You're thinking "wouldn't it be great if there was a community led by an absolute authority which agrees with me" and, uh, that kind of thing doesn't scale, last, or continue agreeing with you for a particularly long amount of time.
>I really think this is not possible without it being a private parcel where there aren't thousands of individual property owners in the loop for decision making.
This is just saying democracy is bad. Ok, but go find me an example of something else that has actually worked.
It's troubling how people think dictatorship is the solution to their problems these days. It's not even one particular viewpoint that falls into this, people of all positions are increasingly advocating for authoritarian solutions.
I think that's a response to the sort of obstructionate governance republicans have been doing. 27 laws total were passed by the senate in 2023 half of which were trivial things like commemorative coins.
The party in power complains about the inactivity of the Congress because minority party obstruction.
The majority party has the full opportunity to get rid of the fillibuster, and yet does not. (pick a year to determine which party is assigned to which role)
The lack of activity is just as much the Democrats' fault, they have had plenty of opportunity to try to change procedure but they have not.
It's more subtle than that, because it depends on the scope. Democracy is already not applied in many contexts today, such as most private corporations. In fact I think large companies have many analogous features to communist governments what with the central control and absolute authority.
There is certainly no suggestion that a whole state or country should be switched over to an authoritarian regime; of course we all know the classic "we tried this already and it didn't work" line.
There are a lot of cult-ish or vaguely religion-based communities out there. But that's not what I have in mind.
You tend to see a lot of lament in here on HN or other similar forums about things like car-centric suburban hellscapes, poor walkability, bike paths, what have you. Meanwhile in urban settings where these things are better solved there is the problem that property values are sky high, and create an elite environment that turn away support roles and cause a new set of problems.
I would love to see some tech billionaire drive an innovative design over a metro-sized zone. Maybe don't have roads and cars except for deliveries, use roads for cycles and pedestrians? Have a subway built before anything else? High-rise mixed-use buildings with important services like free child-care and urgent care? Have golf-cart-like EVs easily available for short-term rent. Free stupid-fast WiFi/Internet etc.
Kind of like a college campus but scaled up? Maybe the crazy sheiks in Dubai will manage it.
>California Forever is a proposed master-planned community, to be carved from over 60,000 acres of land that several members of Silicon Valley’s elite have quietly been buying in Solano County since 2017.
>There are a lot of cult-ish or vaguely religion-based communities out there. But that's not what I have in mind.
Honestly, people and their zoning/walkable/anti-car/density/environmental ideals and desire for a little dictatorship to create it is pretty indistinguishable from all the other cult community efforts. The hippies wanted free love and drugs or whatever, the luddites wanted no technology, everybody wanted their set of things. Nobody thinks their cult is a cult, they think they have great ideas, only what those other people are doing is a cult.
Seriously it's troubling how folks think billionaires and dictatorships are going to save them and can't even conceive of a community built on a strong foundation of well executed differing opinions compromising to achieve the best outcome.
Folks just want their opinions and only their opinions made real by force and absolute power. It's insane that people don't recognize how many people have tried before and the awful things that happen when it fails.
For me it's a pleasant thing to ponder, especially when faced with the above mentioned existing problems.
> It's insane that people don't recognize how many people have tried before and the awful things that happen when it fails.
I think it's just human nature, perhaps even more so in an engineering community. Look at how much of scientific progress follows that pattern, and even worse with the participants fully recognizing the immense amounts of preceding failures.
People try this thing on a fairly regular basis.
You're thinking "wouldn't it be great if there was a community led by an absolute authority which agrees with me" and, uh, that kind of thing doesn't scale, last, or continue agreeing with you for a particularly long amount of time.
>I really think this is not possible without it being a private parcel where there aren't thousands of individual property owners in the loop for decision making.
This is just saying democracy is bad. Ok, but go find me an example of something else that has actually worked.
It's troubling how people think dictatorship is the solution to their problems these days. It's not even one particular viewpoint that falls into this, people of all positions are increasingly advocating for authoritarian solutions.