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At this level of evidence, every problem in a nominally democratic society could be explained by “voters” in the abstract. Would you blame local discretion over land use, Prop 13, or CEQA - semi-permanent features of the Californian democratic system - on today’s San Francisco voters? How about the lack of national healthcare system that can support drug abusers and other mentally incompetent which drives a lot of net migration of homeless people to the city?



In a democracy the answer to all of the above has to be yes. You literally get what you vote for in a democracy. Even more so in the kind of direct democracy that San Francisco engages in so frequently.


At the risk of engaging in a childish yes-no debate—and of using the No true Scotsman fallacy, you are absolutely wrong. In a real democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator. So there are policies—at least on a constitutional—level which you cannot blame the voters for.

Also—at the risk of Godwin’s law—historians usually don’t blame the German voters for the horrors of the Nazi regime, even though it was democratically elected, they blame the Nazis them self. As a current example, voters are not blamed for the current climate crises, even though politicians are.




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