Is democracy dying? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is democracy dying?

#71

Post by mvid » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

andromeduck wrote: post #53

I think the problem is democracy just doesn't scale very well because it requires empathy and altruism and that operates at the scale of human experience. You need some kind of commonality or shared experience to keep people together. In the 50s-80s you had the experience of the wars and cold war to keep people active. Since then, there hasn't been too much of that save maybe terror attacks. For the US specifically,…

This only sounds like it would work if each state had some kind of physical and cultural separation. We already see in Illinois how state level gun control is failing. It doesn’t matter how strict Illinois sets its gun laws, they still pour in from the lax neighbors.

If we want to let human rights choices be set at the state level, we need to provide some kind of subsidized “get out of dodge” program for the people negatively affected by the state level decisions, as those people are usually the poorest and least mobile. Can you imagine trying to sell “your taxes are going to pay for moving gay people to California/NY” to the constituents in dark red states?

Re: Is democracy dying?

#72

Post by johnchristopher » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #6

mdekkers wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who don't own significant amount of property (say, sufficient to provide rent above poverty threshold), shouldn't vote, because their votes are irresponsible by definition, and they are too easy to manipulate Can you back that statement up with data?

It is so hard to see that people who are dependent on social assistance will vote for nothing but more social assistance, dragging whole society into the hole? To me, Chinese model sounds optimal: make strict, public, rarely changing rules of who can get suffrage, which may be a combination of education, income, wealth, and some other (say criminal record) requirements, in part replaceable by one another. 6% of adult…

I am slightly concerned HN seem to just downvote anovikov instead of bringing back the counter-arguments that were made centuries ago when democracy and universal suffrage was being fought for.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#73

Post by verbify » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

andromeduck wrote: post #55

verbify wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can't you just bribe them when they're selected?

Presumably ordinary people selected at random are harder to bribe than people who are pretty much required to accept donations to get elected. These donations often have strings attached.

Besides that 'The desire to be a politician should be enough to ban you from ever becoming one' (Bill Connolly), those who don't accept dubious donations will suffer in advertising dollars compared to those who do.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#74

Post by verbify » Mon, Mar 12, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #41

verbify wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 betw…

The idea is that the funding mechanisms at the heart of democracy comes with strings attached - people who are pretty much required to accept donations to get elected. These donations often have strings attached.

Besides that 'The desire to be a politician should be enough to ban you from ever becoming one' (Bill Connolly), those who don't accept dubious donations will suffer in advertising dollars compared to those who do.

Additionally it has been noted that psychopaths often rise to the top - a problem that isn't presented with demarchy.

Re: Is democracy dying?

#75

Post by Iv » Tue, Mar 13, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

nopriorarrests wrote: post #62

Iv wrote: post #56

I have a very cynical view of democracy but it turns out that these days it makes me more optimistic about democracy. Democracy has never been about electing the brightest, never. Democracy is actually not at all about how we choose the person who will rule (as is demonstrated by US who elected twice this century someone who lose the popular vote). It is about the fact that in face of enough unpopularity, the current…

>The goal of democracy is not good governance, it is civil peace. This is an excellent point. On the other hand, though, it was 8 years of GWB, which was resented by the half of the country, then it was 8 years of Obama, which was resented by another half, and now, well, things are definitely not improving. My point here is that it seems that democracy getting weaker and weaker for solving that civil peace part of eq…

Half of the country hates the other half. It does not date from GWB. Some date it back to the civil war. If that is so, the US democracy has been remarkably effective at keeping peace.