Empirical and theoretical studies are both needed.

I do think these weird elaborate examples of a city choosing where to build a hospital

What do you mean when you say siting a hospital is “weird eleaborate”? I picked it because it’s the most down-to-earth example I could think of, it affects people’s lives and deaths and is an issue I have spent hundreds of hours campaigning on.

Determining where to build a hospital and all other essential public infrastructure is not a question of democratic political will.

I agree it “is not a question of democratic political will” in non-democratic societies like the USA or China. But in a society ruled by the people, then the people decide.

There’s no ideological workaround for to the fact that society has to make choices. First, we need hospitals. Second, the hospitals need to be located somewhere. Third, the choice has to be made, the hospital won’t be sited without some chooser. Fourth, in a people-ruled system, we need some way of converting diffuse individual wishes into a decision.

Planning is good and can and will solve a lot of these problems. Democratic will is best imposed as oversight over a scientific planning process and through the setting of social goals.

Towards a New Socialism talks about the intersection of planning and democratic choice. They say planning can produce multiple feasible plans and then the people choose among them.

Liberal ideology, universal suffrage is a terrible way to run a real country. Council systems are superior in every way.

What do you mean by “council systems”? Do you mean picking people at random (choice by sortilege) and having them vote on issues?

There’s no way around the fact that you have to make a social choice.

You cannot please everyone, there is no utopia, you’re always going to be stepping on someones toes just a bit when making decisions, especially big ones.

That’s what makes it an interesting thing to study. How can we get as many people’s opinions together and approximate some sort of “will of the people”? There’s no such true, objective thing, no “will of the people”, but we have to rough one out in order to build trains, distribute resources. We can’t simply wash our hads of the problem.

I agree. Empirical studies are needed, not just examples.

Graham-Squire, Adam T.; McCune, David (2023-06-12). “An Examination of Ranked-Choice Voting in the United States, 2004–2022”. Representation: 1–19. arXiv:2301.12075. doi:10.1080/00344893.2023.2221689. looked at 185 elections and found monotonicity failures in 5 of them, 2.7%

The fundamental problem I have with all of this kind of analysis is that it treats democracy as a tool for finding the median set of ideas amongst a population of people with ideas, and that the “most democratic” system would enact the idea of each idea set that is most tolerable to the most number of people.

Yes. Agree.

This is the ur-liberalism.

What do you mean by the word in this context?

Politics is the process by which society’s scarce resources (commodities, nature, leisure, whatever) are allocated between people with competing interests. A just outcome would require negotiation between representatives of affinity groups, however composed and however determined, weighted somehow by the size of each group and the impact upon them.

Agree.

Matters of popular opinion just fundamentally are not the problem of politics

This seems to contradict what you just said.

I honestly think there’s just no way to make a single-seat election just or democratic in any meaningful way. Multi-member districts are better, since at least you might elect representatives from multiple affinity groups.

Agree in the case of electing representatives. Sometimes by the nature of what you are voting on there can only be one winner.

e.g. if society has resources to build one hospital, and if that hospital is not some weird quantum hospital that can be in two places, then it must be in one place, so it’s a single-winner choice among locations

Is the hospital location example a “process by which society’s scarce resources (commodities, nature, leisure, whatever) are allocated between people with competing interests” or is that “Matters of popular opinion” in the distinction you’re making?

Inside party I would assume democratic centralism (which is how parties work anyway, despite scary name), people who don’t like resolution quit.

Your meeting hall would be empty after ten resolutions

I don’t know if you’re in a political party or not, but say you are.

And say there’s a proposal that the party could choose to adopt or reject. Will we issue a statement of support for Palestine?

Would you be want a coin to be flipped to make that decision?

I feel like Iran doesn’t really want a war. They have to retaliate, they can’t turn the other cheek, but they’re trying to avoid anything REALLY destructive to themselves like an all-out war.

Angela Wildman is also accused of using a carton of milk and a long-handled mop as weapons after she had put the bird into a sports bag.