Democracy is interesting because it requires you to step outside your own head, understand that there are people who hold different values and different experiences from you, and then mentally engage with them, holding your own doubt and revulsion at bay, until you can come to a consensus that's acceptable to everyone. It's a thoroughly unnatural and uncomfortable experience that can be both fatiguing and time-consuming. No wonder everybody predicts that it will fail - by definition, a democracy requires occasional subjugation to points of view that are alien to your way of life, and which point of view is often unpredictable and changeable.
But I'd much rather have it than any system of forced social roles, where there is one person or small cabal of people who make the decisions and everyone else knows their job is simply to obey.
"...until you can come to a consensus that's acceptable to everyone."
In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, democracy rarely seeems to come to any consensus that is acceptable to everyone, but rather serves as little more than a moral battering ram that the 51% can use to impose their will on the 49%. Perhaps one day people will realize that democracy, given its cultish appeals (e.g. "but don't you know other systems are worse!?") is simply barbaric.
Maybe technology will render nation-states obsolete within my lifetime. I can only hope.
Continue to broaden the scope of what can be transmitted securely and anonymously over the internet until jurisdiction over specific pieces of land approaches irrelevancy.
Why do you assume all questions are answerable by science? Science says that if you assemble materials in a particular way you will get a solar panel, and if you assemble other materials in a different way then you get a toaster; it can't say which you should do.
Science says that a human being is a collection of genes which are formed at conception; it can't say anything about abortion, murder, capital punishment or self-defense. Those aren't topics on which it is competent: all it can do is inform discussions thereon, by affirming, 'yes, we are talking about a human being in this case, but in this other we are not.'
You simply can't address every issue with an appeal to science.
I never actually assumed that. The scientific method applies to systems which have a set of observables. Social science is not a second class citizen to natural science, as both society and nature are systems which can be observed. Therefore, it seems more prudent to ask "why" (i.e. applying the scientific method, or some more general inquisitive process) Half A and Half B disagree rather than simply assuming one half is correct and moving on. In the latter case, there is no learning.
> Social science is not a second class citizen to natural science, as both society and nature are systems which can be observed.
I honestly think social science is only slightly more scientific than astrology.
But even were it not, science is not capable of answering questions like what one ought to do. Sure, A & B disagree; it's interesting why they do; maybe they're both wrong; maybe they're both partially-correct; but what should be done about it? Science can only say what is, not what ought to be.
You have to make some philosophical assumptions (e.g. utilitarianism) in order to even think that science can provide direction, and even then you will get bogged down in questions like, 'what is the greatest good for the greatest number?'
As an aside to the downvoters: don't downvote if you think I'm wrong; please share how you think science can answer a question like 'ought we execute murderers.'
That's why real democracies have more than 2 [real/major] parties. Governments are a lot more interesting and concensusy when they're made up of 23%, 27%, 24%, and 26% for example. Suddenly there's no single majority to ram its will down everyone else's throat.
Except that cases are hardly rare where a small minority party becomes crucial for forming a government and winds up wielding power far beyond its numerical support among the population. And its not rare for countries to be unable to form a government for months or even years.
In Denmark, we never have to wait for long. Whenever those in power want to pass something big or important in parliament, they seek a broad support - otherwise, it'll just get repealed whenever they lose power.
Everything certainly isn't perfect here (yes, it can be darn annoying when center parties hold too much power - but then again, it is a stabilizing factor), but healthy mechanics can get you a long way with democracy.
I feel a lot of people in this thread point out cases where democracy doesn't work. That's easy. But maybe it would be better to look for cases where it does work and learn from it.
Part of the problem with the US is that it is just so damned big and so diverse. I' not sure democracy scales well.
To take your example of Denmark; Denmark has less population, and half again as much area as Massachusetts. Comparisons between the US as a whole, and individual European countries don't always make the most sense; the more appropriate comparison would be to the EU, to have the same kind of multitudes of disparate people under a common banner.
Imagine party A has 23%, party B has 28%, and party C has 49%. Party A and B join forces; they decide per consensus on how they would vote in parliament. Since they have together 51% and vote as one, they don't need to consult party C, even though it's the party with the most votes.
We have again a situation where 51% crushes the 49%.
That's only true if party A and party B agree on every decision, in which case you simply have two parties, "AB" and C.
Also, in some countries, there are way more than 3 factions (over a dozen in Belgium and the Netherlands), making it less likely that the same subset of parties will find itself in agreement every time.
The effect of having that many factions is that the majority part of parliament will always take the minority opinion into account because they know that, in the next vote, they may be part of that minority.
Of course, that is not a guarantee; I think it is part of a nation's culture. Other countries may value the short-term "let's win this vote" way above the longer term "we have to live in this country together".
That certainly seems the case in the USA, where "in four years time, we might end up with the shorter straw." doesn't seem to play a big role in politics (?anymore?)
i have been in it also, and it works just fine. i certainly do not like to be in a minority where the majority gets what it wants and the minority is steamrolled.
A significant role of government is to manage conflicts. Conflicts, by definition, lack consensus.
Imagine Hal doesn't want Bill to build a fence (to make it fun, let's say Hal isn't even going to be impacted by the fence, he just doesn't like Bill).
How does consensus handle this?
Our current system tells Hal to sit down and shut up about what Bill does on his property. If consensus is the norm, Hal has a veto on Bill's fence.
An answer about requiring people to be reasonable in a consensus government is not very satisfying, people aren't reasonable.
consensus works by give and take. Hal and Bill don't just have to deal only with the fence. They have many more items they need to negotiate if they are to live as neighbors.
our current system does NOT allow Bill to do whatever he wants on his property.
You hope that nation-states will be obsolete within your lifetime? Seems to me that's a strange wish given the overwhelming evidence that we would then be faced with a global corporate feudalism from which there would be no retreat. Nowhere to run, no place to hide where people can live as they wish in a way they find congenial. The latter might be unlikely given that local laws could be easily rendered pointless if a powerful central authority elsewhere deemed them unacceptable. Only my view but I'd call that a dystopia.
You say 'democracy, given its cultish appeals (e.g. "but don't you know other systems are worse!?") is simply barbaric'. Does your "quote" rebut itself as you seem to suggest? What is your non-barbaric alternative to democracy?
> In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, democracy rarely seeems to come to any consensus that is acceptable to everyone...
To be fair to American democracy as originally described, supermajorities were required to make big decisions (Constitutional amendments). And power was decentralized between branches of government and layers of government (state and local governments had more authority than the federal government on some matters). This design was amended and eroded over the years. One of the consequences of the movement toward a simple-majority democracy is the 'battering ram' effect you're (justifiably) complaining about.
I'm actually beginning to think that we should require a 2/3 majority for simple legislation and a 3/4 majority for amendments. Maybe it'd help nip a lot of problems in the bud.
The Athenians would say that we do not have a democracy but an oligarchy. The only way that they saw to actually make the government the will of the people was to select representation by sortition, i.e. drawing by lot, like jury selections.
I don't think that they were wrong in this regard. If we look at the demographics of the house of representatives, they do not come close to making a parallel of the demographics of the country. If representatives were selected at random, we'd have 51% women in the house, we'd have people from all economic backgrounds according to the current wealth disparity instead of only the wealthy. We'd need to actually focus our resources on education if we agreed that really anybody can be selected for representation. If the pool of representatives was large enough (larger than we have now, which is a limitation put in place to make party control easier), then random selection should always result in a representative body that is actually representative.
Seems to me that cabals can always form and skew the implementation away from the ideal balance that makes the concept of democracy seem so fair in the first place. I'll recite a personal narrative as my main observation of this potential outcome in the wild.
Several years ago I helped cofound a worker owned for-profit software and design cooperative. Its constitution was formulated around a mix of product incubation and consulting in support of labour solidarity through cultivation of progressively more interesting/motivating/challenging work. It was founded after we had all quit our high-performing and very profitable agency whose non-technical/non-creative ownership cut one too many corners on the sustainable systems that we were working on. Typical anti-flow type management decisions with arbitrary deadlines, death marches, and silly promises to clients despite solid contracts (which I had written and negotiated directly with the clients and our lawyers).
In the new co-op that us engineers and designers from the old company formed, there was growth early on, and a plan to expand to new cities/markets because the cost structure was horizontally scalable by design. This was before boutique remote app studios and incubators became commonplace (at least before all the really big agencies tried to get in on it, e.g. Sid Lee, Ogilvy).
Lo and behold, it turned out there were just barely enough members who wanted to take a more employee/entitlement oriented tack (as opposed to entrepreneurial) vs the other half. These members were of the same local cultural and linguistic background (the socially dominant one), whereas the rest of us were from all over. The locals formed a "cabal" of sorts and pushed for spending lots of money on a swanky office, vetoed horizontal expansion and denied the right to work for one of the members who had just moved to a new city as part of the previous plan (by voting to refuse to allocate some of our mandated work to him).
The original vision fell apart and was replaced by something more parochial. The more "ambitious" cofounders all left and the co-op continues to thrive in its own way today but as a shadow of the dream we had in the beginning.
An autocracy would not have endured these trials so early on. In top-down mode, the boss gets to enforce focus. Certainly not good if the dictator is not benevolent, but the experience provided for a lot of reflection on governance.
No matter the exact loci of power, there are always gradients between the points, and forces that can bring imbalance are very hard (perhaps undesirable) to control.
This is great and all in words, but in reality a lot of democratic decisions end up with really close counts like 51% against 49%. If you look at it like this, a majority is forcing the minority into something even though there is actually a significant number of people it effects who are against the motion. This is far better than a dictatorship, but it is a flaw and something that human society still needs to find a solution too.
What's the alternative, assuming that you can't reach into peoples' heads and change their positions on an issue? Regardless of the decision, you would still have 51% of the population in support of it and 49% opposed (or vice versa, if the system were minority rules).
If I could reach into peoples' heads, there's a solution: "mind your own damn business". If we didn't care so much what other people did, then we wouldn't disagree so much. And in general, I think the world would be a better place if more people did this. But some fraction of issues will always affect multiple people (that's the whole point of government, after all).
And besides, nobody's yet invented a mind-control ray, and it would be pretty icky if they did. (There's a certain irony to altering peoples thoughts so that they care less about what other people think...)
As I stated, there is no alternative as of today, and that is the flaw. Its not terrible flaw, and I think that the democracies on this earth are far better than any other form of government, but maybe one day someone will think up the alternative. Mind control though would just be an uber-dictatorship.
I think there's an alternative already available and sparingly in use today: certain decisions can require 2/3rds, 3/5ths etc. majorities.
For instance, any decision that will last for generations and impact profoundly in everyone's life, like secession or a "Brexit" should require slightly more votes than a majority one. Unfortunately it's only typically used by parliaments, courts and senates for constitutional change, never for popular vote on issues.
No, some countries use referendums for lots of things, like Switzerland. Including quite small things like whether or not to build new tunnels.
Simple majority has the advantage that it's fair. If you're going to start claiming that decisions that will "profoundly impact everyone" need higher than majority you're just going down the road to totalitarianism. Anyone can claim a decision they think they're on the losing side of is too important to leave to majority decision making. Then it's just about ramping up the threshold until you win.
If 51% and 49% cant come to agreement they should live separately. I am not advocating full secession but something like Hong Kong (HK handles everything except Defence and External Affairs).
(I think) In democracy, voters are less likely to compromise. This is result of weak discussion between >1m.
Unfortunately ideology and geography have a correlation that, while positive, is less than one. There will always be a minority that gets overridden. And while it is a good thing for people to have freedom to move to a place that supports their values in extreme cases (some are even talking seriously about it this election), in most situations that isn't practical.
Still that does not stop me from solving 90% of the problem using seperations. For example I would like to have greater say in where my taxes are spent. If we can all agree on this, this would be great.
But likely technology (as always) will come to rescue before democracy. This is in reference to rise of renunciations, AirBnB etc.
> What's the alternative, assuming that you can't reach into peoples' heads and change their positions on an issue?
Supermajority voting on all legislation & referenda? After all, 2/3 of the population forcing 1/3 to obey a law is much more reasonable than 51% forcing 49%.
And making amendments take a 3/4 vote is even better: if 75% of people think something is a good idea, then it probably is.
> a lot of democratic decisions end up with really close counts like 51% against 49%.
America (and the few other remaining non-proportional systems) suffers from this problem much more than the more advanced democratic systems. If America is all you know, you shouldn't generalize too much.
First, I think you might be overestimating the number of decisions that come down to 51% vs 49%.... there are countless actions that the government takes that have a much higher societal-agreement rate than 51%. It only feels like everything is 51v49 because those decisions are the ones people spend their time arguing about; we never talk about the things we all agree on.
Secondly, for spectrum decisions (e.g. what tax rate we should have, how much to spend on defense and education, etc) getting as close to 51v49 for the decision is probably the most equitable outcome.
> But I'd much rather have it than any system of forced social roles, where there is one person or small cabal of people who make the decisions and everyone else knows their job is simply to obey.
If Clinton wins the election in a few days, then at the end of her first term, you're looking at 32 years of only three families in the Whitehouse. If she wins a second term, then that's 36 years - almost two whole generations. It's symptomatic of how little things change at the top.
To be a big gun in US politics, you need so many connections and so much money that only a few people can do it. This election has had a two-year electioneering cycle, a ridiculous expense. The notion that 'anyone can become president' just doesn't pan out in reality.
It doesn't work when the population is composed of different social groups with vastly opposite systems of values. Iraq for example (I was born in Iraq).
We can already see a similar thing happening in America with different ethnic groups not getting along well together. I think this will only get worse over time.
Pro Trump and anti Trump camps are really about how a significant number of whites are not getting along with a significant number of Hispanics (and other ethnic groups).
What you speak of is backwards. The answer to disagreement isn't for both parties to walk away in opposite directions, nor is it for one party to kill the other party. Disagreement is valuable in that it provides the world an opportunity to learn something. Your solution is to run away? That's seriously very sad, and I feel like crying that we still have people who think like this. The solution isn't crying, either. Many people are observed to get along with people who have different ideas, culture, and ethnicity. Perhaps a better solution is in education and learning.
> Disagreement is valuable in that it provides the world an opportunity to learn something.
Please stop. I dont want to have disagreement. I dont want to have this endless debate. I want to be left alone. I dont want people to make descision for me. I want to spend my brain cycles in my work. Not this. Please stop.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. Disagreement is the way a society grows. If everyone agreed on everything, we'd be stuck in the dark ages. It's very simple. This happened with pretty much every advancement in science, most notably with Galileo. Strive to disagree. Don't strive for agreement, for then we are stuck in some sort of pseudotopia.
>Democracy is interesting because it requires you to step outside your own head, understand that there are people who hold different values and different experiences from you, and then mentally engage with them, holding your own doubt and revulsion at bay, until you can come to a consensus that's acceptable to everyone.
Objectively, it can be seen that this is completely untrue. No understanding or empathy is strictly required by democracy. Democracy only requires that you obstinately stick to your preferred viewpoints and shout down those who disagree with you. This can be seen in the legislative chambers of nearly every Western-style democracy on the planet. Specifically:
- in Canada, the hallmark of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's rule was a complete rejection of anything outside his personal ideology, even when his ideology flew directly in the face of fact or public opinion.
- in the US, we are seeing someone who most certainly suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder not only excelling in politics, but may soon come to hold the highest public office and command of the world's most powerful military.
The days of good-old collaboration and working together for the common good back in the 1950s were a short-lived phenomenon created by the shared experience of surviving the deadliest conflict in human history.
No understanding or empathy is strictly required by democracy.
Yes, it's required. Democracy is compromise. The people need to be highly intellectual to make their roles in the society balance between what they want and what society (other people) want them to be. Without understanding of difference, everything breaks down easily. See what happened when us bomb other countries with simply unbelievable execuses. You can see that people having no understanding of outside world basically do not afraid to use violence to make their thinking a reality...
I believe that democracy in theory is excellent, but in practice is a failure, not because of democracy per-se, but because a gut-feeling vote and a properly-researched vote count the same.
I'm in no way suggesting that one vote should be valued more than another one, but that people should be doing their homework and researching properly the benefits and consequences of their decisions...
Having a majority of the population voting with the gut can lead us to disastrous results...
Hm, I am not clear what you're suggesting. You don't want to value votes differently, so what do you want to do about those people who won't do their homework for some reason?
You should also note that in most democracies this is already accounted for. The people who feel they didn't do their homework simply do not vote, and leave the decision on others.
I lived in a communist country, and we had a system that was controlled by, ostensibly, the experts (the party members). It was a disaster.
In practice, democracy works; it doesn't work in theory, because you're wrongly comparing it to some fictional system which makes ideal decisions (whatever that is). It works in the U.S., it works in Switzerland. Those are some of the most developed countries in the world.
I am not an expert in decision-making processes, and I have not an idea of which process would work better, since I understand the big picture: We want to give every person the ability to express their needs with their vote.
I am just a concerned person, since most of the candidates spend too much time discrediting their opponents, rather than discussing about their proposals.
The electoral process had became a reality show rather than a mechanism to choose a representative, and it is saddening that people are picking a candidate because of a catchy slogan, rather than because of their proposals...
The US Presidential elections are a curious thing, they're hardly about policies because presidents can't simply enact whatever laws they want. They aren't general elections as other countries have. Voters are basically selecting a figurehead who has some power, but not enough to really reshape the country as they see fit.
Given the relative pointlessness of the process is it surprising that it turns into a beauty/uglyness contest?
> I believe that democracy in theory is excellent, but in practice is a failure, not because of democracy per-se, but because a gut-feeling vote and a properly-researched vote count the same.
I don't like this line of reasoning, because I do believe the issue is much more fundamental: people want different things.
Now, there is an argument that if people do their research properly, they will have known all the consequences of their decisions. And hence everyone will have the same ordering of concerns from "most serious" to "meh". That's not true for the fact that consequences and the future are really really hard to predict. Not to mention that "what exactly are good things" is still very subjective. Look into philosophy, there are a gazillion moral frameworks, even if you just pick Utilitarianism, it's still unclear what constitutes "utility".
The uneducated who cannot properly express their gut feelings in an intelligent manner have one day where they are equal to everyone and where they can escape from the tyranny of the experts and of the well researched individuals, who mistakenly think that they themselves act always within reason when that couldn't be further from the truth.
This election shows more than any other that people will bend the facts to fit their feelings. The well educated just have more tools at their disposal to lie to themselves about it. Everyone works primarily by their gut feelings and everyone rationalizes it after they've made their decisions internally and unconsciously.
If after this election you can't step back and see this then this is further proof to me that the system works and works well, because it keeps tyrannical well researched experts in check from their own irrationality. It's not an accident that an overwhelming majority of well educated experts who write the policies that drive a country support free trade and globalization, while real people who are not disconnected from the real world and who actually feel the effects of those policies do not.
The best argument against rule by 'experts' is the USSR's attempt to have academic and intellectual 'experts' set 21 million prices before the New Economic Policy.
I think you misunderstand the point of democracy. Democracy is not a mechanism for selecting the best ruler or the wisest policies. Democracy serves as a solution for the succession problem without revolutions and civil war.
It is a mechanism that places the process, the system, above the ruler, and provides a strong and formal mechanism for replacing the old ruler with the new one.
Totalitarian states nearly always descend into chaos and violence when the dictator dies. Without clear succession rules, they rarely have an undisputed successor ready. Monarchies are historically more stable, but every so often a ruler dies without an undisputed heir, or one is such a blatantly bad ruler that civil war breaks out. Some dictatorships are able to maintain stability and prevent revolutions or civil war with more or less extreme repression.
Democracy is meant to solve all this. There is no need to take up arms against a bad king, if you know he or she will be replaced in 4 or 8 years. People who were at least consulted about the choice of ruler (in the form of elections) are less likely to dispute the ruler's legitimacy. Succession isn't disputed, because it's the system and not the ruler that chooses the successor.
Revolutions and civil wars are bad, they used to kill millions every other generation. The system we have maintains itself with minimal repression. So yes, one down side of democracy may be that people get to decide about issues they don't really understand. It's totally worth it.
> People who were at least consulted about the choice of ruler (in the form of elections) are less likely to dispute the ruler's legitimacy.
You say that like it's a good thing. Every 4 years we are called to legitimize the next crop of corrupt politicians sold to the financial interests. We can even choose who we like best between two corrupt candidates. Yay, democracy!
I don't think voting is the greatest thing. Voting silences the minority, instead of integrating it. Voting is blunt. Stamping a paper every four years don't make someone involved or responsible for a country.
Another vice of the voting election system is that one candidate might have a foreign policy I like but an educational platform I hate. That would force me to pick which is more important for me, say, education or world politics. It's sad to choose between two things when both are essential. My political will is so poorly expressed such by kind of voting, it's as if I am only allowed to say part of what I wanted to say.
You know what happens when a ruler's legitimacy is widely questioned. See the legitimacy question as separate from the question whether the ruler is popular or good. In the past armies have been raised against perfectly fine rulers whose legitimacy was questioned, and armies have been raised in defense of horrible tyrants whose legitimacy was not in doubt. My enthusiasm for representative democracy is that it has largely done away with these internal conflicts, without a need for repression.
The vices of voting that you mention are more an artifact of a first past the post, two party system: over time, any idea that has a plurality will get all of the influence. Any idea that never has a plurality will never have any influence.
In a system with proportional representation and a tradition of coalitions, over time, an idea that has 20% of the vote will gravitate towards about 20% of the influence. With many parties to choose from, the choice for your educational platform may not be automatically bundled with a choice for a foreign policy.
add some more context, this NYT editorial was written a couple days before Abraham Lincoln was sworn into office (March 4th, 1861).
The states had already voted to secede (or not to) earlier in the year. The Confederates had even provisionally elected a president, Jefferson Davis, on February 18th. The secession crisis started after Abraham Lincoln was elected in November of 1860.
The nation really was falling apart, hence the lamentation of the republic being just a collection of states in the editorial.
I really think the movie Idiocracy nailed the scary potential future of democracy. If elections continue and build on this trend of featuring reality tv show style candidates and media that lives off hyperbole, eventually we'll just start electing the most popular celebrities.
The success of democracy and its creations have stabilized dictatorships- a constant even small surplus in a economy where the human individual matters near nothing, keeps societys with a frozzen over public relatively stable for a long time.
Dictatorship is what came most natural to our animal ancestors, so we tend to rationalize it while condemning the "Zumutung der Komplexität".
But are they stable? Dictatorships tend to embrace the conservative point of view, which produces usually overpopulation, raging nationalists (the bottled up anger redirected against the guys next door) and religious fanatics. So if this economic surplus, aka innovation is not imported (or even more dangerous constantly produced)theey unravel rather fast, usually by the forces they called upon to stabilize.
There is no inbuilt re-juvenation without weapons. So every new App - any new product or production methode, disturbing the equilibrium, can blow up such a social powder keg.
The seperate problem usually associated with democracys, is that the fullfillment of all wishes in the wests way of life, is rather self-destructive on society.
<Anecdata Begin>
I have several couples i know who really looked forward to having grandkids, after raising (quite large) familys. And in the west this just doesent happen any more. Nothing more depressing then seeing those baby-boomers and there bottles all in tears about "What went wrong with there kids?"
<Anecdata End>
It doesent make the situation better, that democracys have a tendency to import large swaths of people from dictatorships - mostly for economic and sociological reasons.
> We have been so accustomed to hear from infancy eulogies of the wisdom which shaped our Constitution, praises of its perfection, hymns to its symmetry and strength, that to doubt its fullness of all excellence has come to sound like sacrilege.
This, which is also ironic considering what happened in the late 1700's. No Government should ever program itself to be resilient to change. Such a thing is a virus, not a Government.
"Ok kids, we're going to play a game called 'I get a unique power but you can never take it away no matter what!' starting now!"
According "Democracy, god that failed" from Hans Herman Hoppe, it is failed miserably. He sees it even inferior to aristocratic monarchies with good reasons.
We haven't yet found a decision making process that works better than democracy, and a lot of people have tried. At some point, someone has to evaluate how good or bad the decisions being made by the political apparatus are. Either that person is the average voter, or it is a minority group. If it is a minority group, they are in a position of extreme moral hazard to funnel societies resources to their benefit and lock out change.
It is worth reflecting that, although a lot of people complain that people are 'voting for a slogan' or similar, there is evidence (mainly the outrageous success of democracies vs. non-democracies) that the average voter does actually have some idea what is going on.
It is also a subtle and interesting fact that if a large group of people are voting essentially randomly, then they will cancel out. In this way, a person voting with no thought for policy will probably cancel out another person voting with little thought. A 52-48 type margin can mean that 96% of the population had no idea, and the 4% that knew what was going on voted unanimously in favour. The point being that a vote can be sliced up theoretically so that ignorant voters have less influence than might be expected - and again, the practice of democracies suggests this tends to happen more often than intuition suggests.
Democracies throw out some cruel decisions, but that usually means the interests of the voters are being served rather than democracy failing.
> At some point, someone has to evaluate how good or bad the decisions being made by the political apparatus are. Either that person is the average voter, or it is a minority group.
You're quietly assuming a lot there. Let's stop after the first sentence -- "At some point, someone has to evaluate how good or bad the decisions being made by the political apparatus are." Ah! So you're proposing monarchy?
But no, you're not, because you then introduce the fictional "average voter", thereby fitting democracy into the "someone" framework.
I think this is a bad way of looking at it. Democracy isn't a "someone". Democracy is an aggregation mechanism. You contrast having everyone vote with only having a subset vote; but you don't question the assumption that the only aggregation mechanism is the standard sort of voting.
If you ask me, there's one aggregation mechanism that looks like it could actually improve upon democracy, and that's futarchy. Of course, it's untried. But the point is that there are more degrees of freedom here than you seem to realize.
Well, that futarchy replaces hired experts with a panel of future bets. Future bets aren't very reliable, but well, it's something that could be tried - who knows, it may work.
Anyway, on this context you are just begging the question. There's no novelty in there for the democratic process, just for the technocratical one.
I mean, the point is that it's a different sort of aggregation mechanism. It's not one that makes sense for everything, though, so yes there is still a democratic component. Regardless, like I said, it's just an illustration -- there are other sorts of aggregation mechanisms one could use, that are more universally applicable. For instance, there's quadratic voting (not something I actually endorse, but an interesting idea). Again, this is just an illustration.
> At some point, someone has to evaluate how good or bad the decisions being made by the political apparatus are.
Technically true, but you're glossing over another way to approach this fact; we can reduce the number of "decisions being made by the political apparatus" as close to zero as practical.
The decision as to how many decisions to make is itself a decision that must be evaluated somehow, at some point.
But yes, I tend to agree, but this entire thread is largely just a restatement of the last few hundred years of left wing/right wing thought. Minimal regulation, markets, voting, these are all traditionally right wing positions. Regulation of markets by small groups of experts, distrust of the population, the desire for elites to keep a check on the people, these are traditional left wing positions. There's not much new under the sun.
Democracy isn't a failure. Capitalism is. Now before you dismiss me, I'm not defending socialist states, they are far far worse than liberal democracies, however liberal democracies are run by money. Politicians are bought and sold, and we see an undemocratic group of very powerful individuals influencing legislation and pushing around politicians and manipulating public opinion. How can we claim to live in a democracy if the people we trust with developing legislation must filter everything they develop through the approval filter of an undemocratic, and unfairly powerful minority?
Fortunately we have options that aren't the failed states of the 20th century, we need a democratic economy and a democratic workforce. Those are the only solutions to this problem, and if you spend enough time looking at the problems and their causes, it becomes readily apparent why this is so.
Democracy is not a failure, if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure. The problem is the structure on which modern democracy has been built.
>Democracy is not a failure, if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure.
Interesting, I would interpret democracy as the ability for others to control my life; the ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
>I would interpret democracy as the ability for others to control my life
Interesting, I'd disagree though. Say you live in a fascist society or a feudalist society, you get absolutely no say. Democracy allows us to make decisions that influence our own life, however we must obviously respect the fact that we live in a society with other people, and they must be respected. Beyond living in a vacuum, we have no real way to ensure absolute individual freedom, however a completely democratic society is one way of reconciling the thirst for individual freedom with the necessity of cooperation with others.
>The ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
This is absolutely a valid concern, which is why I believe in a rigid groundset of rules on which all laws and rules must comply (consitutions/bill of rights) which respect the rights and liberties of individuals to ensure they have maximum freedom with respect to other individuals in society. This isn't a groundbreaking idea, but I do believe we need to re-evaluate these approaches in a modern context, as most countries were established in a time before progressivism was dominant.
> Interesting, I'd disagree though. Say you live in a fascist society or a feudalist society, you get absolutely no say.
These are hardly the only alternatives. In case you haven't noticed, the other people here aren't implicitly contrasting democracy with e.g. monarchy; they're implicitly contrasting it with anarchy (probably anarcho-capitalism).
Again, there's lots of possibilities out there. Personally I like the idea of futarchy, though it's untried. But that's not the point; the point is, there's a lot of degrees of freeom here.
Anarchy (and some of its branches) value very much the values of democracy, with the added benefits of stressing the search of compromise.
In my opinion, anarcho-capitalism is merely feudalism, with some brainwashing for people to accept their fate. There's a reason some prominent anar-capitalists want to be differenciated from anarchists.
>In my opinion, anarcho-capitalism is merely feudalism, with some brainwashing for people to accept their fate. There's a reason some prominent anar-capitalists want to be differenciated from anarchists.
There's also a reason all anarchists want to be differentiated from ancaps ;)
Isn't anarchocapitalism a contradiction in terms? Capitalism is perhaps the most statist of all forms of society. It's development coincided with the birth of the nation state. Markets have been a part of human societies since the birth of agriculturalism, but it was the state that created the large scale market systems required for capitalism to flourish. Historically markets were established in conquered areas to support standing armies. The same story for currency, which is introduced alongside the market as a means of tax payment levied upon the population by the conqueror; the army comes with the currency and the population has to acquire it through market transactions with them.
Schooling is another big one, the Karolingian expansion first instated it in Europe and around the time of the industrial revolution there was a clear need of schooling the peasantry into the new market driven systems, unifying disparate dialects, teaching basic arithmetics, making sure they can read instructions and do basic record keeping. It's around that time you see the establishment of new public institutions such as prisons and police for enforcing private property law, expansion of courts for arbitrage, the list goes on. Almost all of the foundations of capitalism were created by state power and coercion.
You're reasoning based on a name. Names are not necessarily accurate descriptions. From what I've read of theirs, it doesn't seem that anarcho-capitalism would support capitalism in the sense you describe.
Remember, "capitalism" is an overloaded term. Sometimes it means what you describe, and sometimes it means the free market. Make sure you know what sense it's being used in in a given context, or you can't have a meaningful discussion! In the case of anarcho-capitalism, it refers to the free market. (But even though that works out in this case, you really should be wary of reasoning based on names.)
I've really become more and more for states' rights as time goes on. It's very clear that most states (especially rural states) fundamentally disagree with California, New York, and the other blue strongholds.
I want to preserve the culture I grew up in. I want everyone to contribute to society. I want a culture where what you get is what you worked for. I don't want "diversity" or a bunch of people from other countries to move to the town I grew up in.
Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
In my mind, it would be an absolute travesty to allow the distant majority to vote for the destruction of the culture I grew up in.
Yes, I accept that other people think differently than me. But that should not give the right for Californians to overthrow my community and my culture which exists thousands of miles away from California.
Significant relaxation of federal power is the only way USA and Europe can be politically stable over the long run, but good luck getting people to let go of the idea of federalism.
How so? The general public in the USA and Europe seem fairly docile, we've had massive political scandals on both side of the Atlantic over the past couple of decades, and the general public barely reacts at all (in any meaningful way at least, in terms of organising resistance).
You don't think the political events of 2016 count?
Consider what might happen if Clinton win and more corruption scandals appear about her, or if Brexit is halted somehow. Things are getting less stable over time.
> "Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other."
How is diversity diametrically opposed to equal opportunity and hard work? From what I can see you can have all of the above without any issues.
>I want to preserve the culture I grew up in. I want everyone to contribute to society. I want a culture where what you get is what you worked for. I don't want "diversity" or a bunch of people from other countries to move to the town I grew up in.
>Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
Can you phrase your political philosophy in terms of real proposals rather than thought-terminating cliches? When I hear the term "value" or "values", I reach for my gun.
Bills of rights don't address the problem of the majority voting to define crimes that suit themselves and punish the people who commit them, even if they're not very bad. For example, various drug and sex related laws that keep changing and we can never agree if something should be an important right to be supported or a crime to be punished.
Very true, but if you dig down at the root causes of drug dealing and sex trafficking, you'll see a definite profit motive which drives these systems, that is capitalists which monopolize these trades and continue them for profit. Drug cartels are a perfect example, and basically all organized crime. People who voluntarily participate in these systems (i.e. drug dealers and prostitutes) do so usually out of desperation and the necessity of a capitalist society where poverty means participate in shady pursuits (especially when you're alienated from the work force due to blacklisting like having gone to prison) or go hungry.
I am however not saying that a purely democratic society would eliminate all of societies ills, I'm saying it would make many of the constructs which perpetuate these sorts of problems would become non-viable.
> I would interpret democracy as the ability for others to control my life
That's probably because you're thinking in terms of how things actually are, rather than in terms of vague emotions tacked onto political buzzwords. A classic mistake.
I would interpret the predominant style of capitalism we have in the same way.
Centralisation of power is the issue, it doesn't matter if that centralised power is held by governments or by large corporations, the end result is a tilting of the playing field in favour of those with the most power.
> Democracy is not about having control of your own life. It is about a large group of other people having control over your life.
Democracy is about balancing individual freedom with the demands of living in society. There is no other system of decision making which even attempts to reconcile these two adversarial relationships (individual vs. society).
>What you are thinking about would be volunteerism/Non-aggressionism.
I fail to see how you could have an undemocratic voluntary society. I'd argue democracy is the backbone of a voluntary society.
> Democracy is about balancing individual freedom with the demands of living in society.
No it's not. Democracy does not inherently balance individual liberty with societal necessity. In fact, democracy says absolutely nothing about individual liberty or societal necessity at all. Democracy is a form of government that holds regular public elections. It is not anything else. It might be argued that democracy is a necessary condition for liberty, but it is certainly not a sufficient one.
>It might be argued that democracy is a necessary condition for liberty, but it is certainly not a sufficient one.
I think that's too strong. Some dictatorships have more liberty than some democracies. Democracy increases the odds of liberty immensely, but is neither necessary nor sufficient.
A voluntary system is basically the opposite. Every who wants to participate in something, can choose to do so. Or choose not too. You don't vote on what should be done, and then force everyone to go along with it.
Majority rules is force. You go along with the decision of the group or else. Whereas voluntaryism is zero force. No matter what the group decides, how many people vote for it, you never ever use force on anyone to make them go along with the group.
Thats fine if you think that using force is necessary for the greater good of making society better.
There are lots of good arguments for why the government threatening people with guns, in order to get them to pay taxes, for example, is needed in order to get anything done at all in society.
But don't dress it up in pretty words and call it "voluntary". Voluntary is the absence of force. It is the idea that no matter what I do, as long as I don't directly harm another people, noone should use force against me.
Sounds like a lot of buzz words. Is there any papers or research you can provide links to to flush out the concept. Or maybe provide some insight yourself. There are millions of workers. How do they control the economy and coordinate? And syndicalist push in Europe and even the US is a proven failure of the idea.
Sure, Anarcho-Sydnicalism is a book by Rudolph Rocker the founder of anarcho syndicalism. For other approaches there's mutualism a market based approach, for that I'd see the works of Proudhon, Participatory Economics. There's also anarcho-communism. Here's some books that flesh out the ideas:
They're complementary. A sibling thread on this article says that the problem with democracy is that votes based on a gut feeling that doesn't reflect reality count for the same as well-researched votes by experts with a full understanding of the consequences:
Capitalism solves this problem with bankruptcy & business failure. People whose beliefs are shown to be false lose their businesses and are forced to work for other people whose decisions turned out well. Conversely, capitalism introduces problems with inequality and forced servitude that democracy solves. Democratic government serves as a check on the ability of the economic winners to pull the ladder up after them and use their economic power to impose their will on the people.
This is behind much of the tension between big business vs. big government. You have two power structures (five, actually - the press, the military, and the academy form the other pillars) that work in opposition to each other, each according to different rules. I'd argue that the biggest problem facing America today is that business and government have gotten too cozy with each other while the press and the academy are getting eviscerated, which is letting them manipulate the voter through control of information.
>Capitalism solves this problem with bankruptcy & business failure. People whose beliefs are shown to be false lose their businesses and are forced to work for other people whose decisions turned out well.
A socialist state is one which claims to be a transitional state between capitalism and socialism, i.e. the USSR. They're states which have nationalized most industries in order to prevent capitalists from seizing control until such time the state is no longer necessary and withers away into the establishment of a socialist society (some obvious flaws in this though). A capitalist state is essentially every other modern state, parliamentary democracies,republics etc. all with capitalism as the underlying economic system. Socialism is not state control.
Ah, excellent idea. Put the same people who elected Clinton and Trump in charge of the most complicated emergent system in the world. What could go wrong?
> a democratic workforce
"We voted for you to work on this cotton plantation, so get to it! We also have a democratic economy, so you don't need to worry about getting payed anymore!"
> if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure.
That's interesting, because last time I checked I didn't control my life via a democracy.
Based on the fact that you're using a very new account, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is some sort of incoherent troll bait. If not, this is a strong contender for the dumbest comment I've ever seen on HN; just slap the word "democratic" on random topics and pitch it as an alternative economic system, no further details required.
>Ah, excellent idea. Put the same people who elected Clinton and Trump in charge of the most complicated emergent system in the world. What could go wrong?
The people that placed them on the frontstage already are in charge of it? If you think the people decided on these two I'd say you misunderstand the process by which these two reached the forefront. A very small minority selected Clinton and stacked the odds in her favor for selection, as to the rise of Trump, I'd say that's perfectly representative of the type of misdirected anger that rises out of repeated failings of the system. Remember the individuals Trump was running against? Trumps a protest vote, and a terribly dangerous one at that. Choosing between three different people put on your plate by people you don't trust isn't a failing of democracy, it's a failing of the underlying system.
>"We voted for you to work on this cotton plantation, so get to it! We also have a democratic economy, so you don't need to worry about getting payed anymore!"
You fundamentally misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm not proposing elected slavery, and truly fail to see how you reached that conclusion. I don't know what part of my pro-democracy comment implied I believe in forced labor, but I'm interested in hearing what process you went through in your mind to reach that point.
>That's interesting, because last time I checked I didn't control my life via a democracy.
I'd say your ability to vote, and decide mutually with other people the form society takes is your life being controlled by democracy.
> The people that placed them on the frontstage already are in charge of it?
First off, there's no secret cabal of billionaires that's "in charge" of the economy. Let's dispense with the conspiracy theories.
Second, the group of people that has a disproportionate amount of economic influence (i.e. bankers and the extremely wealthy) generally supported Clinton and rallied extremely hard against Trump. I don't blame them; Trump's policies are bad for trade. But let's not pretend that they're both some sort of globalist illuminati puppets or something.
> I'd say that's perfectly representative of the type of misdirected anger that rises out of repeated failings of the system
You mean the sort of misdirected anger and other irrational motivations that would completely dictate the behavior of a "democratic economy"? Don't put your money where your mouth is; put someone else's money where your mouth is, and vote!
> I'm not proposing elected slavery,
Interesting, because that's the only meaningful interpretation of "democratic economy".
> I'd say your ability to vote, and decide mutually with other people the form society takes is your life being controlled by democracy.
Besides this statement being more or less incoherent, it also doesn't have anything to do with your earlier statement that
> if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure.
There is no connection between the decisions I make for myself and the decisions imposed on me by the whims of a political majority.
>First off, there's no secret cabal of billionaires that's "in charge" of the economy. Let's dispense with the conspiracy theories.
Not at all what I'm trying to say, I don't think there's a shady room where rich people come to smoke cigars and plan out the election, in fact you actually agree with what I'm saying in the very next sentence:
"Second, the group of people that has a disproportionate amount of economic influence (i.e. bankers and the extremely wealthy) generally supported Clinton"
>I don't blame them; Trump's policies are bad for trade. But let's not pretend that they're both some sort of globalist illuminati puppets or something.
I agree, which is why I said Trump was a protest vote, a naive attempt at hitting back at the system whilst still completely supporting it. I don't know how you think I'm sitting here talking about illumaniti when you demonstrably agree with me about capitalist influence on the election?
>You mean the sort of misdirected anger and other irrational motivations that would completely dictate the behavior of a "democratic economy"? Don't put your money where your mouth is; put someone else's money where your mouth is, and vote!
I don't think you know enough about a democratic economy to be attacking the idea, evidently since you're still believing that I think a democratic economy can exist in a capitalist system.
>Interesting, because that's the only meaningful interpretation of "democratic economy".
Then I think you're very poor at reasoning, can I suggest "The Conquest of Bread" it's a great book that might help you on your journey to understand what I'm saying.
It's really not definable in 2 sentences, there are so many different forms this can take. In essence it's where rather than a capitalist system of a small minority directing the production based off the market, it's the workers directing the production based off of mutual cooperation across industries (note this doesn't mean no market, there are market socialist economies e.g. mutualism). That's it in very broad strokes but by no means an all encompassing definition, especially as the form this co-operation takes is left out of this discussion, and that is a very big part of it.
Why does anyone (minority/majority) have to control anyone ? Do you any problem with live and let live.
> Politicians are bought and sold, and we see an undemocratic group of very powerful individuals influencing legislation and pushing around politicians and manipulating public opinion.
The problem is not minority. The problem is overreaching government. Keep government specific and small.
But your vindictive like attitude is what makes government overly powerful. Your "union-infested economy" solution is worse than what we are facing.
> In essence it's where rather than a capitalist system of a small minority directing the production based off the market
False premise. This is simply not true in any way, shape, or form. The bottom 90% of people have drastically more control over production than the top 10%. That's why the single richest company in the world, Apple, is a consumer products company.
> it's the workers directing the production
There's a very obvious conflict of interest there, because the workers aren't the only ones who have things that need to be produced. "You know, Ivan, making bread is really tedious; let's go back to making AK-47s instead." This is why if you go on Ebay and type "soviet surplus", you can still buy crates of Mosin Nagants and Nixie Tubes to this very day.
Planned economies are terrible at producing what needs to be produced, and excellent at overproducing things that don't. Whether you think market economies are impersonal or not, they are undoubtedly extremely efficient at meeting people's needs; no more, no less. Deviating from optimum production levels costs companies money.
> You fundamentally misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm not proposing elected slavery, and truly fail to see how you reached that conclusion. I don't know what part of my pro-democracy comment implied I believe in forced labor, but I'm interested in hearing what process you went through in your mind to reach that point.
This is an unproductive comment. If you say something and you aren't understood, the better response would be to explain.
(I, for one, also have no idea what you might mean by a "democratic economy".)
A democratic economy is one where the workers control it through cooperation across industries, the form this takes is up to the workers in this theoretical system. An anarcho-syndicalist approach may work, a participatory economic approach may work, a socialist market system is possible (mutualism). Unfortunately I can't really explain more without getting into the nitty gritty which requires an understanding of socialism.
Commons trusts would be another major pillar, and democratic confederations of localities. There are many non-capitalist types of institutions ready to use.
Common trusts and co-ops are both "capitalist institutions". They both rely on private ownership and voluntary transactions. Not sure what you mean by "democratic confederations of localities".
To be fair, he means "capitalist" in a different sense than you do. If you take what he said but use a different interpretation of the words, of course nonsense will result.
But I do think that despite the above your underlying point is fundamentally correct here; both commons trusts and co-ops work perfectly well under existing rules. It sounds like, aside from the democratic confederations thing, what eli_gottlieb wants is not a different system of rules, but rather to kick the existing system into a different equlibrium. (It really seems like these socialist types tend not to distinguish between these...)
> It sounds like, aside from the democratic confederations thing, what eli_gottlieb wants is not a different system of rules, but rather to kick the existing system into a different equlibrium. (It really seems like these socialist types tend not to distinguish between these...)
Well, I'd love to know where you draw the conceptual boundaries between systems. Lemme guess: it's only not-capitalism when the state controls everything?
So, I'm a little confused here. You're listing individual points of what would be different, and what the overall intended effect would be (democratic control by workers), but I'm not seeing how this all fits together into a coherent system.
You understand that you are allowed to create such companies now, and they do exist? They don't appear to work much better, if at all better, than a traditional company. But you're free to join or start one if you think you'll like it better.
As a friend recently put it: "Late capitalism depends upon the endless differentiation of desire and the mediation of social recognition (upon which men depend, being social animals) through commodified signs, in order for consumption to continue at a rate which will maintain profit. This means, in principle, a bad infinity of 'lifestyles'. 'No two people identify in exactly the same way', to quote a recent trans propaganda piece. And note that I'm talking about actually existing capitalism, not an abstract or even real free market. I'm talking about the system as it actually exists."
> Now before you dismiss me, I'm not defending socialist states, they are far far worse than liberal democracies
The countries with the highest quality of life are Social Democracies. Places like the nordic countries and the 'new world' anglo countries excluding the US.
It's bizarre just how much the US has demonised the concept of socialism in its political dialogue.
Social democracies are not socialist states, and I 100% agree, there is no way I'd be able to argue against capitalism without prefacing with that statement because everyone would immediately think I propose something like the USSR.
It actually is. Capitalism is defined by the ownership of private property and individuals selling their labor to these owners in the form of a wage/salary, whereas socialism is where private property has been abolished for some form of common ownership. They are mutually exclusive. Social democracies aren't socialist, they're strong welfare in a capitalist system.
So why did the Soviet Union have private housing (and the ability to inherit it)? Why does the modern USA have public lands, managed by the government for the free use of all? How do you classify Chinese communism?
It really isn't an either/or proposition; you're only taking the absolute extremes of the concepts. If it was such a proposition, where does the switch take place? At what point would a nation 'flip' from being 'socialist' to being 'capitalist'?
So, Australia, despite it's reputation, as of a few years ago, had 28% of it's population born overseas. Remove the brits (6%) and the kiwis (1%), and the figure becomes 21%. Compare to 14% for the US, and 12% for the UK (without any groups removed). The last few years, the #1 source of migrants was China. Australia also has only around the replacement birthrate, and yet has increased it's population from 19M in 1999 to 24M today - a figure mostly risen on the back of migration. I'm 43 years old; the White Australia Policy finished it's 20-year dismantling the year I was born, and so has been dead as a dodo for a while now.
Canada (20% foreign-born) and New Zealand (25% foreign-born) are in similar boats. However, your statement is also pretty offensive to kiwis, of whom 15% are of Maori stock - indeed, the relatively harmonious relations are rightfully a source of pride to the kiwis. Both of these countries also deal in bilingual politics (Australia does not).
I'm less knowledgable on the makeup of the Nordic countries, but it's worth pointing out that only two western democracies have a higher rate of immigration than Australia (excluding the year of Syria crisis migration). These countries are Spain and Norway. As for Sweden (usually the go-to country for these discussions), looking now, and excluding the Syria crisis, 14% of Swedes were of foreign birth, equivalent to the US, and two-thirds of these were born outside the EU. While, yes, Sweden doesn't have the latino or black analogues in their national background like the US does, they're not as culturally homogenous as most people think.
In short, I think you're talking about the stereotypes in your head rather than the actual nations. Handwaving it away with "meh, they're all the same in those countries" is an egregious error - after all, if what you're suggesting was true, then Portugal and Ireland (95%+ local-born, single culture) would be powerhouses.
They were homogeneous for centuries, then non-homogeneous for a few decades. Maybe it takes a few decades for the adverse effects of the non-homogeneity to become apparent.
Why stubbornly claim capitalism is a failure when America is not capitalist? It is not laissez faire capitalism, like Chomsky says, it is a nanny state, where government bails out failed business. That is not capitalism.
Spot on! I believe the other term is 'crony capitalism' and this is too often confused with the natural desire of most of us to be able to freely trade goods and services (including our labor) with other people within an evolving independent legal system (national law & international agreements otherwise known as international law) that disallows criminal and unfair practices.
Au contraire it's just a matter of what definitions you are working with, and to many of us the US is the penultimate expression of the rule of capital over society -- capital-ism. The rule of capital. The rule of the interests of those who own capital.
Classical liberals and libertarians of course run with a different -- IMHO utopian -- definition of capitalism which puts the emphasis on the act of individuals trading goods with each other. From my perspective it's an ideological smoke screen which papers over the reality of the asymmetrical distribution of power that arises naturally out of the particular 'natural rights' of property that classical liberalism embraces. And they were embraced historically precisely because of that distribution of power -- during an era of expanding colonialism, imperialism, and enclosure.
To put it another way -- the US may not look like a textbook laissez-faire capitalist society that a Friedman, Hayek or Randian would advocate -- but the unjust power structure of the US and societies like it are what actual-existing capitalism _creates_. It is capitalists who rule, and capitalists who made it that way.
It's not a failure but democracy is about to be tested like no time before. With the ability for everyone to have a voice via social media single minded groups are easier than ever to create. As we have seen many of these groups are unwilling to compromise their ideas which makes it likely for chaos to erupt over any hot issues. We saw an example with the Arab spring and Occupy Wall Street. They erupted but yet have had no real results. Primarily because there was no real leadership behind it to move it forward. In many ways you can say that the revolution made matters worse.
When everyone is upset and there are many points of view there is no common way to move forward but there are many hot heads that are willing to shoot first and ask questions later. Imagine a million hot heads without a common goal but the willingness to fight and we can see chaos with out results.
People get upset at the "do nothing congress" because they can't get X done but people aren't willing to admit that the reason is that voters have sent individuals with very diverse ideas to try to get things done. Voters are the ones that are pushing them to not compromise any idea or be punished by being voted out. I can see a future where one person that can use social media very well can push people to vote in ways that we consider distasteful now. What will happen then? Groups will erupt with opposing view and many will be ready to fight.
We've heard allegations that the voting system is rigged but that's very unlikely. We have laws and watch dogs that prevent that in any significant way. We don't have the same for social media but we know that it's possible to manipulate it, even by foreign powers, and that's not illegal worse yet it's hard to impossible to prevent. It's hard to even contemplate how that effects a democratic system.
The founding father created a representative government because they knew that rule by majority can be as distasteful as government by a monarchy or emperor. They thought a functioning government needs representatives that can sort out what's needed. With everyone having a voice that's going to get extremely difficult. Social media is about to let the US test out its governmental system, lets hope it can pass the trouble ahead. Can the US stay together as a nation?
Yes. Consider that attractive candidates get two and a half times as many votes as unattractive ones. Consider that most voters have very little or no knowledge of most policy and issues. Most voters can't name their representatives even. Most just blindly vote for one party or issue.
It's still better than nondemocratic systems I guess. But that's a terribly low bar to pass. That's not something to be proud of.
Everyone always says that it's the best system of government that has been tried. Well maybe we aren't trying hard enough! There are other systems, and here are a few that are my personal favorites.
My ideal system of government has no politicians. It forms a parliament or congress just like normal, but the representatives are sampled randomly from the population. Ideally they would be filtered for IQ or education, but this is optional. And then they would debate and vote on issues, without having party loyalty, and without having to pander to the general population. It's sort of like direct democracy, but the random sampling lets it scale to much larger populations.
I also really like the model of the supreme court. I have to say that every supreme court decision I've looked into, they seem remarkably rational and competent. They aren't perfect of course, but it seems so much better than congress. Statistics show that even biased judges tend to become much less biased by the time they retire.
I'm not sure how they accomplish this. My guess is the lifetime appointments, and the structure of the court being to debate issues extensively, and for the judges to at least try to weigh them objectively. I would love to try a system of government modelled after something like the Supreme court.
There is futarchy, proposed by Robin Hanson. The idea is to use prediction markets to make predictions about the future, like whether policies will actually work. Then voters can vote on values ('I approve of Brexit, conditional on it being predicted to increase median wages.') But they bet on beliefs.
Another idea I like is the "Ideological Turing Test". In this case representatives can vote on policy just like normal. But they have to pass a test that proves they fully understand the other side's point of view. By writing arguments for the other side of the argument, and blinded reviewers not being able to tell if it's authentic or not. This would be complicated to implement without people gaming the system, but I think it's worth a try.
There is also alternative voting systems. These are just small modifications of regular democracy. They modify the voting system so you can vote for third parties without being punished for splitting the vote.
Statistics show that even biased judges tend to become much less biased by the time they retire.
Citation needed.
If judges were so great and neutral then why does the US have a collective fit any time one needs to be replaced? It's taken for granted that the judges are all extremely biased and the decision making of the court can be (and should be) swayed by selection of appointees.
I never said that judges were perfectly unbiased, just that they tend to the same opinions over time. Republican nominated judges tend to look indistinguishable from democrat nominated judges by the time they retire.
The bureaucratic dynasties under the Mandate of Heaven ruled for ~3,000 years in China, ~2100 BCE until 1912. Individual dynasties lasted for 100s of years, the longest, the Zhou, for 790 years from 1046 BC to 256 BC.
The English royal system has persisted with relatively little discontinuity from 1066 AD to present, some 950 years.
Unless you've other criteria for "success", in which case you might care to consider what those might be.
That's helpful. I'm curious to know of a system (like democracy) that is/was enjoyed by its people and if so, it's a success IMO. I incline to the view that democracy is the best form of government, although I cannot corroborate my own statement because my knowledge of politics is poor.
I have a similar inclination, though I strongly suspect a cultural and familiarity bias. I've been trying to go through the literature of political philosophy and dynamics, which is ... complicated. As with economics, a key point to remember is that virtually everyone writing on the topic (and most especially those who've been promoted to cultural consciousness) are promoting a model that benefits ... someone.
I've found William Ophuls to be an interesting point of entry. His topic is politics within a context of ecological limits, but he has classic training (he's strongly influenced by Plato), direct experience (positions in the US foreign service), and an excellent grasp on modern (mostly 20th & 21st century) thought on ecology, limits, and the interactions of these with polity. His bibliographies are excellent, and worth publishing on their own right. I'd recommend his 1977 Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity and his more recent Plato's Revenge. The former focuses more on the ecological case, the latter more on the questions (with very few answers suggested -- he's really exploring the problem space) of how you'd construct a polity, given environmental, psychological, and social limits.
I'm also starting to form some new thoughts on the role of religion as something of a social glue in vast empires over which communications might take weeks, months, or years, but in which a plausibly predictable level of trust would be found. Religion-as-trust-glue strikes me as a fundamental aspect. Curiously, instantaneous communications (and the monitoring and management that entails) allows for a near-total breakdown in such trust.
If success is defined as social stability and wealth then there seems to be a direct correlation between localism+direct democracy and success, with Switzerland being the canonical example.
Wow! Yes it's social stability and wealth. I know my wording was poor and/or ambiguous. I'm working and at the same time sneaking a glance at this discussion, so it shows that I can't multitask.
I'm not sure it is really accurate to lump 3000 years of Chinese history under a single political system. That would be roughly analogous to saying the the Egyptian political system was continuous from Thutmose to Cleopatra, because the ruler still called themselves Pharaoh. Or perhaps saying that the Western Roman Empire was continuous with the Franko-German Holy Roman Empire that followed it.
There are extensive periods of discontinuity intermixed there, whether it be fracture and civil war, invasion and synthesis with various steppe peoples, the taking on of Buddhist Chakravartin mantles, etc.
"51% of people want spin-up, 49% of people want spin-down, therefore we are going to be a spin-up only society". That right there is the problem with Democracy. Democracy finds controversy, but it does absolutely nothing about it. Since the majority side is always favored, there's no incentive to actually get past the disagreements; there's no incentive to grow. It's just about mindlessly acquiring votes.
Democracy provides useful data: which topics society agrees on, which topics they disagree on. For the ~51/49 (controversial) cases, instead of enlightening ourselves, we just blindly take the majority choice. This is not the way a scientific society should be approaching government.
couldn't up vote enough. Also almost all decisions are voted into without proper deliberations. If you don't like to deliberate, you are incompetent to be elected in the first place. Governments have been turning into for profit entities. And checks and balances being systematically side stepped.
Yes it is a failure, but everything else is even more of a failure. So we settled for a lesser failure.
Also "democracy as a failure" is a common trope that is used by those who perceive the election isn't going according to how they planned. "They are not voting the way I like, therefore democracy has failed" or if the election or polls go the expected way then "democracy and clear minds prevailed again!".
One interesting thing I found about the current election is the role the media plays. To control people in a dictatorship is easier, you just make criticism and dissent punishable, nationalize all the media and it is all simple and easy. In a Democracy controlling is a bit harder, but is still done over the media using sophisticated and not-so-sophisticated methods. Related to that my favorite quote so far comes from CNN's Chris Cuomo talking about the emails: "it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us." It is as if, there was a tiny crack in the matrix and the underlying code was exposed for a moment.
The author speaks about the "provincial" partisans that exist between states, cities, and areas of the Union as if it's the byproduct of a failing Democracy. He or she points specifically to the different ways laws are written and enforced, as one example.
This is, to me, perhaps one the strongest strengths of our Republic. Different ideas and values can be thrive in different areas at the same time, and we can test and experiment with what's true and right.
Centralized democracy is indeed a complete failure.
I really hate an idea that minorities must live as majority wants. The assumption that majority is always smart and able to make wise decisions is completely wrong.
Unlike others, I actually think that some form of democracy exist even in authoritarian countries. I lived 22 years in Uzbekistan, then 9 years in Russia. I can say for sure that almost every dictator appeals to masses. Mediocre people (masses) is always their primary audience. For example, in Russia, tzar Putin perfectly represents mentality of majority of people in Russia. People actually love the style he speaks and acts. Dictator won't last long if he looses support from majority.
I wrote about this here:
(I was surprised this answer got a lot of upvotes)
Also, I noted that even when masses don't like their current government's ideology, they jump to another mediocre idea.
For example, the mob in Uzbekistan is attracted to radical islam as opposition to current secular dictatorship. So if current secular regime in Uzbekistan will fall, then masses choose to go back to 15th century as an alternative. The mob in Uzbekistan certainly won't choose liberal market economy with highly developed technology sector attracting international capital. The backward silly ideas of islamic clerics are much, much, much closer to the mob.
Another example, next after Putin'ism in the priority queue of ideologies in Russia are: communism, and right next after communism is national-socialism. So there are a lot of people who oppose Putin because he is not true communist or do not fully support national-socialism. Again, there is no "liberal market economy with highly developed technology sector attracting international capital" in their queue of ideas.
I can't even imagine the masses go to the streets demanding relaxing regulations for businesses, reducing government spending, attracting international capital.
I guess in US republican party is relatively popular because of religion. Remove strong support of religion in the GOP and after that their popularity will probably drop 10 times.
In Europe, masses a bit smarter than in Uzbekistan and Russia but still they are demanding nanny state, taking money from high earners.
I spent a lot of time and effort to escape poor government policies supported by masses.
I born and lived in Uzbekistan, then moved to Russia, then to Sweden, then to the Netherlands.
So I'm not afraid to say to entire society - "fk off, you are all wrong, I'm leaving!".
I already did it 3 times!
For example, I left Sweden because of ridiculously high taxes and really big nanny state.
I see decentralized democracy as a solution.
For example, I would support an idea of small federal government and pretty independent states.
So that voters can vote for laws only in their states (with rare but inevitable exceptions).
It would be competition between states and eventually people with certain ideas would concentrate in particular states.
Some states would be more socialist, some more capitalist.
Head of federal government should not be a single person but rather a group of persons from each party.
I think Switzerland is closest example to this.
In such country, you can easily move between states with different laws, taxes, ideologies. It's far easier than moving between countries if you are disagree with prevailing political sentiment (what I'm doing right now).
I think many people like the idea of decentralized in principle, but when the centralized power shares consequences for the decentralized mismanagement, people tend to get pissy (see EU financial crisis woes with Greece and friends, or USA state/municipal budget problems of past few years..).
Perhaps these are problems solved with policy though?
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 269 ms ] threadBut I'd much rather have it than any system of forced social roles, where there is one person or small cabal of people who make the decisions and everyone else knows their job is simply to obey.
In my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, democracy rarely seeems to come to any consensus that is acceptable to everyone, but rather serves as little more than a moral battering ram that the 51% can use to impose their will on the 49%. Perhaps one day people will realize that democracy, given its cultish appeals (e.g. "but don't you know other systems are worse!?") is simply barbaric.
Maybe technology will render nation-states obsolete within my lifetime. I can only hope.
the solution is to make the pie arbitrarily large.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Democracy and religion share beds, occasionally, I might even say they were married on upon a time. Barbarism indeed.
Science says that a human being is a collection of genes which are formed at conception; it can't say anything about abortion, murder, capital punishment or self-defense. Those aren't topics on which it is competent: all it can do is inform discussions thereon, by affirming, 'yes, we are talking about a human being in this case, but in this other we are not.'
You simply can't address every issue with an appeal to science.
I honestly think social science is only slightly more scientific than astrology.
But even were it not, science is not capable of answering questions like what one ought to do. Sure, A & B disagree; it's interesting why they do; maybe they're both wrong; maybe they're both partially-correct; but what should be done about it? Science can only say what is, not what ought to be.
You have to make some philosophical assumptions (e.g. utilitarianism) in order to even think that science can provide direction, and even then you will get bogged down in questions like, 'what is the greatest good for the greatest number?'
As an aside to the downvoters: don't downvote if you think I'm wrong; please share how you think science can answer a question like 'ought we execute murderers.'
In Denmark, we never have to wait for long. Whenever those in power want to pass something big or important in parliament, they seek a broad support - otherwise, it'll just get repealed whenever they lose power.
Everything certainly isn't perfect here (yes, it can be darn annoying when center parties hold too much power - but then again, it is a stabilizing factor), but healthy mechanics can get you a long way with democracy.
I feel a lot of people in this thread point out cases where democracy doesn't work. That's easy. But maybe it would be better to look for cases where it does work and learn from it.
To take your example of Denmark; Denmark has less population, and half again as much area as Massachusetts. Comparisons between the US as a whole, and individual European countries don't always make the most sense; the more appropriate comparison would be to the EU, to have the same kind of multitudes of disparate people under a common banner.
We have again a situation where 51% crushes the 49%.
Also, in some countries, there are way more than 3 factions (over a dozen in Belgium and the Netherlands), making it less likely that the same subset of parties will find itself in agreement every time.
The effect of having that many factions is that the majority part of parliament will always take the minority opinion into account because they know that, in the next vote, they may be part of that minority.
Of course, that is not a guarantee; I think it is part of a nation's culture. Other countries may value the short-term "let's win this vote" way above the longer term "we have to live in this country together".
That certainly seems the case in the USA, where "in four years time, we might end up with the shorter straw." doesn't seem to play a big role in politics (?anymore?)
The literal consent of the governed is necessary for government to be legitimate.
i have been in it also, and it works just fine. i certainly do not like to be in a minority where the majority gets what it wants and the minority is steamrolled.
Imagine Hal doesn't want Bill to build a fence (to make it fun, let's say Hal isn't even going to be impacted by the fence, he just doesn't like Bill).
How does consensus handle this?
Our current system tells Hal to sit down and shut up about what Bill does on his property. If consensus is the norm, Hal has a veto on Bill's fence.
An answer about requiring people to be reasonable in a consensus government is not very satisfying, people aren't reasonable.
our current system does NOT allow Bill to do whatever he wants on his property.
Of course not. My point was that it doesn't give Hal a veto over anything Bill might want to do.
You say 'democracy, given its cultish appeals (e.g. "but don't you know other systems are worse!?") is simply barbaric'. Does your "quote" rebut itself as you seem to suggest? What is your non-barbaric alternative to democracy?
To be fair to American democracy as originally described, supermajorities were required to make big decisions (Constitutional amendments). And power was decentralized between branches of government and layers of government (state and local governments had more authority than the federal government on some matters). This design was amended and eroded over the years. One of the consequences of the movement toward a simple-majority democracy is the 'battering ram' effect you're (justifiably) complaining about.
Or just create new ones …
I don't think that they were wrong in this regard. If we look at the demographics of the house of representatives, they do not come close to making a parallel of the demographics of the country. If representatives were selected at random, we'd have 51% women in the house, we'd have people from all economic backgrounds according to the current wealth disparity instead of only the wealthy. We'd need to actually focus our resources on education if we agreed that really anybody can be selected for representation. If the pool of representatives was large enough (larger than we have now, which is a limitation put in place to make party control easier), then random selection should always result in a representative body that is actually representative.
Several years ago I helped cofound a worker owned for-profit software and design cooperative. Its constitution was formulated around a mix of product incubation and consulting in support of labour solidarity through cultivation of progressively more interesting/motivating/challenging work. It was founded after we had all quit our high-performing and very profitable agency whose non-technical/non-creative ownership cut one too many corners on the sustainable systems that we were working on. Typical anti-flow type management decisions with arbitrary deadlines, death marches, and silly promises to clients despite solid contracts (which I had written and negotiated directly with the clients and our lawyers).
In the new co-op that us engineers and designers from the old company formed, there was growth early on, and a plan to expand to new cities/markets because the cost structure was horizontally scalable by design. This was before boutique remote app studios and incubators became commonplace (at least before all the really big agencies tried to get in on it, e.g. Sid Lee, Ogilvy).
Lo and behold, it turned out there were just barely enough members who wanted to take a more employee/entitlement oriented tack (as opposed to entrepreneurial) vs the other half. These members were of the same local cultural and linguistic background (the socially dominant one), whereas the rest of us were from all over. The locals formed a "cabal" of sorts and pushed for spending lots of money on a swanky office, vetoed horizontal expansion and denied the right to work for one of the members who had just moved to a new city as part of the previous plan (by voting to refuse to allocate some of our mandated work to him).
The original vision fell apart and was replaced by something more parochial. The more "ambitious" cofounders all left and the co-op continues to thrive in its own way today but as a shadow of the dream we had in the beginning.
An autocracy would not have endured these trials so early on. In top-down mode, the boss gets to enforce focus. Certainly not good if the dictator is not benevolent, but the experience provided for a lot of reflection on governance.
Reminds me of this explainer video I saw recently from CGP Grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&t=344s
No matter the exact loci of power, there are always gradients between the points, and forces that can bring imbalance are very hard (perhaps undesirable) to control.
If I could reach into peoples' heads, there's a solution: "mind your own damn business". If we didn't care so much what other people did, then we wouldn't disagree so much. And in general, I think the world would be a better place if more people did this. But some fraction of issues will always affect multiple people (that's the whole point of government, after all).
And besides, nobody's yet invented a mind-control ray, and it would be pretty icky if they did. (There's a certain irony to altering peoples thoughts so that they care less about what other people think...)
For instance, any decision that will last for generations and impact profoundly in everyone's life, like secession or a "Brexit" should require slightly more votes than a majority one. Unfortunately it's only typically used by parliaments, courts and senates for constitutional change, never for popular vote on issues.
Simple majority has the advantage that it's fair. If you're going to start claiming that decisions that will "profoundly impact everyone" need higher than majority you're just going down the road to totalitarianism. Anyone can claim a decision they think they're on the losing side of is too important to leave to majority decision making. Then it's just about ramping up the threshold until you win.
(I think) In democracy, voters are less likely to compromise. This is result of weak discussion between >1m.
But likely technology (as always) will come to rescue before democracy. This is in reference to rise of renunciations, AirBnB etc.
Supermajority voting on all legislation & referenda? After all, 2/3 of the population forcing 1/3 to obey a law is much more reasonable than 51% forcing 49%.
And making amendments take a 3/4 vote is even better: if 75% of people think something is a good idea, then it probably is.
America (and the few other remaining non-proportional systems) suffers from this problem much more than the more advanced democratic systems. If America is all you know, you shouldn't generalize too much.
Secondly, for spectrum decisions (e.g. what tax rate we should have, how much to spend on defense and education, etc) getting as close to 51v49 for the decision is probably the most equitable outcome.
If Clinton wins the election in a few days, then at the end of her first term, you're looking at 32 years of only three families in the Whitehouse. If she wins a second term, then that's 36 years - almost two whole generations. It's symptomatic of how little things change at the top.
To be a big gun in US politics, you need so many connections and so much money that only a few people can do it. This election has had a two-year electioneering cycle, a ridiculous expense. The notion that 'anyone can become president' just doesn't pan out in reality.
We can already see a similar thing happening in America with different ethnic groups not getting along well together. I think this will only get worse over time.
Pro Trump and anti Trump camps are really about how a significant number of whites are not getting along with a significant number of Hispanics (and other ethnic groups).
Please stop. I dont want to have disagreement. I dont want to have this endless debate. I want to be left alone. I dont want people to make descision for me. I want to spend my brain cycles in my work. Not this. Please stop.
Objectively, it can be seen that this is completely untrue. No understanding or empathy is strictly required by democracy. Democracy only requires that you obstinately stick to your preferred viewpoints and shout down those who disagree with you. This can be seen in the legislative chambers of nearly every Western-style democracy on the planet. Specifically:
- in Canada, the hallmark of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's rule was a complete rejection of anything outside his personal ideology, even when his ideology flew directly in the face of fact or public opinion.
- in the US, we are seeing someone who most certainly suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder not only excelling in politics, but may soon come to hold the highest public office and command of the world's most powerful military.
The days of good-old collaboration and working together for the common good back in the 1950s were a short-lived phenomenon created by the shared experience of surviving the deadliest conflict in human history.
Those days are over.
Yes, it's required. Democracy is compromise. The people need to be highly intellectual to make their roles in the society balance between what they want and what society (other people) want them to be. Without understanding of difference, everything breaks down easily. See what happened when us bomb other countries with simply unbelievable execuses. You can see that people having no understanding of outside world basically do not afraid to use violence to make their thinking a reality...
Being "Highly intellectual" is therefore not a requirement to participate in a democracy.
Just look around you, man. There are stupid people everywhere.
I'm in no way suggesting that one vote should be valued more than another one, but that people should be doing their homework and researching properly the benefits and consequences of their decisions...
Having a majority of the population voting with the gut can lead us to disastrous results...
You should also note that in most democracies this is already accounted for. The people who feel they didn't do their homework simply do not vote, and leave the decision on others.
I lived in a communist country, and we had a system that was controlled by, ostensibly, the experts (the party members). It was a disaster.
In practice, democracy works; it doesn't work in theory, because you're wrongly comparing it to some fictional system which makes ideal decisions (whatever that is). It works in the U.S., it works in Switzerland. Those are some of the most developed countries in the world.
I am just a concerned person, since most of the candidates spend too much time discrediting their opponents, rather than discussing about their proposals.
The electoral process had became a reality show rather than a mechanism to choose a representative, and it is saddening that people are picking a candidate because of a catchy slogan, rather than because of their proposals...
Given the relative pointlessness of the process is it surprising that it turns into a beauty/uglyness contest?
I don't like this line of reasoning, because I do believe the issue is much more fundamental: people want different things.
Now, there is an argument that if people do their research properly, they will have known all the consequences of their decisions. And hence everyone will have the same ordering of concerns from "most serious" to "meh". That's not true for the fact that consequences and the future are really really hard to predict. Not to mention that "what exactly are good things" is still very subjective. Look into philosophy, there are a gazillion moral frameworks, even if you just pick Utilitarianism, it's still unclear what constitutes "utility".
This election shows more than any other that people will bend the facts to fit their feelings. The well educated just have more tools at their disposal to lie to themselves about it. Everyone works primarily by their gut feelings and everyone rationalizes it after they've made their decisions internally and unconsciously.
If after this election you can't step back and see this then this is further proof to me that the system works and works well, because it keeps tyrannical well researched experts in check from their own irrationality. It's not an accident that an overwhelming majority of well educated experts who write the policies that drive a country support free trade and globalization, while real people who are not disconnected from the real world and who actually feel the effects of those policies do not.
It is a mechanism that places the process, the system, above the ruler, and provides a strong and formal mechanism for replacing the old ruler with the new one.
Totalitarian states nearly always descend into chaos and violence when the dictator dies. Without clear succession rules, they rarely have an undisputed successor ready. Monarchies are historically more stable, but every so often a ruler dies without an undisputed heir, or one is such a blatantly bad ruler that civil war breaks out. Some dictatorships are able to maintain stability and prevent revolutions or civil war with more or less extreme repression.
Democracy is meant to solve all this. There is no need to take up arms against a bad king, if you know he or she will be replaced in 4 or 8 years. People who were at least consulted about the choice of ruler (in the form of elections) are less likely to dispute the ruler's legitimacy. Succession isn't disputed, because it's the system and not the ruler that chooses the successor.
Revolutions and civil wars are bad, they used to kill millions every other generation. The system we have maintains itself with minimal repression. So yes, one down side of democracy may be that people get to decide about issues they don't really understand. It's totally worth it.
You say that like it's a good thing. Every 4 years we are called to legitimize the next crop of corrupt politicians sold to the financial interests. We can even choose who we like best between two corrupt candidates. Yay, democracy!
I don't think voting is the greatest thing. Voting silences the minority, instead of integrating it. Voting is blunt. Stamping a paper every four years don't make someone involved or responsible for a country.
Another vice of the voting election system is that one candidate might have a foreign policy I like but an educational platform I hate. That would force me to pick which is more important for me, say, education or world politics. It's sad to choose between two things when both are essential. My political will is so poorly expressed such by kind of voting, it's as if I am only allowed to say part of what I wanted to say.
The vices of voting that you mention are more an artifact of a first past the post, two party system: over time, any idea that has a plurality will get all of the influence. Any idea that never has a plurality will never have any influence.
In a system with proportional representation and a tradition of coalitions, over time, an idea that has 20% of the vote will gravitate towards about 20% of the influence. With many parties to choose from, the choice for your educational platform may not be automatically bundled with a choice for a foreign policy.
The states had already voted to secede (or not to) earlier in the year. The Confederates had even provisionally elected a president, Jefferson Davis, on February 18th. The secession crisis started after Abraham Lincoln was elected in November of 1860.
The nation really was falling apart, hence the lamentation of the republic being just a collection of states in the editorial.
Dictatorship is what came most natural to our animal ancestors, so we tend to rationalize it while condemning the "Zumutung der Komplexität".
But are they stable? Dictatorships tend to embrace the conservative point of view, which produces usually overpopulation, raging nationalists (the bottled up anger redirected against the guys next door) and religious fanatics. So if this economic surplus, aka innovation is not imported (or even more dangerous constantly produced)theey unravel rather fast, usually by the forces they called upon to stabilize.
There is no inbuilt re-juvenation without weapons. So every new App - any new product or production methode, disturbing the equilibrium, can blow up such a social powder keg.
The seperate problem usually associated with democracys, is that the fullfillment of all wishes in the wests way of life, is rather self-destructive on society. <Anecdata Begin> I have several couples i know who really looked forward to having grandkids, after raising (quite large) familys. And in the west this just doesent happen any more. Nothing more depressing then seeing those baby-boomers and there bottles all in tears about "What went wrong with there kids?" <Anecdata End> It doesent make the situation better, that democracys have a tendency to import large swaths of people from dictatorships - mostly for economic and sociological reasons.
> We have been so accustomed to hear from infancy eulogies of the wisdom which shaped our Constitution, praises of its perfection, hymns to its symmetry and strength, that to doubt its fullness of all excellence has come to sound like sacrilege.
Some things never change.
"Ok kids, we're going to play a game called 'I get a unique power but you can never take it away no matter what!' starting now!"
A badly adapted one. Every virus that gives us real trouble does that because it changes.
It is worth reflecting that, although a lot of people complain that people are 'voting for a slogan' or similar, there is evidence (mainly the outrageous success of democracies vs. non-democracies) that the average voter does actually have some idea what is going on.
It is also a subtle and interesting fact that if a large group of people are voting essentially randomly, then they will cancel out. In this way, a person voting with no thought for policy will probably cancel out another person voting with little thought. A 52-48 type margin can mean that 96% of the population had no idea, and the 4% that knew what was going on voted unanimously in favour. The point being that a vote can be sliced up theoretically so that ignorant voters have less influence than might be expected - and again, the practice of democracies suggests this tends to happen more often than intuition suggests.
Democracies throw out some cruel decisions, but that usually means the interests of the voters are being served rather than democracy failing.
You're quietly assuming a lot there. Let's stop after the first sentence -- "At some point, someone has to evaluate how good or bad the decisions being made by the political apparatus are." Ah! So you're proposing monarchy?
But no, you're not, because you then introduce the fictional "average voter", thereby fitting democracy into the "someone" framework.
I think this is a bad way of looking at it. Democracy isn't a "someone". Democracy is an aggregation mechanism. You contrast having everyone vote with only having a subset vote; but you don't question the assumption that the only aggregation mechanism is the standard sort of voting.
If you ask me, there's one aggregation mechanism that looks like it could actually improve upon democracy, and that's futarchy. Of course, it's untried. But the point is that there are more degrees of freedom here than you seem to realize.
Anyway, on this context you are just begging the question. There's no novelty in there for the democratic process, just for the technocratical one.
Technically true, but you're glossing over another way to approach this fact; we can reduce the number of "decisions being made by the political apparatus" as close to zero as practical.
But yes, I tend to agree, but this entire thread is largely just a restatement of the last few hundred years of left wing/right wing thought. Minimal regulation, markets, voting, these are all traditionally right wing positions. Regulation of markets by small groups of experts, distrust of the population, the desire for elites to keep a check on the people, these are traditional left wing positions. There's not much new under the sun.
Fortunately we have options that aren't the failed states of the 20th century, we need a democratic economy and a democratic workforce. Those are the only solutions to this problem, and if you spend enough time looking at the problems and their causes, it becomes readily apparent why this is so.
Democracy is not a failure, if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure. The problem is the structure on which modern democracy has been built.
Interesting, I would interpret democracy as the ability for others to control my life; the ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
Interesting, I'd disagree though. Say you live in a fascist society or a feudalist society, you get absolutely no say. Democracy allows us to make decisions that influence our own life, however we must obviously respect the fact that we live in a society with other people, and they must be respected. Beyond living in a vacuum, we have no real way to ensure absolute individual freedom, however a completely democratic society is one way of reconciling the thirst for individual freedom with the necessity of cooperation with others.
>The ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
This is absolutely a valid concern, which is why I believe in a rigid groundset of rules on which all laws and rules must comply (consitutions/bill of rights) which respect the rights and liberties of individuals to ensure they have maximum freedom with respect to other individuals in society. This isn't a groundbreaking idea, but I do believe we need to re-evaluate these approaches in a modern context, as most countries were established in a time before progressivism was dominant.
These are hardly the only alternatives. In case you haven't noticed, the other people here aren't implicitly contrasting democracy with e.g. monarchy; they're implicitly contrasting it with anarchy (probably anarcho-capitalism).
Again, there's lots of possibilities out there. Personally I like the idea of futarchy, though it's untried. But that's not the point; the point is, there's a lot of degrees of freeom here.
In my opinion, anarcho-capitalism is merely feudalism, with some brainwashing for people to accept their fate. There's a reason some prominent anar-capitalists want to be differenciated from anarchists.
There's also a reason all anarchists want to be differentiated from ancaps ;)
Remember, "capitalism" is an overloaded term. Sometimes it means what you describe, and sometimes it means the free market. Make sure you know what sense it's being used in in a given context, or you can't have a meaningful discussion! In the case of anarcho-capitalism, it refers to the free market. (But even though that works out in this case, you really should be wary of reasoning based on names.)
I want to preserve the culture I grew up in. I want everyone to contribute to society. I want a culture where what you get is what you worked for. I don't want "diversity" or a bunch of people from other countries to move to the town I grew up in.
Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
In my mind, it would be an absolute travesty to allow the distant majority to vote for the destruction of the culture I grew up in.
Yet you have moved to California? Can you hear the irony?
>> It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
You don't have. You just have to accept other people think differently and want different things to you.
Consider what might happen if Clinton win and more corruption scandals appear about her, or if Brexit is halted somehow. Things are getting less stable over time.
How is diversity diametrically opposed to equal opportunity and hard work? From what I can see you can have all of the above without any issues.
>Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
Can you phrase your political philosophy in terms of real proposals rather than thought-terminating cliches? When I hear the term "value" or "values", I reach for my gun.
I am however not saying that a purely democratic society would eliminate all of societies ills, I'm saying it would make many of the constructs which perpetuate these sorts of problems would become non-viable.
That's probably because you're thinking in terms of how things actually are, rather than in terms of vague emotions tacked onto political buzzwords. A classic mistake.
Centralisation of power is the issue, it doesn't matter if that centralised power is held by governments or by large corporations, the end result is a tilting of the playing field in favour of those with the most power.
Yep, but you have exact same right to control life of others, so things are balanced.
> the ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
Constitution and court protects us from abuse, so don't worry about minorities in Constitutional Democracy.
What you are thinking about would be volunteerism/Non-aggressionism.
Democracy is about balancing individual freedom with the demands of living in society. There is no other system of decision making which even attempts to reconcile these two adversarial relationships (individual vs. society).
>What you are thinking about would be volunteerism/Non-aggressionism.
I fail to see how you could have an undemocratic voluntary society. I'd argue democracy is the backbone of a voluntary society.
No it's not. Democracy does not inherently balance individual liberty with societal necessity. In fact, democracy says absolutely nothing about individual liberty or societal necessity at all. Democracy is a form of government that holds regular public elections. It is not anything else. It might be argued that democracy is a necessary condition for liberty, but it is certainly not a sufficient one.
Democracy is a group of people co-operating in a system through equal representation. This does not require a state apparatus or government.
>It might be argued that democracy is a necessary condition for liberty, but it is certainly not a sufficient one.
Solely sufficient? Absolutely not, that's what I'm saying, but yes it is a necessary condition. It's is the sustinence on which liberty grows.
I think that's too strong. Some dictatorships have more liberty than some democracies. Democracy increases the odds of liberty immensely, but is neither necessary nor sufficient.
A voluntary system is basically the opposite. Every who wants to participate in something, can choose to do so. Or choose not too. You don't vote on what should be done, and then force everyone to go along with it.
Majority rules is force. You go along with the decision of the group or else. Whereas voluntaryism is zero force. No matter what the group decides, how many people vote for it, you never ever use force on anyone to make them go along with the group.
Thats fine if you think that using force is necessary for the greater good of making society better.
There are lots of good arguments for why the government threatening people with guns, in order to get them to pay taxes, for example, is needed in order to get anything done at all in society.
But don't dress it up in pretty words and call it "voluntary". Voluntary is the absence of force. It is the idea that no matter what I do, as long as I don't directly harm another people, noone should use force against me.
Participatory Economics: https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Published%20writing/Alterna...
What is Mutualism? : https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/what-is-mutualis...
Anarcho-Syndicalism https://libcom.org/files/Rocker%20-%20Anarcho-Syndicalism%20...
The Conquest of Bread (Anarcho-Communism): https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-c...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12878457
Capitalism solves this problem with bankruptcy & business failure. People whose beliefs are shown to be false lose their businesses and are forced to work for other people whose decisions turned out well. Conversely, capitalism introduces problems with inequality and forced servitude that democracy solves. Democratic government serves as a check on the ability of the economic winners to pull the ladder up after them and use their economic power to impose their will on the people.
This is behind much of the tension between big business vs. big government. You have two power structures (five, actually - the press, the military, and the academy form the other pillars) that work in opposition to each other, each according to different rules. I'd argue that the biggest problem facing America today is that business and government have gotten too cozy with each other while the press and the academy are getting eviscerated, which is letting them manipulate the voter through control of information.
And how often does this work in real life?
Ah, excellent idea. Put the same people who elected Clinton and Trump in charge of the most complicated emergent system in the world. What could go wrong?
> a democratic workforce
"We voted for you to work on this cotton plantation, so get to it! We also have a democratic economy, so you don't need to worry about getting payed anymore!"
> if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure.
That's interesting, because last time I checked I didn't control my life via a democracy.
Based on the fact that you're using a very new account, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is some sort of incoherent troll bait. If not, this is a strong contender for the dumbest comment I've ever seen on HN; just slap the word "democratic" on random topics and pitch it as an alternative economic system, no further details required.
The people that placed them on the frontstage already are in charge of it? If you think the people decided on these two I'd say you misunderstand the process by which these two reached the forefront. A very small minority selected Clinton and stacked the odds in her favor for selection, as to the rise of Trump, I'd say that's perfectly representative of the type of misdirected anger that rises out of repeated failings of the system. Remember the individuals Trump was running against? Trumps a protest vote, and a terribly dangerous one at that. Choosing between three different people put on your plate by people you don't trust isn't a failing of democracy, it's a failing of the underlying system.
>"We voted for you to work on this cotton plantation, so get to it! We also have a democratic economy, so you don't need to worry about getting payed anymore!"
You fundamentally misunderstand what I'm saying here. I'm not proposing elected slavery, and truly fail to see how you reached that conclusion. I don't know what part of my pro-democracy comment implied I believe in forced labor, but I'm interested in hearing what process you went through in your mind to reach that point.
>That's interesting, because last time I checked I didn't control my life via a democracy.
I'd say your ability to vote, and decide mutually with other people the form society takes is your life being controlled by democracy.
First off, there's no secret cabal of billionaires that's "in charge" of the economy. Let's dispense with the conspiracy theories.
Second, the group of people that has a disproportionate amount of economic influence (i.e. bankers and the extremely wealthy) generally supported Clinton and rallied extremely hard against Trump. I don't blame them; Trump's policies are bad for trade. But let's not pretend that they're both some sort of globalist illuminati puppets or something.
> I'd say that's perfectly representative of the type of misdirected anger that rises out of repeated failings of the system
You mean the sort of misdirected anger and other irrational motivations that would completely dictate the behavior of a "democratic economy"? Don't put your money where your mouth is; put someone else's money where your mouth is, and vote!
> I'm not proposing elected slavery,
Interesting, because that's the only meaningful interpretation of "democratic economy".
> I'd say your ability to vote, and decide mutually with other people the form society takes is your life being controlled by democracy.
Besides this statement being more or less incoherent, it also doesn't have anything to do with your earlier statement that
> if you believe democracy is a failure, you're saying that your ability to control your own life is a failure.
There is no connection between the decisions I make for myself and the decisions imposed on me by the whims of a political majority.
Not at all what I'm trying to say, I don't think there's a shady room where rich people come to smoke cigars and plan out the election, in fact you actually agree with what I'm saying in the very next sentence:
>I don't blame them; Trump's policies are bad for trade. But let's not pretend that they're both some sort of globalist illuminati puppets or something.I agree, which is why I said Trump was a protest vote, a naive attempt at hitting back at the system whilst still completely supporting it. I don't know how you think I'm sitting here talking about illumaniti when you demonstrably agree with me about capitalist influence on the election?
>You mean the sort of misdirected anger and other irrational motivations that would completely dictate the behavior of a "democratic economy"? Don't put your money where your mouth is; put someone else's money where your mouth is, and vote!
I don't think you know enough about a democratic economy to be attacking the idea, evidently since you're still believing that I think a democratic economy can exist in a capitalist system.
>Interesting, because that's the only meaningful interpretation of "democratic economy".
Then I think you're very poor at reasoning, can I suggest "The Conquest of Bread" it's a great book that might help you on your journey to understand what I'm saying.
> Politicians are bought and sold, and we see an undemocratic group of very powerful individuals influencing legislation and pushing around politicians and manipulating public opinion.
The problem is not minority. The problem is overreaching government. Keep government specific and small.
But your vindictive like attitude is what makes government overly powerful. Your "union-infested economy" solution is worse than what we are facing.
False premise. This is simply not true in any way, shape, or form. The bottom 90% of people have drastically more control over production than the top 10%. That's why the single richest company in the world, Apple, is a consumer products company.
> it's the workers directing the production
There's a very obvious conflict of interest there, because the workers aren't the only ones who have things that need to be produced. "You know, Ivan, making bread is really tedious; let's go back to making AK-47s instead." This is why if you go on Ebay and type "soviet surplus", you can still buy crates of Mosin Nagants and Nixie Tubes to this very day.
Planned economies are terrible at producing what needs to be produced, and excellent at overproducing things that don't. Whether you think market economies are impersonal or not, they are undoubtedly extremely efficient at meeting people's needs; no more, no less. Deviating from optimum production levels costs companies money.
This is an unproductive comment. If you say something and you aren't understood, the better response would be to explain.
(I, for one, also have no idea what you might mean by a "democratic economy".)
Co-ops, probably.
One in which we workers are rid of all absentee bosses and run enterprises ourselves, democratically. Hence "democratic economy".
Common trusts and co-ops are both "capitalist institutions". They both rely on private ownership and voluntary transactions. Not sure what you mean by "democratic confederations of localities".
But I do think that despite the above your underlying point is fundamentally correct here; both commons trusts and co-ops work perfectly well under existing rules. It sounds like, aside from the democratic confederations thing, what eli_gottlieb wants is not a different system of rules, but rather to kick the existing system into a different equlibrium. (It really seems like these socialist types tend not to distinguish between these...)
Well, I'd love to know where you draw the conceptual boundaries between systems. Lemme guess: it's only not-capitalism when the state controls everything?
The countries with the highest quality of life are Social Democracies. Places like the nordic countries and the 'new world' anglo countries excluding the US.
It's bizarre just how much the US has demonised the concept of socialism in its political dialogue.
It really isn't an either/or proposition; you're only taking the absolute extremes of the concepts. If it was such a proposition, where does the switch take place? At what point would a nation 'flip' from being 'socialist' to being 'capitalist'?
Canada (20% foreign-born) and New Zealand (25% foreign-born) are in similar boats. However, your statement is also pretty offensive to kiwis, of whom 15% are of Maori stock - indeed, the relatively harmonious relations are rightfully a source of pride to the kiwis. Both of these countries also deal in bilingual politics (Australia does not).
I'm less knowledgable on the makeup of the Nordic countries, but it's worth pointing out that only two western democracies have a higher rate of immigration than Australia (excluding the year of Syria crisis migration). These countries are Spain and Norway. As for Sweden (usually the go-to country for these discussions), looking now, and excluding the Syria crisis, 14% of Swedes were of foreign birth, equivalent to the US, and two-thirds of these were born outside the EU. While, yes, Sweden doesn't have the latino or black analogues in their national background like the US does, they're not as culturally homogenous as most people think.
In short, I think you're talking about the stereotypes in your head rather than the actual nations. Handwaving it away with "meh, they're all the same in those countries" is an egregious error - after all, if what you're suggesting was true, then Portugal and Ireland (95%+ local-born, single culture) would be powerhouses.
Why stubbornly claim capitalism is a failure when America is not capitalist? It is not laissez faire capitalism, like Chomsky says, it is a nanny state, where government bails out failed business. That is not capitalism.
Classical liberals and libertarians of course run with a different -- IMHO utopian -- definition of capitalism which puts the emphasis on the act of individuals trading goods with each other. From my perspective it's an ideological smoke screen which papers over the reality of the asymmetrical distribution of power that arises naturally out of the particular 'natural rights' of property that classical liberalism embraces. And they were embraced historically precisely because of that distribution of power -- during an era of expanding colonialism, imperialism, and enclosure.
To put it another way -- the US may not look like a textbook laissez-faire capitalist society that a Friedman, Hayek or Randian would advocate -- but the unjust power structure of the US and societies like it are what actual-existing capitalism _creates_. It is capitalists who rule, and capitalists who made it that way.
When everyone is upset and there are many points of view there is no common way to move forward but there are many hot heads that are willing to shoot first and ask questions later. Imagine a million hot heads without a common goal but the willingness to fight and we can see chaos with out results.
People get upset at the "do nothing congress" because they can't get X done but people aren't willing to admit that the reason is that voters have sent individuals with very diverse ideas to try to get things done. Voters are the ones that are pushing them to not compromise any idea or be punished by being voted out. I can see a future where one person that can use social media very well can push people to vote in ways that we consider distasteful now. What will happen then? Groups will erupt with opposing view and many will be ready to fight.
We've heard allegations that the voting system is rigged but that's very unlikely. We have laws and watch dogs that prevent that in any significant way. We don't have the same for social media but we know that it's possible to manipulate it, even by foreign powers, and that's not illegal worse yet it's hard to impossible to prevent. It's hard to even contemplate how that effects a democratic system.
The founding father created a representative government because they knew that rule by majority can be as distasteful as government by a monarchy or emperor. They thought a functioning government needs representatives that can sort out what's needed. With everyone having a voice that's going to get extremely difficult. Social media is about to let the US test out its governmental system, lets hope it can pass the trouble ahead. Can the US stay together as a nation?
It's still better than nondemocratic systems I guess. But that's a terribly low bar to pass. That's not something to be proud of.
Everyone always says that it's the best system of government that has been tried. Well maybe we aren't trying hard enough! There are other systems, and here are a few that are my personal favorites.
My ideal system of government has no politicians. It forms a parliament or congress just like normal, but the representatives are sampled randomly from the population. Ideally they would be filtered for IQ or education, but this is optional. And then they would debate and vote on issues, without having party loyalty, and without having to pander to the general population. It's sort of like direct democracy, but the random sampling lets it scale to much larger populations.
I also really like the model of the supreme court. I have to say that every supreme court decision I've looked into, they seem remarkably rational and competent. They aren't perfect of course, but it seems so much better than congress. Statistics show that even biased judges tend to become much less biased by the time they retire.
I'm not sure how they accomplish this. My guess is the lifetime appointments, and the structure of the court being to debate issues extensively, and for the judges to at least try to weigh them objectively. I would love to try a system of government modelled after something like the Supreme court.
There is futarchy, proposed by Robin Hanson. The idea is to use prediction markets to make predictions about the future, like whether policies will actually work. Then voters can vote on values ('I approve of Brexit, conditional on it being predicted to increase median wages.') But they bet on beliefs.
Another idea I like is the "Ideological Turing Test". In this case representatives can vote on policy just like normal. But they have to pass a test that proves they fully understand the other side's point of view. By writing arguments for the other side of the argument, and blinded reviewers not being able to tell if it's authentic or not. This would be complicated to implement without people gaming the system, but I think it's worth a try.
There is also alternative voting systems. These are just small modifications of regular democracy. They modify the voting system so you can vote for third parties without being punished for splitting the vote.
Citation needed.
If judges were so great and neutral then why does the US have a collective fit any time one needs to be replaced? It's taken for granted that the judges are all extremely biased and the decision making of the court can be (and should be) swayed by selection of appointees.
I never said that judges were perfectly unbiased, just that they tend to the same opinions over time. Republican nominated judges tend to look indistinguishable from democrat nominated judges by the time they retire.
The English royal system has persisted with relatively little discontinuity from 1066 AD to present, some 950 years.
Unless you've other criteria for "success", in which case you might care to consider what those might be.
I've found William Ophuls to be an interesting point of entry. His topic is politics within a context of ecological limits, but he has classic training (he's strongly influenced by Plato), direct experience (positions in the US foreign service), and an excellent grasp on modern (mostly 20th & 21st century) thought on ecology, limits, and the interactions of these with polity. His bibliographies are excellent, and worth publishing on their own right. I'd recommend his 1977 Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity and his more recent Plato's Revenge. The former focuses more on the ecological case, the latter more on the questions (with very few answers suggested -- he's really exploring the problem space) of how you'd construct a polity, given environmental, psychological, and social limits.
I'm also starting to form some new thoughts on the role of religion as something of a social glue in vast empires over which communications might take weeks, months, or years, but in which a plausibly predictable level of trust would be found. Religion-as-trust-glue strikes me as a fundamental aspect. Curiously, instantaneous communications (and the monitoring and management that entails) allows for a near-total breakdown in such trust.
If success is defined as social stability and wealth then there seems to be a direct correlation between localism+direct democracy and success, with Switzerland being the canonical example.
There are extensive periods of discontinuity intermixed there, whether it be fracture and civil war, invasion and synthesis with various steppe peoples, the taking on of Buddhist Chakravartin mantles, etc.
The Ship of Theseus is a profound question.
Democracy provides useful data: which topics society agrees on, which topics they disagree on. For the ~51/49 (controversial) cases, instead of enlightening ourselves, we just blindly take the majority choice. This is not the way a scientific society should be approaching government.
Also "democracy as a failure" is a common trope that is used by those who perceive the election isn't going according to how they planned. "They are not voting the way I like, therefore democracy has failed" or if the election or polls go the expected way then "democracy and clear minds prevailed again!".
One interesting thing I found about the current election is the role the media plays. To control people in a dictatorship is easier, you just make criticism and dissent punishable, nationalize all the media and it is all simple and easy. In a Democracy controlling is a bit harder, but is still done over the media using sophisticated and not-so-sophisticated methods. Related to that my favorite quote so far comes from CNN's Chris Cuomo talking about the emails: "it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media. So everything you learn about this, you’re learning from us." It is as if, there was a tiny crack in the matrix and the underlying code was exposed for a moment.
See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_Noam_...
Seems to be available full-length on YouTube: [http://youtu.be/YHa6NflkW3Y](http://youtu.be/YHa6NflkW3Y)
The other book I like is "Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion" by Elliot Aronson and Anthony Pratkanis
This is, to me, perhaps one the strongest strengths of our Republic. Different ideas and values can be thrive in different areas at the same time, and we can test and experiment with what's true and right.
I really hate an idea that minorities must live as majority wants. The assumption that majority is always smart and able to make wise decisions is completely wrong.
Unlike others, I actually think that some form of democracy exist even in authoritarian countries. I lived 22 years in Uzbekistan, then 9 years in Russia. I can say for sure that almost every dictator appeals to masses. Mediocre people (masses) is always their primary audience. For example, in Russia, tzar Putin perfectly represents mentality of majority of people in Russia. People actually love the style he speaks and acts. Dictator won't last long if he looses support from majority. I wrote about this here:
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-living-in-totalitarian-s...
(I was surprised this answer got a lot of upvotes)
Also, I noted that even when masses don't like their current government's ideology, they jump to another mediocre idea.
For example, the mob in Uzbekistan is attracted to radical islam as opposition to current secular dictatorship. So if current secular regime in Uzbekistan will fall, then masses choose to go back to 15th century as an alternative. The mob in Uzbekistan certainly won't choose liberal market economy with highly developed technology sector attracting international capital. The backward silly ideas of islamic clerics are much, much, much closer to the mob.
Another example, next after Putin'ism in the priority queue of ideologies in Russia are: communism, and right next after communism is national-socialism. So there are a lot of people who oppose Putin because he is not true communist or do not fully support national-socialism. Again, there is no "liberal market economy with highly developed technology sector attracting international capital" in their queue of ideas.
I can't even imagine the masses go to the streets demanding relaxing regulations for businesses, reducing government spending, attracting international capital.
I guess in US republican party is relatively popular because of religion. Remove strong support of religion in the GOP and after that their popularity will probably drop 10 times.
In Europe, masses a bit smarter than in Uzbekistan and Russia but still they are demanding nanny state, taking money from high earners.
I spent a lot of time and effort to escape poor government policies supported by masses. I born and lived in Uzbekistan, then moved to Russia, then to Sweden, then to the Netherlands. So I'm not afraid to say to entire society - "fk off, you are all wrong, I'm leaving!". I already did it 3 times!
For example, I left Sweden because of ridiculously high taxes and really big nanny state.
I see decentralized democracy as a solution. For example, I would support an idea of small federal government and pretty independent states. So that voters can vote for laws only in their states (with rare but inevitable exceptions). It would be competition between states and eventually people with certain ideas would concentrate in particular states. Some states would be more socialist, some more capitalist. Head of federal government should not be a single person but rather a group of persons from each party.
I think Switzerland is closest example to this.
In such country, you can easily move between states with different laws, taxes, ideologies. It's far easier than moving between countries if you are disagree with prevailing political sentiment (what I'm doing right now).
Switzerland is a working example https://fee.org/articles/the-secret-of-swiss-success-is-dece...
What I hope will take of is Seasteading http://www.seasteading.org/
- is representative democracy a failure (in contrast with direct democracy[1])
- is a two-party system a failure (in contrast with a multiparty system[2])
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-party_system
Winston Churchill