[kaens]

you're off by a little bit.

> The duty and role of a government is to act in the best interest of their citizens which that government represents.

> In a well functioning representative democracy, voters will kick out politicians/administrations that don’t represent their interests well.

part of what i'm saying is that if these statements are true, then we are not in a functioning representative democracy.

>if i lie to you a bunch and you vote me in, i'm not representing you.

>This feels like a contradiction to the previous point that

correct. it is an argument against it.

> Maybe a lying politician gets to do this once, but after that it's the populace's job to hold them accountable. The people have a responsibility in a democracy as well. I agree it's not easy and opportunists will try to rig the system. Being difficult doesn't absolve us of the responsibility.

regardless of whether or not i agree that in "the way its supposed to work" this is the case, it's been a lot more than once and for a lot longer than a little bit of time. longer than i've been alive.

with what time, resources, or authority are you suggesting the populace hold them accountable with? don't answer that just yet.

> I get the impression we fundamentally disagree that there's "zero accountability to the people". I think there is, but people may just not have the fortitude to do it for a variety of reasons.

We don't disagree in the sense you are talking about, technically. Zero accountability that the accountable will accept as valid though.

If i am born into a life with zero political agency and a constant threat of not having food or shelter in a populace that is largely entirely alienated not only from their peers but from also what they produce and consume how is that me getting what i deserve? In what way do you expect the hypothetical me to be organized or able to organize? How successful do you think someone like that could be at doing what you are suggesting when they don't have more than a $400 buffer and no supply chain?

> In many ways, I think the adage of "People get the government they deserve" is true.

I don't think the adage you're referring to is true at all; on the contrary I think that the responses you are speaking of simply take a long time to bubble up into enough of the populace to make them inevitable. Once that threshold is crossed you may as well swap the adage around. The structures and superstructures of societal organization are things that exist prior to you, it's natural for them to be baked into assumptions of "just how things are".

> If you want to tolerate rigged systems or lying politicians, or don't want to get actively engaged, what kind of system do you think you deserve?

I don't think that inaction in face of miserable conditions that have been part of your experience of reality since day one makes someone "deserve" those conditions. It just makes them someone living in the reality they've been presented with. Engagement however, of all sorts, has been rising

[bumby]

>If i am born into a life with zero political agency

Genuinely curious, what would you cite as evidence of "zero political agency"? If it's the de facto sense of it being prohibitively hard for one person/group than another as you allude to in your previous posts, this is a very different thing than zero agency. Again, I think it's dangerous to conflate hard with impossible.

The $400 buffer hurdle is a loaded topic that would be difficult to get into without being drawn into more walls of text, but I think this is often an artifact of poorly aligned priorities and choices. I actually tend think the counter is true; lower economic strata tend to have more free time than higher strata, etc. But I'm afraid this would turn into a long digression to get into.

I can agree that a government deserves it's constituency. However, I think can be true without negating the previous statement about a populace deserving it's government as well. It's hard to be both an advocate for empowerment while also absolving oneself of responsibility.

I do appreciate you taking the time to elaborate, but a common thread seems to be an almost infantilizing of a constituency. While I can empathize with the marginalized, I don't think it does any pragmatic good if it just stops at hand-wringing. If we resign ourselves to a lack of agency, ironically it's a good way to guarantee not to get it. It's a personal viewpoint, but I think those who will take ownership of these problems are in a much better position to affect change than those who constantly say it's out of their control.

[kaens]

I spent a decade homeless in appalachia and the general midwest for a decade, and another largely below the poverty line. I'm fine with citing my life and the lives of everyone I knew for the amount of political agency that was present in our lives.

I would not describe that period of my life as having more "free time" but I can understand how that may look the case.

I agree with you in spirit in some ways here and I do not believe in absolution of responsibility. Material conditions, however, often skew the will in ways rather extreme, possibility is not probability and it's a fool that eats shit after watching 20 people take a bite of a cake and realize it's shit.