I think you make a good point about institutions though. In practice they may be more important on a day to day basis than the popular will in placing constraints on government power.

Disruptive innovation requires disturbing some part of that chain of influence. Microsoft and Apple have found success mostly by providing tools to people who exist in established parts of that chain. Google and Facebook and many other current-generation startups are more likely to use the power of collective action to create feedback loops where collective action directly informs further collective action with limited checks and balances. This sometimes leads to imbalances which spark mass outrage over policies that do not fit into people's concepts of how things ought to work.

Is this kind of power sustainable? It's likely to follow a more volatile path of quick growth followed by outrage over the outcomes that make people uncomfortable, but it might find equilibrium regardless, as it still has to exist in the world that was formed by traditional institutions.

It would be like if the U.S. decided it would be good for them to own the entire Caribbean in addition to Puerto Rico, so they acquired all the islands (through power or other means) and then those citizens became some sort of pseudo-citizens of the U.S. as a result.

Every company will eventually flex as far as they can on all these axes. I’m interested if you have some insight about something that makes Google particularly dangerous in the horizontal direction?

Google is a bit different story. Living without Google is doable with some but not gigantic sacrifices.

My step-sister spent years fighting cancer. I knew this, and would talk to her occasionally, but I wouldn't find out about significant events until after the fact.

As soon as I surrendered and finally joined Facebook, I discovered she was in the hospital again, and was able to go visit and spend some quality time with her. As it turned out, it was the best conversation we ever had, the most time I spent 1:1 with her before she passed away.

Are there other ways of keeping in touch with family? Sure. Once your family is invested in using Facebook, however, that's where you have to be to know what's going on all the time.

I dislike Facebook, and look forward to getting rid of it. I cannot, however, dismiss the unique value it offers.

The only other means of communication which might have led me down the same path on that occasion was a family message board on QuickTopic.

However, frankly, Facebook is much better, for a wide variety of reasons. The message board was never ideal, privacy was a binary choice, people regularly struggled with it, photo sharing was a joke, etc. It's not at all obvious that the short hospital stay would have been communicated there.

Email, phone? Nope, wouldn't have happened.

Has Facebook displaced other communications mechanisms? Sure. But for the most part, the alternatives were far from ideal. Facebook has won by being better.

It's just unfortunate that they aren't satisfied with being a good way of keeping in touch with friends and family.

anyway, their pool of available actions is still constrained by user preference, even if you believe facebook is that crucial.

Here is the relevant part:

- The need to supplant emotional labor with Facebook (read Sarah Jeong’s essay on how she tried to stay away from Facebook and really felt bad about it. For many, not having Facebook means an extremely weakened social support network)

- The need to use Facebook to get required information (such as parties, events, gossip, personalized news).

- The need to use Facebook to run a business/make a living (Read: Emerging Markets Can’t Quit Facebook)

- The need to use Facebook for work-related tasks.

- The need to use Facebook to maintain and reach a personal audience (particularly relevant for influencers and people from the fields of media, marketing and communication, politicians etc.)

- The need to login to 3rd party sites with Facebook credentials"

Not everything applies to everyone. But I bet that almost every active Facebook user would recognize themselves in some of these. And unlike what the general tenor at HN suggests, most people are not willing to accept any sacrifice in order to remove Facebook from their lives.

Here's the full post https://medium.com/@martinweigert/most-people-cannot-leave-f...

Really? What constraint is the popular will of users exerting on what Google and Facebook do?

Not just "from a certain point of view", Obi-Wan: The whole point of a constitutional system is to check the majority, to say that some laws are impermissible, no matter how much the majority wants them, because they violate some principle we regard as more important than majority rule.

The big thing with constitutional changes is that they will normally require serious unity amongst the population, most of whom will likely by default agree with the constitution.

The majority isn't greedy and evil, they just don't put up much of a fight when the politicians 'misunderstand' and implement policy that favours the majority without accepting the damage to a minority. There are a lot of policies like that, and in many cases one suspects the politicians know exactly what they are doing but the public is intellectually lazy.

Someone once said, 'Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'. Democracy, in its purest form, is arguably mob rule.

That's why constitutional democracy - democracy with limited government and the rule of law, including human rights - is the ideal and the foundation of modern government. The majority, the popular will, can't vote to take away your free speech and other rights, no matter how unpopular you are. Remember the foundation of the U.S. is the assertion that 'all men' have "inalienable rights", and that governments exist to protect those rights.

Ideal is hard to quantify here, but if we focus on maximizing representation and effectiveness at the same time, then it's fair to say that these forms of government were uniquely successful. Despite their flaws and failures, they still seem to be the best at maximizing those two variables. Prior to the U.S., people accepted Plato's sensibility that all forms of democracy devolve into authoritarianism -- which obviously is a meme that persists today. (It's worth pointing out that at the same time the U.S. was forming, France had its democratic revolution which ultimately settled into Napoleonic rule.)

The racism of the Enlightenment authors I mentioned is fairly staggering. It's hard to reconcile that with their work, even at the time it was written. Despite that, America now has 100% suffrage and managed to retain its government structure (via a civil war).

Great point; I agree that I shouldn't have used the word "ideal", because it's not at all ideal. Constitutional democracy sucks; it's just much better than any alternative. (I think Churchill said that.)

He said something like that, but he didn't say he originated the thought. In the house of Commons, he once said:

"...Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

https://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government

This seems much more closely aligned with the principles of liberalism than it does constitutionalism. Any dictator can write a constitution and derive authority from it. They can't, however, practice authoritarianism through the practice of liberal principles.

I see this as a matter of terminology, not meaning. Here's what I know:

I've seen "constitutional democracy" used by experts, though not often enough to say it's a term of art in that field. Certainly I've seen experts say that the basic formula = (democracy) + (constitution that protects minority rights and limits government).

And certainly "liberal democracy" also is used to describe that form of government. Those liberal principles are enshrined in the constitutions; I don't know if that defines "liberal democracy".

> Any dictator can write a constitution and derive authority from it.

That would omit an essential component of the 'formula', democracy.

Very interesting way to think about it. Thanks.

This is a strange claim. It could mean a number of things, but the senses in which it is defensible seem like stretches.

Popular will brings fascism and authoritarianism because it is a source of authority. It has been the well-documented foundation of extremely powerful dictators going back to the ancient Greek tyrants. It was the basis of Julius Caesar's authority, and while it proved unsustainable for him, it was also crucially important for the emperors that followed him for the next few hundred years.

At the other end of history, it has been a bedrock of the authority of recent dictators in Germany, Italy, Latin America, China, Russia, Africa, Korea, etc. etc. etc. etc.

You could make the argument that governmental authority, over the course of centuries, doesn't generally derive directly from the popular will. But there are three problems with that argument: first, people generally don't care about whether the popular will 300 years from now will endorse the institutions of today. Second, while it is true that governmental authority over long periods does not derive from the popular will, it is always pretty harshly constrained by it. Third, religious organizations routinely do derive substantial authority solely from popular support, and they do this for many centuries at a time.

And then, once they had earned our trust, they broke those institutions. So if they are the only alternative to "popular will", then it looks like we're screwed.

The government is you in a democracy, it's there to protect your and everyone else's interests, that what democracy and rule of law means. It's what guarantees a somewhat civilized society. It is not this simplistic 'majority can do what they want' illiteracy spread by market fundamentalists.

Markets have existed for thousands of years, it did not lead to any civilization then and cannot now. Discrimination, segregation, slavery, plunder and exploitation are the result of uncontrolled capitalism and free markets, not democracy and 'popular will'. Anyone who knows history and human greed understands this instinctively.

It appears some people become rich and increasingly alienated from people, society and government and begin to believe they don't need government. This is the kind of hubris that leads to tyranny and quasi feudalism, which is of course what they want.

“Don’t be evil” can be achieved passively

For example, if you spend all day watching TV you probably haven’t done evil, but you probably also haven’t done anything ‘right’

Right and evil are both words with a lot subjective meaning

Google is evil. Maybe they weren't at some point, but they absolutely are now.