Hi André, I'm not exactly interested in wading into the various discussions around GCD 008, but there is one point you mentioned in your recent email that I find myself needing to comment on.
On Monday, June 8th, 2026 at 1:28 PM, André Batista <[email protected]> wrote: > Did you happen to read their other post[3] linked on this one? There they > spouse another reactionary view on law and society by claiming that social > change is not democratic. You know, they use democracy as equal to the > simple majority rule whereas for at least a century democracy is understood > not as the rule of majority but as the system that provides protections to > the minorities and those who are vulnerable. Can you please cite your sources as to your alternate definition of "democracy" as "a system that provides protections to the minorities and those who are vulnerable"? Democracy is--and to my knowledge has always been--by definition (and etymology) the rule of the majority [1]. Even in the Merriam-Webster definition, the closest to what you describe is definition 3, which is about a system wherein everyone is treated equally and have the right to participate equally. Neither that definition, nor any[2] other[3] that I have seen have indicated that democracy is about providing protections to minorities and other vulnerable persons. At best[3], various freedoms and rights (including minority rights) are described as common features of democracies, not defining characteristics or required features. > Human rights cannot be removed > from the law by a majority vote, they can only be extended. As a member of a currently aggressively targeted minority in the United States, I have serious issues with this claim. I have seen many laws passed in the US at various levels designed to deny and even revoke human rights for minorities--and not just from the current administration. So human rights can absolutely be removed from the law by a majority vote (even though that, to me, violates the Platonic concept of a human right). So far the recourse in such situations has been to try to get such laws and regulations struck down by the courts (a decidedly non-democratic process). Also, it can be important to distinguish what kind of "majority vote" you are referring to--is it a direct "majority vote" put to the population and the result is determined by the majority of the voting public, or is it a representative "majority vote" where the result is determined by the majority of the elected representatives? Both are "majority votes", though both can have the power to curtail human rights while staying within the rules of the systems under which they operate (and whether either or both have that power depends on existing rules/laws). > The majority vote > is only a formal process of decision making which takes places for decisions > which are not related to fundamental principles of the system. AKA, you > cannot democraticaly put to vote wether people want to establish a > dictatorship. I am fairly certain this is also false. I don't remember if public referendums or votes are part of the process for constitutional amendments in any of the US states, but at a minimum constitutional amendments can be passed by a sufficient majority of US Congresspeople voting in favor of it. And those amendments can be related to the fundamental principles of the system, for example the Fifteenth Amendment allowed for males of any race or color to vote, and the Nineteenth Amendment allowed women to vote--both of which are significant changes to a fundamental principle of the US' representational democracy, in that both greatly change the demographics of the people allowed to participate in the democracy. Cheers, Kaelyn > So the correct reasoning is not claiming that social change is undemocratic, > and thus favoring individual moral purity and unflinching adherence to a > learder (you know, like nazis), but that the fundamental rights of democracy > on a digital world must encompass the right to knowledge, users rights on > software and culture at large, the break down of power concentration and that > democracy nowadays can only survive if those rights are recognized and > properly enforced. > > Cheers! > > 1. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2195750>. Unfortunately paywalled and I must > obey that sacrosanct law of copyright, right? > 2. > <https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52000AE1424> > 3. <https://blog.lx.oliva.nom.br/2026-02-01-social-change-is-not-democratic> > > > [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democracy definition number 1. [2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy/Democratic-institutions [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
