[madaxe]

No, it isn't, but it appears to be the endgame of representative democracy. I'd suggest reading Hobbes' Leviathan, or perhaps Hayek's Road to Serfdom, if you haven't already, as both anticipated this exact malaise. The US and the UK are in the terminal stages of decline.

The representative democratic ideal is ultimately revealed to be a fiction, and the rule of law is a falsehood - for without a universally applied rule of law, there is no rule of law - just authoritarianism - and our rule of law is decidedly not universal, and never has been. One set of rules for us, one for them.

All representative democracy eventually declines under the same disease of creeping authoritarianism due to the inevitable desire of entrenched power structures and bureaucracies to self-sustain and expand. This should not be mistaken for malice, rather it's the inevitable output of a system optimised for self-preservation.

The only solution to my mind while maintaining a democratic ideal is either strict sortition, or direct democracy.

[marvin]

This doesn't make sense to me. Why hasn't my native Norway ended up in this spot? Claiming "it is inevitable" isn't a valid argument, projecting to unlikely-seeming future scenarios can be used to prove anything. Just because two big nations have ended up with a screwed-up political system doesn't prove that it is an inevitability.

[vidarh]

Try arguing with a Norwegian police officer. Even calmly. Odds of ending up in jail overnight are pretty high, though you might find one with a sense of humour now.

Norway is one of those countries where shouting insults at a police officer can be illegal where shouting those same insults at a random strangers would not be - there explicitly is one law for public officials and one for the rest.

The idea of public officials being above the rest is deeply embedded in the Norwegian system, and only started fading with the growth of the labour movement, and steady inclusion of the labour movement into the establishment starting with the first lasting Ap (labour party) government in 1935 onwards. Even then, Ap took up the baton (..), and wielded it against the groups to their own left, with extensive illegal political surveillance for decades.

The reason Norway is now as civilized as it is, is simple:

Norway eventually got filthy rich thanks to the oil. The average salary in Norway is about 70% above the average salary in the UK, for example, and the salary curve is far flatter.

We've had social democratic ministers from a party that used argue for revolution and was an early member of Komintern that are millionaires. A long range of our past "threats" to the establishment are now wealthy and firmly embedded in the establishment. The class struggle in Norway is largely "on hold", and the police is being wielded against immigrants instead.

[saraid216]

> I'd suggest reading Hobbes' Leviathan

WELP. Time to find ourselves a king.