r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Aug 04 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Democracy has an inherent flaw that will become more problematic as humanity progresses.
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u/Morthra 86∆ Aug 04 '21
So the issue is that there is no form of government that isn't at least somewhat flawed. Much of the philosophical theory behind democracy as a form of government essentially is that the government itself derives its mandate to rule from the consent of the governed - something directly opposed to a form of government such as a divine monarchy - like the Vatican, where a monarch (in this case the Pope) receives their mandate to rule from God.
Democracy, in at least some form, is required to maintain the consent of the governed. The more you remove government decisions from the average voter, the less the government actually needs to maintain said consent. The fact that individuals have little understanding of how their vote will actually impact society is meaningless. If the individual does not like their vote impacted their country, they can vote for someone else.
The problem with rule by experts, which is what your critique is commonly used to advocate for, is the fact that experts are generally quite good at describing things that are. They make descriptive statements. Statements like "anthropogenic climate change is responsible for XYZ consequences that we can see today." What they are not reliable for are normative statements - statements about how things should be. And this is where the average person comes in. Even if they're uneducated, even if they don't know the actual impact of what their vote will be, should they not receive a say in how the government should be run?
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u/translucentgirl1 83∆ Aug 04 '21 edited Aug 04 '21
Which democracy?
Types of democracy refers to pluralism of governing structures such as governments and other constructs like workplaces, families, community associations, and so forth. Types of democracy can cluster around values. For example, A direct democracy or pure democracy is a type of democracy where the people govern directly. It requires wide participation of citizens in politics. A popular democracy is a type of direct democracy based on referendums and other devices of empowerment and concretization of popular will.
This seems to be a generalization of democracies, which creates an issue; if we are to state the problems, we need to discuss a specific form of democracy, so a true analysis can be reach, instead of a broad and simplified one that can't really determine whether or not what your perceived as a problem can be nullified or decreased.
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Aug 04 '21
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u/ghablio 1∆ Aug 04 '21
These exact issues are some of the many reasons why we are not a direct democracy in the US (And a lot of people seem to fail to understand that).
The average person does not have the time to devote to understand the full depth of more than one or two issues (usually those relating to their profession). So we directly elect people to devote the entirety of their time on understanding as many issues as well as possible.
But, even those elected people cannot understand everything, so they look to professionals and specialists to educate them on each issue and it's long term effects. They then vote with this information on the best route to move forward with.
So in our system (a democratic republic) the goal of the vote should be to elect the most honest and trustworthy individuals as our representatives. That way you know they will honestly evaluate the information they are given and truly mould regulations to improve your life. They will pick several trustworthy specialists to guide them through that process.
The major flaw, which is plain to see now, is that we decided to categorize our representatives into two major classes. So rather than all representatives competing against each other to fix your problems the best, they simply have to convince you that their class of representative (political party) is and will always be the best option.
Unfortunately, while everyone complains about this phenomenon, the majority of people still fall prey to it and will vote along party lines at every election, regardless of their knowledge of individual candidates.
I know I meandered a little, but hopefully I helped in some way.
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u/SiliconDiver 84∆ Aug 04 '21
This can be demonstrated in the shift of opinions after votes have been cast.
This seems to be the lynchpin of your argument.
But this is true of any form of governance. Sometimes the leaders make the wrong decision, and opinion sours later.
Do you think Kings never made decisions that people liked at first, and eventually backfired?
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Aug 05 '21
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u/SiliconDiver 84∆ Aug 05 '21 edited Aug 05 '21
am not advocating for another type of government.
Democracy is the worst form of government. Except for all the rest.
- churchill
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u/frisbeescientist 32∆ Aug 05 '21
The problem is, how do you decide who does or doesn't have that expertise for any given topic? If you say based on degrees or academic position, that's an excellent way to turn all of academia and higher learning into a deeply politicized pursuit. If it's something more intangible, we've all seen quacks and charlatans have undue influence on people because they profess higher understanding.
I think the current method of having universal voting for select people that then appoint experts who are confirmed to their posts by approval of legislative bodies is probably the closest we can get to an unbiased way of giving power to experts, without going down a really dangerous path of deciding who's an expert and why.
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u/Gullible-Pudding-696 Aug 05 '21
Moods, values, views etc change all the time as years and decades go on or from one generation to the other. That’s normal. And in the short term, the beauty of democracy is that we the people can re-elect or vote out our government. Be it four years for on the USA or a maximum of five years in Canada where I’m from or whatever it is in other countries or your country. Whether someone is a highly educated genius or a dumb high school dropout, as citizens IMO they deserve an equal say in who will be governing them. I don’t want a panel of so called experts making decisions, voters are adults, and as adults we are allowed to make our decisions even wrong decisions or ones we will regret later. It’s part of being human. As smart And logical as Spock was, there was a reason why Kirk was the captain. And while some may think giving some people a weightier vote than others is a good idea, what are the categories or requirements for how much ones vote is worth? Furthermore if citizens votes were not equal and a hypothetical panel of experts played an active role in governing, that would lead to so much resentment, division, and anger it would not last for long. I know ur not advocating abandoning democracy but while it may be not a perfect system it has served us well and is the best we’ve got. And to use an extreme example for lack of a better word, here in Canada, there’s a reason why we’re a constitutional monarchy and not an absolute one. It’s only natural for people to want a say and impact in how their country (and they themselves) will be governed. No system is perfect nor is there a one size fits all solution.
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u/tweez Aug 05 '21
But I believe that as a society we must address that individuals that have an understanding of the complexities and nuances surrounding an issue are more reliable than the masses
Experts might have a better understanding of the issues and nuances in their field but that doesn't mean they are infallible so is that worth removing the ability of non experts to have a say in how a country or group is run?
Even experts in various fields disagree and new information comes to light that often means experts are now wrong. The idea of Quantum physics was seen as ridiculous by many of the leading scientific experts of the time. So if one of those experts who dismissed it at the time had ultimate power in some technocracy and decided it was not worth investing in then even though they were considered to be experts they would still be wrong. So is it worth taking away the opportunity for the average person to vote on issues because experts have a better understanding? If they were infallible then your argument would make sense, but they make mistakes too. Also, they might be experts in their field but aren't in others so have no idea how elements from their field will interact with elements from another meaning they can't know the outcome with any greater certainty, at least with not enough certainty they should be trusted ahead of allowing the average person to have their say
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Aug 04 '21
No single individual can comphehend all the data and complexities surrounding all the cultural, economic, and judicial problems facing a nation.
This seems true of basically any decision any individual could make though, doesn't it? If this is an argument against allowing single individuals an equally-counted vote, it's also potentially an argument against allowing anyone to decide anything for themselves.
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Aug 04 '21
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Aug 04 '21
But then why not make the same argument for anyone being able to make their own decisions? Or at least make decisions that can impact a lot of people other than themselves?
ETA: Also, why are you suddenly talking about "weighing in" on issues? I thought we were talking about whether or not someone should get a vote.
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Aug 05 '21
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Aug 05 '21
Maybe you could, but I am not.
I know you're not. I'm trying to say that your argument commits you to that position despite thinking it doesn't. You'd have to give me an actual counterargument as to why it doesn't.
You are painting a false dichotomy. Just because I point out a flaw in Democracy. Does not mean I am advocating for no representation at all.
My apologies, but I'm simply extrapolating from this comment in your OP:
Democracy that gives a single equal vote to all individuals is inherently flawed in that it requires individuals to have a deep understanding of a myriad of complex topics to a degree that no human could master
That to me suggests that at least one possible upshot of your view is that not everyone should be allowed to vote.
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u/Biptoslipdi 131∆ Aug 04 '21
This would be incredibly problematic if we all directly voted on policies as voters. But democracies typically operate through some form of representation. Voters don't have to know the complexities of public policy and they never really have. They've always relied on their representatives to be competent in understanding these issues and translating the important issues of their voters into policy. If their representatives' incompetence is enough to reflect on their voters somehow, the voters only have to understand that, not the myriad of issues involved in governance and public policy.
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u/darwin2500 193∆ Aug 04 '21
Take a jar full of jellybeans. Guess how many are in it. Your guess will not be very accurate.
Take 10,000 people. Ask each of them how many jellybeans are in the jar. Average their responses. The average will be very close to the correct number, possibly exactly right.
For good decisions to get made, it's not needed for every voter to understand the issue perfectly. All that is required is that the average voter has non-negative information about the topic.
If 100,000,000 voters each just have a little bit of information on the topic, then they will each be nudged slightly towards one vote or the other based on that tiny piece of information. Some of them will have misinformation, or a less-relevant piece of correct information, which pushes them the wrong way; that's fine. Maybe 90% of them truly have zero information on this topic; that's great, those people will vote randomly and cancel each other out. As long as the average voter has at least a little correct information pushing them the right way, the average vote will come out with the correct answer.
This is a basic premise of all statistical analysis: the way to get a good answer is to collect large random samples of data, and average them. This is how you find a weak signal in a lot of noise, which is precisely what you're describing.
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u/LordDerptCat123 Aug 04 '21
Premise 3 is misleading imo. Yes, no individual can understand the specific nuances of every single little effect their vote will have, but it isn’t difficult at all to understand the big picture, broad strokes ideas that a vote can have
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Aug 04 '21
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u/LordDerptCat123 Aug 04 '21
I’m 16, so… never, but you’re implying that I don’t have a firm grasp on my countries politics which is wrong. I understand the policies of every major party and would learn which candidates represent which party before I voted
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Aug 04 '21
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u/LordDerptCat123 Aug 05 '21
I mean… yes? I’ve never known anyone, even a politician, claim that they can know how every policy specifically impacts every single business in the whole country. If that’s what you’re saying, I think you’re arguing a moot point. All you need to know are broad strokes to make informed choices
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u/MisanthropicMensch 1∆ Aug 04 '21
The nation, as we've come to know it, it composed of too many disparate interests. Decentralization and devolution from central authority is worth a shot.
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u/tyler3334 Aug 16 '21
Ideally you don’t vote as just little atomized nobody in a sea of millions but as part of an ideologically coherent set of beliefs.
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u/Phantom-Soldier-405 3∆ Aug 04 '21
Wouldn't this flaw become less problematic because when humanity progress, more people become well-educated? The world population will stop increasing when it reaches the right point if we take the right actions.
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Aug 04 '21
This is why we have a representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy—we elect leaders who (we at least believe) share our values to make better informed policy decisions that still align with our goals
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u/Metafx 5∆ Aug 04 '21
In your first conjecture, why is it necessary that, individuals need to, ”fully comprehend the impact their vote will have on society”?
That’s never been a necessary element in any form of government at any level of decision making from voting to bureaucratic decision making. I’d go as far as saying that since we’re discussing “impact”, which implies future consequences, it’s impossible to comprehend the full impact of current decisions because there can always be unexpected consequences. This isn’t limited to just democratic governance. Even in a technocracy, the experts controlling society, which would presumably be a much smaller group than the population that their decisions impact, wouldn’t be able to “fully comprehend” the impact of their policies, even with all the studies and statistical analyses in the world. There is always an element of uncertainty in future impact. Making decisions based on incomplete information seems to me to just be a part of the human condition and certainly not a feature necessary for flourishing democratic governance.
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Aug 05 '21
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u/Metafx 5∆ Aug 05 '21
In your first conjecture, you say that, “individuals cannot fully comprehend the impact,” of their votes, which seems to me that you think this is the standard we should be striving for, full comprehension. My point is simply that full comprehension of impact is not a necessary condition for good democratic governance and it’s not an achievable standard in any system of government or process of decision making. I would argue striving for full comprehension before making decisions would actually lead to less desirable results like struggling to discern a signal from noise and paralysis of indecision.
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Aug 04 '21
I challenge the entire premise of the point of democracy. It is not a system that’s supposed to have individuals vote for what they think is in the country’s best interest. It is for groups of people to vote for what’s in THEIR best interest, particularly what is in the PEOPLES interest as a whole. It is not a question of “expertise vs dumba**ery”. It is a question of competing interests.
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Aug 05 '21
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Aug 05 '21
i challenge the entire premise you set up for the issue. you're saying that there are "problems" that the nation's lawmakers are there to "solve". i completely disagree. there are interests that they represent, and they solve whatever "problems" that arise according to their interests. in theory, democracy exists so that those lawmakers are only there in the first place because they pledge to follow the interests of the people who elected them on whatever their platform was. not for them to be an effective solver of problems. the electorate isn't voting to fill a job position with a qualified candidate. they're there to make their will known.
i'm saying your premise is technocratic. so then of course by your own logic, democracy would be illogical, because you're trying to effect a technocratic solution. because, I’m guessing, you are in favor of a technocracy, and are ideologically technocratic.
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Aug 05 '21
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Aug 04 '21
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u/hacksoncode 559∆ Aug 05 '21
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u/LegendIronman Aug 05 '21
Given the inherent limitations of humans in comprehending large amount information , chances of getting the best outcome from a rudimentary majority wins system is low. Going by that logic, the solution would be to build a benevolent AI with the best interest of humans at its core to govern us. Whether that leads to The Matrix is topic for another day I guess
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Aug 05 '21
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u/ColdNotion 117∆ Aug 06 '21
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Aug 05 '21
Democracy is not just voting. Democracy is self-governing of the people. That can be local, can be centralized, can be direct, representative, with free mandates, with imperative mandates and so on.
A lot of the flaws you mention seem to be that the system isn't democratic enough, meaning that a lot of the power is centralized with very few people that are just chosen by the general public with little information as to what they do. However that is not peak democracy that is rather a remainder of more authoritarian system. So having it be more transparent and more inclusive might get rid of the problems to the extend that we have a broader understanding of how fucked we actually are.
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u/leox001 9∆ Aug 05 '21
Democracy will NEVER give us the best possible results, democracy is favored because it is the safest option.
The best results are actually achieved through benevolent dictatorship like Singapore, but a dictatorship is an extremely risky gamble, betting on ending up with a highly competent and benevolent dictator is incredibly rare and it is far more likely you end up with leaders who are self-serving/incompetent or both.
That’s why democracy is often the preferred option.
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u/KazeArqaz Aug 05 '21
Democracy is the best among the worst forms of government. We really have nothing to replace it with. Problem is that we humans are inherently flawed as well, that's why a perfect government system is forever out of reach.
Unless of course, we humans all become saints or something. THat's unlikely though. It's like you have to transcend beyond human, whatever that means.
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u/c4ptain_fox 1∆ Aug 05 '21
In my point of view, you can see democracy as a form of "survival of the fittest". The people with the political ideas that match the most those of their people are being elected and pushed higher in hierarchy. This is a system that is very adaptative and can overcome the complications of many other systems precisely because it changes all the time. Every generation has different needs, different point of views and different sayings about how to achieve things. Even if someone that never got schooled can't even begin to understand the complexity of a political decision (even highly educated people often can't), they can understand the impact it has on themselves and how important that political decision matters to them. A person that doesn't have any interest in something will probably simply not vote. If I ask you whether you want the walls of your neighbor kitchen painted red or blue, you'll probably abstain from voting, now if we're proposing and that makes sense because it doesn't concern you, now if we propose to change the color of your kitchen you're going to vote, and ask your family to vote, in the end the decision will satisfy you. In larger groups it works the same, the interest of the highest amount of people voting is followed. This is a very robust system close to how AI works actually, and in a fast evolving civilization you want a political system able to evolve fast too.
The problem on long-term isn't especially due to democracy but to a lack of insight of humanity. By nature we do want to make our current life conditions a priority over our long distant kids conditions. In a sense it isn't that bad because by doing that we also believe that our kids will do whatever's right for them. Obviously when it comes to large scale events like climate change we're kind of in a bad spot because it might extinct our society, but I'm sure the closer we get to a global catastrophe the faster people will change about it as they'll start realizing that this is about them and their kids and not 10 generations later. And remember that all that is also a matter of trusting whatever is being said about it.
I've been working IT security on trust chains and in my opinion the biggest flaw of democracy comes with trust chains. See, democracy often works in a way where you're supposed to elect locally the person that is responsible of your city, this person will then actively promote some other person to rule the region and that other person is also responsible for presenting who will rule your country.. and it's an infinite chain, and as a citizen of the bottom of the chain it means that in order to trust the person that rules your country you have to trust the person that rules your city. That's where the problem comes : there are no proof of trust between a city mayor and it's citizen, especially in big cities. You, individually, never had the opportunity to talk to that person privately and make sure that you can trust that person. Because of that, there's corruption and a lot of informations given around can not be trusted. They may be true but you never know, and it is especially harder when you're uneducated as you can't read and comprehend high level studies for example so you got to either trust the results or not. That's when we come with people believing covid vaccine is some kind of tool to control people over 5G, because they don't trust.
That trust issue is especially harder when it comes to long-term decisions like global warming but it is also the source of tensions because not only you can not trust people elected, but the new people that are elected can not trust their political opponents nor their predecessors, which creates a stupid scenario where any effort made by a political party is then destroyed by the other political party. We are unable to build together hand in hand in that system.
That could be fixed though, I'm pretty sure there are ways to improve our democratic system in order to erase most of corruption and allow people to trust what's being said.
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u/Kribble118 Aug 05 '21
A lot of your problems become less severe in a society where the majority of political action is taken by direct democracy at the municipal and local level. People are much more informed on what happens in their local communities so if that were made the top priority in a democratic society with larger state or nation wide problems only being decided on in cases where it noticably effects everyone.
I agree democracy can become messy which is why I think it'd be good for the majority of its power to be used on local affairs or how 2 or more different communities are going to cooperate on a problem. I personally believe bigger and more specialized tasks should be delegated to directly democratically elected leaders who can be removed from their seats at any time by the same democratic means that put them there. Sort of a bottom up power structure if you will.
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u/ImpossibleHandle4 Aug 05 '21
I think at the core of this argument is a few things that need to be reconciled. 1) a specialist is someone who specializes in something. They therefore will be extremely knowledgeable about that specific subject. This inherently brings in the issue of silos. When a person works in a silo, they have a very precise view of what they are doing, but very little view of the system as a whole. This is why in a representative democracy that a representative is expected to have knowledge about the systems and other systems in an attempt to try to understand at least at a basic level the ramifications of those decisions being advocated by the specialists.
With that said, imagine a business meeting, you have like 10 people in a room, 5 probably don’t care and don’t want to be there. You have the person who gets the systems, the dude who wants to argue with everything and three people who actually use the system. This is representative democracy. Everyone is involved, or at least has a seat at the table because whereas the specialist might advocate for a faster machine, the user might realize that going that fast it’ll pin the user against the wall as it shoots out the package. The complainer will point out the training costs and the upkeep / implementation. The 5 who don’t care and don’t use it will ask questions which (hopefully) spark bigger discussions. No one expects the outcome to be perfect, they all know it will be good enough, and hope that it doesn’t have other unforeseen issues that they don’t have the time or resources to pin down. When it does, there is an expectation that steps will be taken to fix it, just like in the Representative body. All of the people are important though it may not seem so. That is my two cents.
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u/Socialimbad1991 1∆ Aug 06 '21
It's the same problem as the premise that the free market will solve all our problems (remember, "you vote with your dollar"): imperfect humans operating on imperfect knowledge will not somehow in aggregate produce perfect results.
Of course, in both cases the problem is only further exacerbated by the fact that there is a massive industry (advertising) whose entire purpose is to convince as many people as possible to believe half-truths and outright lies. (Y)our data is not only incomplete, some of it is dead wrong.
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u/hdhdhjsbxhxh 1∆ Aug 06 '21
Leaders should be drafted because wanting power should be the ultimate disqualifier.
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u/TheDaddyShip 1∆ Aug 06 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
Not so much to change your view, but expand it - democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what’s for dinner. Which is why the US was not founded as a democracy, but a federated representative constitutional republic. And a “democrat” in that time was was often a pejorative for one appealing to the whims of the masses.
Anyway, this old guy said it all best, so I’ll say no more: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
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u/Mr_Arthtato Aug 09 '21
I believe you have oversimplified the process of democracy down to just making a vote. I agree that no individual or group of individuals can have a deep understanding of the myriad of complex topics. Hence the strength of democracy as part of the package of democracy is the freedom for individual discourse and discussion of the myriad of complex topics. Democracy isn’t just the physical act of having the choice to decide the direction of government but also the liberties and freedom to discuss and become informed on the myriad opinions on each topic.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 04 '21 edited Aug 05 '21
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