(03-25-2023, 01:53 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(03-25-2023, 12:42 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: You love to play word games, dude. What makes something tyrannical? It's the use of force or oppression. If conditions are agreed upon, there is no force. This is why representation matters. Someone could literally give all of their money to the government if they wanted to, and there would be no tyranny. Obviously, you aren't going to have everyone in an area agree to the exact same amount of taxes, but giving people the freedom to choose their leaders and have them adequately represent them is the fairest solution.

To Marty's questions, if elections are not transparent, accountable, and readily available, then it becomes hard for the people to be represented. Furthermore, the more things are done at the federal level, the less likely small groups of people can actually represent themselves or have a say in their government.

Force or the threat of force is inherent in all government, good or bad.  
Tyranny is simply bad government over a long time, or very very bad government for a shorter time.  The only difficult part of the definition is how do we define good or bad.  Meaningful voting at least guarantees that the government will basically adhere to what the majority of people see as good government.  Whether it meets a philosophical or religious definition of good is of course not guaranteed.
But we agree about this, that representation and the freedom to choose representatives matters.  What you fail to appreciate is how few people approve of the results of their representation, the acts of Congress.  You seem to know this abstractly as a fact, but you fail to see how dangerous it is, how much it invites a future strongman.  And you fail to see its very simple causes that are relatively simple to solve.  Closed primaries and choose-one voting inventivize candidates to make promises that sound good to 25% of the population of a district, but can never be kept because other elected representatives will not vote for the promises.  Some of our population like me can clearly see a solution that will encourage compromise and consensus, while others of our population like you see the only solution as gerrymandering the opponents into irrelevance.

To the first bolded part, is there ANY level of expert consensus that supports that [BLEEP] definition you just made up? 

To the second, go [BLEEP] yourself, you [BLEEP]. When have I EVER said that. Stop misrepresenting people to try to get your point across. I get that you think we need voting reform, but that is secondary to getting money out of politics. I would be open to other reform, but it doesn't make a difference if people can spend billions of dollars on politics. The rich will always be represented more than the average person. I am one of the most open minded people on this board. I am open to changing almost anything if it will improve our system. Don't put words in my mouth.

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