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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Democratic procedures have legitimate authority

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Legitimate authority requires that decisions track justice or correct outcomes, not merely procedural agreement (Estlund's epistemic proceduralism inverted).
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    • 2.Majority rule systematically produces outcomes that violate the rights of minorities, as Tocqueville's tyranny of the majority demonstrates historically.
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    • 3.A procedure that reliably produces unjust outcomes forfeits its claim to legitimate authority regardless of its formal fairness.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Rousseau's distinction between the will of all and the general will shows that aggregating individual preferences does not yield a genuinely authoritative collective will.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Democratic procedures in pluralist societies aggregate preferences shaped by structural inequality, advertising, and epistemic distortion rather than informed deliberation.
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    • 3.Authority grounded in epistemically corrupted preference aggregation is not legitimate authority but the laundering of existing power structures.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Democratic procedures are better than random chance at producing good decisions
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    • 2.Democratic procedures are epistemically the best of the political systems acceptable to all reasonable citizens
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    • 3.The justification of democratic procedures is acceptable to all reasonable citizens, thereby respecting their freedom and equality
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    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.