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Who needs democracy when you have data?

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Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#71

Post by close04 »

coldtea wrote: post #40
close04 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what people want If they gave the people what they wanted then everybody (and nobody?) would be elites, right? Or maybe the majority of people just want those 10% to be rich. And since Brexit was brought up, can you think of any huge promise that was made in order to get the vote but won't be kept? Must be that what people really want is to be lied to. [1] Today's democracy functions as a 2 step process: the campai…

> If they gave the people what they wanted then everybody (and nobody?) would be elites, right? You can have an elite (in wealth/earnings) and still have a voting system that reflects the majority's wishes. In fact, unless you can balance those two you don't have a democracy -- at best you have a bastard system where elites buy influence (and not outright, that would still be up to the people "selling" their vote: th…

I think you completely missed the point. Which was that while democracy is the best system we have, most implementations are crap. Remember that on paper even communism sounds good. Although while hotly debating the Brexit topic with whataboutism you just made my point without realizing.

Not only are most people easily manipulated into believing they want something when they actually need something else or their votes are simply bought with "trinkets", sometimes they are also not even being offered those trinkets in the end. Their vote is worth nothing the second they cast it.

You're focusing too much on Brexit, it was just an example. Politicians fooled people into thinking they vote for (among others) more money to the NHS only to turn around right after the vote and say "that's not happening". The vote was heavily based on misdirection and manipulation. All perfectly democratic but without actually giving any power to the people. What happens after a promise is broken? Nothing.

Somewhere else in the world people might be told that "I'm sure education is important but the war against terror...". So they vote for the war without even realizing that they're losing twice: they have to fight a war and miss out on education. Again, perfectly democratic.

Democracy as it stands now is actually the business of selling promises. If you vote for a promise that's never fulfilled what exactly is your power other than to try again?

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#72

Post by zeveb »

lumberjack wrote: post #6
coldtea wrote: post #3

> It helps that a tumultuous couple of years in the world’s democracies have made the Chinese political elite feel increasingly justified in shutting out voters. Developments such as Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, the rise of far-right parties across Europe, and Rodrigo Duterte’s reign of terror in the Philippines underscore what many critics see as the problems inherent in democracy, especially populism, instabili…

Trump and BREXIT: the blame is put entirely on the electorate, but in both cases it was the elites who gave the electorate the opportunity to make a choice and it was the elites who provided the selection of possible choices. Think of the many contemporary political issues on which the elites refuse to provide such a choice and insist on governing as they please. This is the same as when the media (the voice of the s…

> Trump and BREXIT: the blame is put entirely on the electorate, but in both cases it was the elites who gave the electorate the opportunity to make a choice and it was the elites who provided the selection of possible choices.

To the extent that the elites made President Trump's run possible, I believe it was because they believed him to be the most defeatable Republican competition for Mrs. Clinton. The media loved reporting on him, because it was fun. Meanwhile, the Republican Party relied too much on primaries and not enough on caucuses, and awarded delegates based on plurality rather than having runoffs. As it turned out, while he was the most-defeatable opposition for Mrs. Clinton she wasn't able to actually defeat him.

As for Brexit, the whole reason it was on the ballot was that Mr. Cameron believed that he could get a clear vote of confidence on the U.K.'s E.U. membership. This is a pretty historic instance of hubris: had he simply asked for a two-thirds vote, he'd have won. But he went with a simple majority, and that defeated him.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#73

Post by liberte82 »

gknoy wrote: post #53
bopbop wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rational need for democracy for you would be so that I don't govern you according to my wishes. A rational need for democracy for me would be that you don't govern me according to your wishes. A rational need for democracy for the uyghurs would be that Xi Jumping doesn't govern them according to his wishes. I've always understood this to be what is meant by democracy is the worst form of governance, apart from all…

But ... we currently (in the US) have a direct example of the rulers in power governing the populace in a way which is "not according to the wishes" of roughly half the population. (I think this is a direct result of our 2 party system, as compared to Britain's multiple parties, but I've no idea how to fix it.) Any time you vote on the losing side of an election (whether it's for who to elect, or approve a tax, or le…

I was always taught that representative democracy is the rule of the majority, with respect for minority rights. This is where a rational court system comes into play, and why not all questions of rights are left to a referendum.

It's what distinguishes it from populism, which is also a rule of the majority, but is a tyranny in that it scapegoats the losing side rather than tries to establish a peaceful way of life for everyone.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#74

Post by beat »

Tade0 wrote: post #37
beat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Can you really establish a rational need for democracy, or are you just running on cultural reflex? If you take this question as me saying we shouldn't have democracy, maybe it's reflex. It's an interesting question. Democracy isn't an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. What is that end (or those ends)? How else can those ends be achieved?

The end is a robust system that minimises corruption and this can only be achieved when the people in power can be held accountable and are easy to replace.

Ok, so why is corruption the problem? I can easily imagine a government that is not corrupt at all that terrifies me (such as a theocratic state), and I can imagine governments that are quite corrupt that are just fine for most purposes.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#75

Post by _bxg1 »

throwawayjava wrote: post #64
_bxg1 wrote: post #56

There is nothing in the world right now that I fear more than the creep of Chinese surveillance/authoritarian practices into the rest of the world's society. They are a rapidly growing superpower, and while I hold no fantasies of U.S. supremacy, this specific trend in the use of digital technology terrifies me. There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke…

> There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it out in such a literal fashion. Although I agree with you, it's worth noting that this sentiment is not a new one. There were plenty of people who believed that WWI marked the end of war, at least in Europe. Even after WWII, Pax Americana (in Western Europe) was not an inevitability. Today's relative stabil…

Maybe. Part of my concern is that America's superiority complex will prevent those at the top from doing anything about it; just continuing to push ahead as normal with the presumption that we'll win.

However, I have some friends who work in the government, and conversations with them have given me a small source of hope: the government may feel like it mostly consists of the clowns we see in the news every day, but the reality is that it's made up of a massive collection of American citizens, many of whom are extremely competent at their jobs and whose priorities are simply to keep things working well for everyone. They do incredibly thorough planning for contingencies that allow us to do things like weather natural disasters (that's the department one of my friends works in), etc. So much complexity and knowhow and effort goes into simply keeping this whole thing moving at all, and part of me hopes that there are people somewhere in there who are are thinking through all this stuff, who know what they're doing, and who have a plan.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#76

Post by _bxg1 »

dqpb wrote: post #67
_bxg1 wrote: post #56

There is nothing in the world right now that I fear more than the creep of Chinese surveillance/authoritarian practices into the rest of the world's society. They are a rapidly growing superpower, and while I hold no fantasies of U.S. supremacy, this specific trend in the use of digital technology terrifies me. There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke…

It will be an interesting case study to see what they do with the Uyghurs. What can a government do to an enemy population when they've sequenced the DNA of every individual in that population?

I don't know if "interesting" is the word I would use; what they're doing to that subpopulation is approaching Nazi Germany-level stuff. However, the human rights violations could prompt the global community to take action like they did in WW2, which could honestly be one of the better outcomes of all this.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#77

Post by vorpalhex »

dfjliasjg wrote: post #61
PakG1 wrote: post #39

Democracy is good because it basically allows for a peaceful revolution if a populace is dissatisfied with its government. Democracy is bad because the government risks enduring endless bickering and nothing getting done. Etc, etc. I don't know what the right answer is anymore.

I've always thought that deadlock was a feature instead of a bug. If half the population is for it and half is against it then nothing should happen legislatively.

Federalist paper #10 contains a lot of thought on this topic, and it's worth reading. Like all documents of this type, it should be read as a kind of argument between two competing sides. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#78

Post by wilsonnb3 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #63
wilsonnb3 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it out in such a literal fashion. It's just bad for business. It's bad for business until it's not. Isolationist economic policies will over time make war more likely. > Between the spread of the companies it effectively owns, and the deals being made with the rest of the world's most powerful tech companies, China will soon wield more influe…

"I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information." I think at the end of the day it just comes down to the numbers. With four times the population, they have four times the market of consumers and four times the workforce to create value. The U.…

Your base assumption seems to be that world influence has a positive linear relationship with population size, which is not something that I agree with.

I don't necessarily disagree with it either, though. I think the situation is far more complex to boil down to just that.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#79

Post by _bxg1 »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #78
_bxg1 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information." I think at the end of the day it just comes down to the numbers. With four times the population, they have four times the market of consumers and four times the workforce to create value. The U.…

Your base assumption seems to be that world influence has a positive linear relationship with population size, which is not something that I agree with. I don't necessarily disagree with it either, though. I think the situation is far more complex to boil down to just that.

I would amend that to say the potential for world economic influence has a positive linear relationship with population size. Clearly population alone doesn't do it, since China doesn't yet have the economic weight of the U.S., but they have a much greater capacity for growth.

Re: Who needs democracy when you have data?

#80

Post by close04 »

gnode wrote: post #31
close04 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what people want If they gave the people what they wanted then everybody (and nobody?) would be elites, right? Or maybe the majority of people just want those 10% to be rich. And since Brexit was brought up, can you think of any huge promise that was made in order to get the vote but won't be kept? Must be that what people really want is to be lied to. [1] Today's democracy functions as a 2 step process: the campai…

> If they gave the people what they wanted then everybody (and nobody?) would be elites, right? Or maybe the majority of people just want those 10% to be rich. I think the majority of people are actually comfortable with the existence of even extreme (billionaire-scale) inequality. Although people want to feel that the inequality is just -- based on wealth-creation, rather than rent-seeking.

It's not about being comfortable with the difference, rather about seeing that the difference keeps increasing because that small minority keeps tipping the scales. You are not as equal as democracy makes it out to be.

50% of Americans earn ~$37000. The poorest 35% had a decrease from 2016 to 2017. Do you feel they are particularly favored in the grand scheme of things? Because they certainly have the power to change this by sheer voting power.

As I said before, democracy is the business of selling promises once every 4 years. Unless you have the power to get what you actually want you are not leading anything and you have no real power. It's like the power to choose your poison is not an actual power if you didn't want to die in the first place.

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