@izzythepush,
izzythepush wrote:
As opposed to capitalism where two wolves force the sheep to butcher and cook their own to serve them their dinner.
The whole capitalism-democracy compare-contrast notion is foiled by twisting democracy slightly to refer to popular sovereignty (majority rule) without consent.
Democracy is about representation, but it is ultimately about consent. Majority representation is about preventing a government of elites from ruling over the majority without their consent (e.g. taxation without representation); but if power is modified so that the elite can essentially buy a majority and then rule without consent by majority, that is just as undemocratic as minority rule.
Basically, democracy is about government rule by consent of the people, and all the discussion and deliberation that has to take place for that to happen.
Even consent, however, can be bought in too many cases; which is why we hear so much about 'compromise' in politics. In real democracy, there is no compromise by bought-consent. Citizens are supposed to be independent of the need to sell consent to others; so when everyone consents to some government policy, it is based on the higher judgment of all.
In other words, democracy is supposed to be about a diverse populace discussing the greater good across political/ideological differences in order to achieve policies that are acceptable to all.
The problem is, when people resist consent so that they can (continue to) get away with activities that are exploitative/abusive, then they are using their right to withhold consent as a tool to overpower others' right to resist. E.g. think about a rapist who refuses to consent to anti-rape laws while continuing to rape. In that case, the rapist is buying consent or rejecting consent altogether at the level of his private activities, but yet he is arguing at the political level that a law against rape is something he's not willing to consent to and that making such a law would violate government by consent.
The rape example is just to illustrate how democracy as government by consent can be abused to protect social/economic activities that abuse, exploit, or defy consent. To have a truly voluntary society/economy, we would have to embrace the spirit of accepting dissent in all things; AND then also resist abusing the power of dissent to manipulate others to our advantage by selling consent instead of using independent judgment to decide when it is right to consent and when not.