Is democracy a failure? (1861)

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 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. 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?" 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.

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.

It never fails logging into a Hacker News thread near election season but to find commenters yearning for literacy tests.