It's going to take more than voting

Posted Feb 9, 2011 12:32 UTC (Wed) by Seegras (guest, #20463)
In reply to: It's going to take more than voting by drag
Parent article: Moglen on Freedom Box and making a free net

> True democratic government means you, personally, choose. Not the
> majority, not your grandfathers, or founding fathers, or anybody
> else... But YOU. YOUR CHOICE. Your choice to belong, to pay your
> dues, to obey their laws or to just drop out completely and move
> some place else that has something more of your liking. THAT is true
> Democracy.

Nope. This is called Anarchy (meaning "A social state in which there is no governing person or group of people, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder)"). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy

And yes, this is of course a desirable state, but terribly difficult to achieve, and even more difficult to maintain in presence of hostile foreign actors. In fact, all historically existing "anarchist states" have been invaded by (mostly dictatorship) neighbours.

In contrast to this, democracies are relatively easy to enact, can defend themselves against foreign agression, but on the other hand have a tendency to evolve into oligarchies and even fascism (as seen last century in Germany, and this decade in the USA and Europe).