Oddbean

Australia’s democracy had a referendum in 2023 on “The Voice”. The newly elected Gov proposed a wishy-washy “voice to parliament” for Aborigines. They refused to detail what it would mean up front and just wanted a constitutional amendment to enable it. They lost every state and territory 60-40 except for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) - a tiny enclave where our Federal Gov sits, similar to Washington DC where all the fucking bureaucrats live. Despite losing the referendum (bear in mind Australia is 1of2 “democracies” with **mandatory** voting on threat of fines), States have ignored those results and moved ahead with their own “Voice”. Even though their constituents voted against this idea, they’ve gone ahead and done it anyway. South Australia went first. A state 3X larger than Germany with 1.7 million people, they decided to do this at a state level totally ignoring the referendum result. They had 30,000 eligible Aboriginal people and got just 2,619 votes. 0.1% of the population just override the 60-40 result thanks to democracy. Put aside your idealism from CivVI telling you a Churchill quote and come to the real world. Democracy is a fucking shitcoin used to mask the actions of totalitarians to do whatever they want.