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Is democracy dying?

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Re: Is democracy dying?

#41

Post by dragonwriter »

verbify wrote: post #37
probably_wrong wrote: post #33

I've always wondered: is there a paper/thesis somewhere suggesting a better alternative to democracy? I don't mean the usual (monarchy, dictatorship, etc), but rather something entirely new. I imagine there must be at least one political sciences/philosophy student somewhere who gave this a thought, but I never found anything.

There's demarchy - a random sampling of the population. Like democracy, it ensures that people have a way to change laws they don't like. Unlike democracy, it doesn't suffer from the fact that the corrupt or power hungry rise to the top. Lobbyists would have less power. There are also some suggestions that a random sampling of a population will lead to a better selection mechanism - similar to suggestions that promot…

> Unlike democracy, it doesn't suffer from the fact that the corrupt or power hungry rise to the top.

I don't see any reason to believe that is true in any substantive way. Most of the corrupting and influence mechanisms that work in democracy work in demarchy, and some are cheaper. OTOH, there's an entirely new corruption mechanism introduced, corrupting the “random” selection mechanism (either at the source or between the notional mechanism and the public reporting of results, which is ultimately what really matters).

Re: Is democracy dying?

#42

Post by ian0 »

I may be naive but I think this is a tech problem.

The vast majority of us share a common set of ethical norms. We are also relatively savvy. If we know someone has acted against our interests before we wont be keen on working with them again. Eg. A dodgy Mechanic. And this goes for everyone, regardless of education level or armchair-economist status.

There is a technical solution out there that combats misinformation and riling people up against each other. And promotes educated decision making. So that we can approximate an optimal policy that complies with ethical norms and shared longer-term goals. And evaluate the impact of policy as best we can.

This probably wouldn't mean direct democracy (as there are very few experts in a given field), but rather in built in validation of expert opinion and evaluation of consequences of decision making. A little less prone to abuse than our current systems.

You can even see hints of how it could be done in online communities such as HN, where despite a relatively diverse community the shared goals of learning is still optimised.

I dont think this is head in the clouds, technology impacts governance all the time, from printing presses to pamphlets to socmed. And we have done some pretty impactful things with it recently, governance could be next.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#43

Post by SubiculumCode »

lordnacho wrote: post #29

I think there are some real problems. Some constitutional, some cultural. Applicable to many countries, not just the US: - We like to think that we keep our representatives accountable through transparency. Now we can no longer claim the information is too hard to get. Now tell me how often your rep voted in a way that suited your preference. Or tell me how many times he voted at all. Or tell me his name. - Your repr…

Term limits tend to hand power to the beureaucracy because the newly elected official doesn't know enough policy to be effective.

Democracy needs:

Democracy needs smaller states and districts. Citizens per representative as a ratio is higher than ever, and we lose representation responsive to local concerns.

Media now focuses on national politics. State and local politics suffer because of it.

Increased State/Decreased Federal power provides a way for ideological divisions to be resolved at the local level , and thus lose potency as political red meat.

Move to a weekly news cycle so policy can be worked out and digested before being reported.

Foreign state powers ( especially geopolitical advesaries) should have very limited access to manipulate hearts and minds of citizens.

Mass microtargetting of citizens with personalized propoganda tailored to their personality and weaknesses should not be permitted or heavily regulated.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#44

Post by qubex »

lucideer wrote: post #25

I'm not sure if democracy is necessarily dying everywhere, I—hopefully not too naïvely—think there's a little more diversity in worldwide politics than that. Reading the article though, this seems to be US-centric. Perhaps the title could be changed to "Is US democracy dying?", in which case, at least to an outsider looking in, it seems that death happened quite a long time ago. I'm not sure if Buckley v. Valeo was a…

I’m in Italy, we’re voting in our first national elections in five years today (despite having three/four governments in the intervening years, depending on how you count). Democracy definitely seems dead or at least mute here. As I made my way to the polling station, I was reminded of my favourite quote from Thomas Pynchon: “If they can keep you asking the wrong questions, they don’t need to worry about the answers”. I don’t mean it in the sense a conspiracy theorist might, but in some other ineffable or inexpressible sense whereby parliamentary politics has simply become to weak and ineffectual to contrast and compensate for other forces that act on societies (economic and financial ones, particularly). That might be why strident or extremist viewpoints of various kinds are more prevalent now than they used to be: because faced with a body politic that cannot effect change or even visibly affect the trajectory, many people just choose what they perceive to be a bigger rudder to steer with.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#45

Post by barsonme »

fenk85 wrote: post #39
mmaunder wrote: post #22

Democracy with universal suffrage has barely been around a century. In South Africa, it is just over 2 decades old. It's new, it's messy, it doesn't always go our way. What amazes me is that the USA can swing from one side of the political spectrum to the other and the country holds together and happily repeats the process every few years.

Sorry to break it to you buy Democrats are not left, if anything they are center right by western European standards, the Republicans on the other hand are going right off the cliff https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-maralago-remar... aside: Last time Europe had politics like above it ended badly for millions of people worldwide, except this time nuclear weapons abound

And the US’ right would be considered quite far left compared to many Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make or how it’s relevant to GP’s. It’s quite clear GP was referring to the US’ policies spectrum, not that of the entire world.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#47

Post by d--b »

First, I think it'd be good to separate the Western world from the rest of the world. The West has been meddling with other countries' governments for centuries, such that it's impossible to say that true democracy ever existed outside the West. Is it better or worse today than it was 50 years ago? Hard to say... What seems to be the case though is that more countries are escaping the West's sphere of influence than 20 years ago (after the collapse the USSR, only the West remained).

In Western countries, I think it's an issue to link the rise of national sentiment to a decline in democracy. Disinformation is certainly a thing, but for it to work, I believe there needs to be a general discontent with current politics such that people are using the urns for exactly what democracy has been designed to do: change government when people are unhappy with it.

US democracy will be in danger the day when access to some information is prohibited or some parties are forbidden, which is far from being the case.

These people at MIT forget that most republicans are fairly moderate, and a good chunk of Trump voters would have voted for Bernie Sanders if he had been nominated.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#48

Post by fenk85 »

barsonme wrote: post #45
fenk85 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to break it to you buy Democrats are not left, if anything they are center right by western European standards, the Republicans on the other hand are going right off the cliff https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-maralago-remar... aside: Last time Europe had politics like above it ended badly for millions of people worldwide, except this time nuclear weapons abound

And the US’ right would be considered quite far left compared to many Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make or how it’s relevant to GP’s. It’s quite clear GP was referring to the US’ policies spectrum, not that of the entire world.

The point I am trying to make is that the US is not oscillating happily between left and right as the OP claims, but is veering further and further into authoritarian right territory.

I doubt many people in US would like their country to become a "shithole country" to quote their current president, but yet here we are watching history unfold

Re: Is democracy dying?

#49

Post by true_religion »

fenk85 wrote: post #39
mmaunder wrote: post #22

Democracy with universal suffrage has barely been around a century. In South Africa, it is just over 2 decades old. It's new, it's messy, it doesn't always go our way. What amazes me is that the USA can swing from one side of the political spectrum to the other and the country holds together and happily repeats the process every few years.

Sorry to break it to you buy Democrats are not left, if anything they are center right by western European standards, the Republicans on the other hand are going right off the cliff https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-maralago-remar... aside: Last time Europe had politics like above it ended badly for millions of people worldwide, except this time nuclear weapons abound

Not really. Trump is a third gen immigrant with an immigrant wife. If he were in Europe, he would talk about bloodline heritage, and how his people were French for centuries. There is a level of protectionism, homognity, and xenophobia that Europeans simply take for granted.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#50

Post by stctgion »

barsonme wrote: post #45
fenk85 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to break it to you buy Democrats are not left, if anything they are center right by western European standards, the Republicans on the other hand are going right off the cliff https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-maralago-remar... aside: Last time Europe had politics like above it ended badly for millions of people worldwide, except this time nuclear weapons abound

And the US’ right would be considered quite far left compared to many Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make or how it’s relevant to GP’s. It’s quite clear GP was referring to the US’ policies spectrum, not that of the entire world.

I think maybe the point is that the swing isn't really that big, so no real surprise that things keep on working
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