...sometimes a thought bubbles to the top of my brain that I feel I should share with the world...
The Asshole Problem
About twelve years ago, I was really into an online game/"society simulator" called Cantr II. (Jos, Wim, in the unlikely event that you find this, hallo, hoe gaat het, ik probeer nog steeds nederlands te leren. :) ) It was kind of a sandbox game - there were locations, there were resources in the locations, and the idea was that players could set up trade mechanisms and governments with minimal interference from the staff (basically the only rules governed interactions between multiple characters run by the same player; in a nutshell, "no muling, no sockpuppeting").
I was one of the first active players in a particular location - the spawn points tended to be seen as towns - and I was working with a few of the others to set up a democratic government with a council and some basic rules/codes of conduct. It took weeks, because it's really hard to have this kind of discussion when you're not all online at the same time, but we finally got it hammered out. We'd started passing the charter around for signatures. Before it got far, some asshole with a sword showed up, slaughtered everyone in the town, and declared himself king of that location.
My first thought was, "Wow, there's a fundamental flaw in the way fighting is handled in this game, because people who aren't online have no means to fight back."
My second thought was, "Wow, that's actually illustrative of a fundamental flaw in liberal democracy. One asshole with a sword and a willingness to use it can bring the whole thing crashing down."
Sometimes it takes a lot of assholes. Sometimes the swords are metaphorical. (Sometimes they're not - how much democracy was going on at the Affordable Care Act town halls where people showed up with assault rifles?) But I think we're going to see how that plays out in the real world - when you have people who are into the democracy part ("My guy won!") but not the liberal part (i.e. the idea that the winners still need to consider the needs of the minority) in charge.
Building is hard, and takes time. Tearing down can happen overnight.



