Musk and Bezos and others all operate on getting key people on their side. With these key people, they take the reigns of power. Under a direct democracy, the key people is everyone - Musk and others can’t sway everyone, and it would be much harder for them to get the critical mass needed to achieve what they do now.

But in practice they aren’t. In practice a represntative is swayed by people with money to go against the people they represent.

There would be little to no opportunity for that in a direct democracy. Lobbyists can’t bribe everyone, it wouldn’t be cost effective. Meanwhile people will have no choice but to educate themselves, as they’ll feel the effects of their votes directly and won’t be able to hide behind the (sometime inevitable) betrayal of the person they voted for. Even if people are lied to and convinced to vote another way, there’s a huge difference between “You lied to me and didn’t do what you said you’d do” and “You lied to me and got me to do something I didn’t want to do”, and generally there should be more accountability.

No, it’s because lawyers can be expected to know how laws work. You kind of want that from someone who writes laws.

Which actually points to how the EU is structured. The unelected bureaucrats of the European Commission are in fact lawyers selected by each of the member states, they are selected on merit for their skill and they write the proposed EU regulations. These are then voted on by the democratically elected representatives of the European Parliament. The goal being to have professionals write functional laws but ultimately have them put in force through democratic means.

Still, the major problem with the EU is the way represntatives behave and are voted for. People all too easily neglect voting in the EU, or vote for joke/sensationalist parties that are even less likely to actually represent the people.

Frankly, I think for better or worse a direct democracy would do away with these issues. People might not know about every matter, but they’ll certainly feel the consequence - and they won’t be able to hide behind their representative screwing things up, it will be their own fault. They’ll learn soon enough and there’ll be much more accountability all round.

What time is it Mr AI man? And how often do you mow your windowsill?

I think that still fits in with what @wewbull@feddit.uk is saying. There is a right shift in votes because of extensive promotion by the media, which acknowledges the problem but offers a fascist solution, which is picked up by some voters. However other voters are disenfranchised and end up not voting. The overall shift in votes is to the right but the population itself is not right wing, the votes are not representative of the population because those who disagree don’t vote for alternatives and instead don’t vote at all.

but it actually that the electorate isn’t representable by the options available.

Bring on direct democracy. If our representives don’t represent us, we should get rid of the position.

Nice try, Mr Sainsburys.

Where’s the full report?

And then, with the industry under national control, they arrange for it to be critically mismanaged again to use it as justification for the private sector to buy it back so they can “fix it”. However, this time they have to sell it cheap, because it’s critically mismanaged and the private sector won’t buy an apparently failing business otherwise.

The real conspiracy is that it’s always the same groups looking to get in and “mismanage” the business, for the benefit of extracting wealth.

Surely he’s supposed to take his glasses off before he reveals he’s supeurman

The gender flag glitch totally makes this.

Title - “BLASTED WITH SNOW!”

Text - The BBC predicts that temperatures will drop as low as -1C on the weekend, with light snowfall expected between 8am and 11am on Saturday January 3. Then another smattering of snow is forecast for 8pm on Saturday until 3am on Sunday morning.

If anything the end result is different. The hospital had decided that the 14 year old had “capacity” to make the decision, meaning they would go along with her wishes. The hospital then sought the legal opinion of the court to cover their asses. The court made a different decision, ruling that the child does not have authority to make that choice and that the doctors must act to preserve the child’s life.

Mmmm, prions.

The article doesn’t mention the parents’ opinions, but I think the angle here is that the state is considering the interests of the child and assuming some of the responsibility when the parent “fails” to meet the court’s standard of ensuring they survive the operation.

So, basically, you can refuse treatment for yourself from 18 onwards, but under 18 someone else has a duty of care. Typically your parents, but if your parents don’t meet this duty of care the courts might intervene, on behalf of the child’s interests.

Then with teenagers it’s a whole massive grey area, they’re still technically children but they are given limited agency - their opinion is considered, and here the hospital determined she had “capacity” to make the decision. Hence going to court to try and sort the whole mess out beforehand.

So the court here ruled that a 14 year old girl can’t refuse life saving treatment.

Nah, the whole point of going to court was to cover their ass legally either way, so that the operation could go ahead.

If they’d refused a transfusion and she’d died, they could get sued for not transfusing. If they’d overrode her wishes and transfused, they could get sued for that. By getting the court’s opinion beforehand they limit the chance of either happening.

The article explains that they were looking for an explanation under these specific circumstances, with a 14 year old themselves refusing, which implies the legal question has already been answered for other circumstances. I would imagine that at 18 anyone can refuse any treatment themselves, so at 18 her wishes would not be ignored.

Yeah, to be clearer it covers them either way. Their initial position was to refuse a transfusion, but if she’d died there’d be every possibility that her parents would change their tune and sue the hospital for not providing the transfusion. And, of course, if they overrode her decision by themselves they’d also be open to a lawsuit. By going to court, then whichever way the court decides it becomes the court’s legal decision, and by following that the hospital avoids any potential legal problems and costs.

In this instance it was the 16 year old child themselves refusing, and the hospital determining that she had capacity to do so. That’s why they went for a court order, so the decision and liability wouldn’t fall on them.

It’s not a recent thing, it’s always been that way. Something to do with the way archive.is and mirrors have their DNS set up.