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.
"Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but Democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit."
If you would like to elevate your thinking on this subject in order to understand what's going on, I recommend:
1. Iron law of oligarchy (1911 - 1700 words on wikipedia):
"all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies."
2. Dictator's handbook (2011) - Or CGP Grey's summary: rules for rulers (2016 - 18 minutes):
"Bad behavior" is emergent from power structures rather than human weakness. From democracies to dictatorships, organizations select for Machiavellian and psychopathic behaviors.
I can't recommend these enough. This life altering perspective takes <30 minutes to go over - plus potentially several days of despair.
The problems with the world are not user error. How can technology help?
I am faving this comment. Huxley was a true visionary.
However I dont agree with the "...new kind of non-violent totalitarianism..."
Our democracies are non-violent only if you obey. Otherwise they use violence and force to lock you up. Most people in prisons are there for victimless crimes like drugs. That is not a non-violent system in my opinion.
You know, here at Brazil we are having some deep recent changes... And I just can not imagine anybody who could be interested in financing the mind-manipulating machine that would be creating this.
I'm still tending to think Huxley didn't have the full picture and populations still have some amount of free-will.
Another early prescient vision of thought-manufacturer and mind-manipulator culture, as well as a great read is the Frederick Pohl and Kornbluth story Gravy Planet, home of the great quote 'power ennobles, and absolute power ennobles absolutely'..
It's from the 50's but it's a shockingly accurate picture of our modern world with advanced propoganda, globalism etc .. and it's free here https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1952-08 .. enjoy :)
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.
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...
There are two perspectives on democracy. You can compare it to some ideal world that has never been, and easily see it falls short, by a lot.
Or you can look back on history, and look at countries who have done things differently, and realize it is by far the best system we have had.
If you want to live a full lifetime in peace and security and health. Be born in a democratic and capitalist country somewhere in the past 70 years, and you maximize that chance. Any other time and place and the chance of a good life drops quickly.
To other commenters in this thread, describing democracy or capitalism with words like "disastrous" or "complete failure" or "elite rule", please some perspective.
When encountering a shortcoming of the world, there are two responses:
You can compare it to what has happened before and console yourself that of observed past histories, this situation ain't so bad.
Or you can imagine what has never been, and try to create a society better than has ever existed before.
There was once a time when democracy of modern form had never been tried, outside of some rugged mountain towns in the Alps, and yet those in the face of tyranny had the gall to try something new. Isn't that an example we should emulate?
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.
> 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.
> 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!"
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
>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.
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."
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.
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.
> 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.
(For clarity: I'm against Trump and voted against Brexit)
I'm so tired of this kind of thinking. It seems to come from people who don't have much contact with a good cross-section of society, such that they can maintain the illusion that things are fine, that (for example) Brexit or Trump was a stupid decision.
These decisions are actually democracy at work, in a positive sense. A large raft of society in the UK and the USA have been neglected, trod upon, bullied, and exploited for decades. And they have finally had the opportunity to kick back and they have taken that opportunity. It's destructive in one sense, but you have to consider that without precisely this kind of upset, no-one would pause to think about these people for a moment, and things would continue to get worse for them.
These people aren't racist (well, no more than those who voted the other way), they're not idiots, they're not some sort of cesspool of poorly educated fools, they are making an informed rational decision to kick back. They're furious. They want to be heard.
I think so many of my friends don't get it, because they don't realise that the vote for Brexit turned out that way precisely because it was designed to annoy them. If you don't get Trump, you don't get Brexit, chances are you are exactly the beneficiary of decades of globalisation and free trade, widening inequality, that have crushed the people below you. Try trading places with them and see how you feel then.
If you're not grasped this by now, you should definitely make an effort to broaden your social circles.
If you watch this video and think "wow, Michael Moore's lost it", then you have a long way to go:
Democracy isn't a failure, you just need a better voting system.
If people could rank their preferences then people like Bernie and Bloomberg would actually run without fear that they might "take away votes from Hillary" and therefore help Trump. In fact, the two-party syste would give way to something better. Only the party elites would NOT want this... but after this election, even they probably do.
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?
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?
[+] [-] nostrademons|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] hairy_man674|9 years ago|reply
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958)
[+] [-] abandonliberty|9 years ago|reply
1. Iron law of oligarchy (1911 - 1700 words on wikipedia): "all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies."
2. Dictator's handbook (2011) - Or CGP Grey's summary: rules for rulers (2016 - 18 minutes): "Bad behavior" is emergent from power structures rather than human weakness. From democracies to dictatorships, organizations select for Machiavellian and psychopathic behaviors.
I can't recommend these enough. This life altering perspective takes <30 minutes to go over - plus potentially several days of despair.
The problems with the world are not user error. How can technology help?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
[+] [-] urza|9 years ago|reply
However I dont agree with the "...new kind of non-violent totalitarianism..." Our democracies are non-violent only if you obey. Otherwise they use violence and force to lock you up. Most people in prisons are there for victimless crimes like drugs. That is not a non-violent system in my opinion.
[+] [-] justinpombrio|9 years ago|reply
Read "soldiers, policemen, lobbyists and advertisers"?
[+] [-] amelius|9 years ago|reply
Also, we need better ways to keep our leaders in check, i.e., more transparency.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy
[+] [-] marcosdumay|9 years ago|reply
I'm still tending to think Huxley didn't have the full picture and populations still have some amount of free-will.
[+] [-] hackerfromthefu|9 years ago|reply
It's from the 50's but it's a shockingly accurate picture of our modern world with advanced propoganda, globalism etc .. and it's free here https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1952-08 .. enjoy :)
[+] [-] capkutay|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinwang|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinsingh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aldo_MX|9 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] ozy|9 years ago|reply
Or you can look back on history, and look at countries who have done things differently, and realize it is by far the best system we have had.
If you want to live a full lifetime in peace and security and health. Be born in a democratic and capitalist country somewhere in the past 70 years, and you maximize that chance. Any other time and place and the chance of a good life drops quickly.
To other commenters in this thread, describing democracy or capitalism with words like "disastrous" or "complete failure" or "elite rule", please some perspective.
[+] [-] kobeya|9 years ago|reply
You can compare it to what has happened before and console yourself that of observed past histories, this situation ain't so bad.
Or you can imagine what has never been, and try to create a society better than has ever existed before.
There was once a time when democracy of modern form had never been tried, outside of some rugged mountain towns in the Alps, and yet those in the face of tyranny had the gall to try something new. Isn't that an example we should emulate?
[+] [-] roenxi|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Sniffnoy|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wyager|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unclenoriega|9 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] jayajay|9 years ago|reply
"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!"
[+] [-] nick0garvey|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt_wulfeck|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ianai|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Houshalter|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] zigzigzag|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jayajay|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rubberstamp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] stenl|9 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] y80|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nostrademons|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gragas|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wyclif|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikbye|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] stale2002|9 years ago|reply
What you are thinking about would be volunteerism/Non-aggressionism.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] wyager|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] FreedomToCreate|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qantourisc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] randomsearch|9 years ago|reply
I'm so tired of this kind of thinking. It seems to come from people who don't have much contact with a good cross-section of society, such that they can maintain the illusion that things are fine, that (for example) Brexit or Trump was a stupid decision.
These decisions are actually democracy at work, in a positive sense. A large raft of society in the UK and the USA have been neglected, trod upon, bullied, and exploited for decades. And they have finally had the opportunity to kick back and they have taken that opportunity. It's destructive in one sense, but you have to consider that without precisely this kind of upset, no-one would pause to think about these people for a moment, and things would continue to get worse for them.
These people aren't racist (well, no more than those who voted the other way), they're not idiots, they're not some sort of cesspool of poorly educated fools, they are making an informed rational decision to kick back. They're furious. They want to be heard.
I think so many of my friends don't get it, because they don't realise that the vote for Brexit turned out that way precisely because it was designed to annoy them. If you don't get Trump, you don't get Brexit, chances are you are exactly the beneficiary of decades of globalisation and free trade, widening inequality, that have crushed the people below you. Try trading places with them and see how you feel then.
If you're not grasped this by now, you should definitely make an effort to broaden your social circles.
If you watch this video and think "wow, Michael Moore's lost it", then you have a long way to go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lMp_363B2c
[+] [-] known|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zkhalique|9 years ago|reply
If people could rank their preferences then people like Bernie and Bloomberg would actually run without fear that they might "take away votes from Hillary" and therefore help Trump. In fact, the two-party syste would give way to something better. Only the party elites would NOT want this... but after this election, even they probably do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|9 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] hal9000xp|9 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] urza|9 years ago|reply
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/
[+] [-] spydum|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulsutter|9 years ago|reply
- 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