> When a behavior hurts the society the society puts a law against it
Laws are passed by politicians, not society. And the more removed they are from actual working people, the more different their incentives are. You and I as members of society have very little actual control over what gets passed.
On any given issue, there's something between 0 and 30% of the population who actually care.
- Immigration? Maybe 30% cares, the rest doesn't.
- Gay marriage? Maybe 10%, idk really.
- Whether training an ML model is derivative work? Right now, I'd guess close to 1%, hopefully it'll go up.
- Whether online services should disclose evidence of causing addiction? I bet that's maybe 2% now.
- Trans rights? Depending on country, it's between 0 and, say, 10%. This issue is massively hyped up by people who benefit from dividing the population to distract them from other issues. No, seriously, most people should have no need to dictate other people's lives, but frame is as an attack on moral values and you get supporters.
The issue with democracy is that you don't vote on issues, you vote for parties. And even if you live in a democracy which isn't totally broken by degenerating into 2 parties, there are still way fewer parties than combinations of issues. So you can't express your view in any meaningful way.
It's like describing a precise point in N-dimensional space (your entire opinion) by picking 1 of a dozen predefined points. When you realize this, you realize how incredibly dumb is it.
