<story><title>I believe US could see rolling series of “Ireland events” over next 2 months</title><url>https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-ireland-event-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickelcitymario</author><text>If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you&amp;#x27;re feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people.&lt;p&gt;Which means believing that it&amp;#x27;s better to implement a terrible but popular decision than to override the will of the people.&lt;p&gt;So in this case, IF the majority supported lifting restrictions (and I&amp;#x27;m not Irish so I have no idea what the public sentiment was), then the politicians did the right thing: They obeyed the will of the people.&lt;p&gt;Which also means that in this case, the people of Ireland f&amp;#x27;d up and need to take responsibility for that, rather than blame the politicians who simply implemented their will.&lt;p&gt;We can&amp;#x27;t have it both ways. We can&amp;#x27;t demand a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and also let ourselves off the hook whenever our collective decisions suck.&lt;p&gt;Maybe we, the people, suck at governing in a crisis.</text></item><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>Representative government caving to demands when the demands are terrible, like in this case, is not a good thing. In that moment what is needed is enough guts to see the measures through and fend interest groups off. Loss of leadership and movement towards &amp;quot;the customer is king&amp;quot; politics is responsible for a lot of mistakes in the response to this virus.</text></item><item><author>ls612</author><text>Isn’t this last bit in some sense a good thing? Representative government changing policies to reflect a shift in the population’s preference after ten months of dealing with these restrictions?</text></item><item><author>lynchdt</author><text>Also Irish. +1 on your assessment here. The virulent strain narrative was peddled by the Irish government who went against medical advice and tried to deflect blame. The evidence doesn’t support the narrative.&lt;p&gt;I think the COVID-fatigue angle is quite interesting though. As critical as I am of the government they were under a lot of pressure from the populous to provide some sort of respite.</text></item><item><author>Fordec</author><text>Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m Irish, working in tech but my hobby that gets me more of a social life is involvement with an Irish political party.&lt;p&gt;The new variant accounted for 10-25% of these new cases over the period of that spike. The spike happened two weeks after Christmas when lock-down restrictions were lifted, as planned in October, so people could have a respite after 9 months of all this. Did the government misjudge just how much people would socially interact? You bet.&lt;p&gt;But to claim that this event is a sign of things to come is to willfully ignore what Irish medical professionals (NPHET) are saying about what the root cause has been and fully buy into the government politicians attempts to cover their butts by blaming the new strain and not their own operational strategy.&lt;p&gt;Also note that it is coming up to three weeks since Christmas and new infections today is half of what it was last week already and dropping.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ska</author><text> &amp;gt; If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you&amp;#x27;re feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people.&lt;p&gt;What you are describing is leaning towards &amp;quot;direct democracy&amp;quot;, which nobody tries to implement, vs &amp;quot;representative democracy&amp;quot; which is what we all experience.   In the latter it absolutely is a feature that representatives will go against the preference of the majority at least some of the time.</text></comment>
<story><title>I believe US could see rolling series of “Ireland events” over next 2 months</title><url>https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-ireland-event-2/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nickelcitymario</author><text>If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you&amp;#x27;re feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people.&lt;p&gt;Which means believing that it&amp;#x27;s better to implement a terrible but popular decision than to override the will of the people.&lt;p&gt;So in this case, IF the majority supported lifting restrictions (and I&amp;#x27;m not Irish so I have no idea what the public sentiment was), then the politicians did the right thing: They obeyed the will of the people.&lt;p&gt;Which also means that in this case, the people of Ireland f&amp;#x27;d up and need to take responsibility for that, rather than blame the politicians who simply implemented their will.&lt;p&gt;We can&amp;#x27;t have it both ways. We can&amp;#x27;t demand a government of the people, by the people, for the people, and also let ourselves off the hook whenever our collective decisions suck.&lt;p&gt;Maybe we, the people, suck at governing in a crisis.</text></item><item><author>Barrin92</author><text>Representative government caving to demands when the demands are terrible, like in this case, is not a good thing. In that moment what is needed is enough guts to see the measures through and fend interest groups off. Loss of leadership and movement towards &amp;quot;the customer is king&amp;quot; politics is responsible for a lot of mistakes in the response to this virus.</text></item><item><author>ls612</author><text>Isn’t this last bit in some sense a good thing? Representative government changing policies to reflect a shift in the population’s preference after ten months of dealing with these restrictions?</text></item><item><author>lynchdt</author><text>Also Irish. +1 on your assessment here. The virulent strain narrative was peddled by the Irish government who went against medical advice and tried to deflect blame. The evidence doesn’t support the narrative.&lt;p&gt;I think the COVID-fatigue angle is quite interesting though. As critical as I am of the government they were under a lot of pressure from the populous to provide some sort of respite.</text></item><item><author>Fordec</author><text>Disclaimer: I&amp;#x27;m Irish, working in tech but my hobby that gets me more of a social life is involvement with an Irish political party.&lt;p&gt;The new variant accounted for 10-25% of these new cases over the period of that spike. The spike happened two weeks after Christmas when lock-down restrictions were lifted, as planned in October, so people could have a respite after 9 months of all this. Did the government misjudge just how much people would socially interact? You bet.&lt;p&gt;But to claim that this event is a sign of things to come is to willfully ignore what Irish medical professionals (NPHET) are saying about what the root cause has been and fully buy into the government politicians attempts to cover their butts by blaming the new strain and not their own operational strategy.&lt;p&gt;Also note that it is coming up to three weeks since Christmas and new infections today is half of what it was last week already and dropping.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>waterhouse</author><text>&amp;gt; If we believe in democracy, we necessarily must believe that the crowd - the mob, if you&amp;#x27;re feeling less generous - is better at making decisions than any small group of people.&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily.  I think some people have said that democracy is designed to imitate revolutions without actually being violent: that if much of the populace is armed and not &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; many people have enough gear and training to make them enormously more effective than a random person with a gun, then &amp;quot;one person, one vote; majority wins&amp;quot; approximately reflects what would happen if there &lt;i&gt;was&lt;/i&gt; a violent revolution, so people don&amp;#x27;t have much to gain by adding violence.  If that&amp;#x27;s true, then appeasing the mob by letting them more or less get their policies implemented may be best even if those policies are not the best—because the alternative is risking a bloody revolution followed by the mob implementing their policies anyway.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s one perspective, anyway.</text></comment>