefits be universalized the owning class was able to ride the wave of the racist backlash all the way to a near-total rollback of the welfare state.

Ensuring that welfare for the people lasts requires that we directly and conclusively address the underlying causes of the inequality it is meant to alleviate. We must recognize that private ownership of the means of production is the direct cause of this inequality and will always reproduce it if it is not eliminated. And finally we must also address the social causes of inequality - racism, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism, etc. - so that they cannot be used as justification for the reconstruction of a system of inequality. Alongside an economic and political revolution we also need a cultural revolution.

Mamdani's kinda straddling the edge. He calls himself a Democratic Socialist and uses anti-capitalist rhetoric but his policy platform is just Social Democracy.