The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#21

Post by sovietcattle » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

jampekka wrote: post #18

sovietcattle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just one way to look at it. Another point of view is that elections are way to make people believe they are represented and therefore won't fight a state that maintains the monopoly of force, which can impose taxation, arbitrary laws, and a lot of other attacks to individual freedoms that people wouldn't be keen to accept naturally.

It's telling of your bias that you lament imposing taxes but ignore imposing ownership. I guess the latter is included in "accepted naturally" for you but there's really nothing natural in ownership if you step outside the prevailing dogma.

Do you have "ownership" of your own consciousness? Do you "own" your own body? Is that dogma?

Have some reading about argumentative ethics, it derives natural law based on private property through the means of logic:

https://mises.org/wire/primer-hoppes-argumentation-ethics

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#22

Post by sovietcattle » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

k__ wrote: post #20

sovietcattle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracies can't work, as they're managed by politicians with low time preferences, which means that in order to get elected they'll promise and pass laws and regulations that make the government always spend more than what they make through taxes, disregarding long-term effects. That process generates debt. Democracies inevitably end up achieving state bankruptcy through excessive debt. Regardless, that debt has to…

Isn't the goal of democracy to elect the average? Sure in the US or Russia this system is totally broken, but at least in countries with multiple political parties this seems to be the case.

One can claim anything about the goal of a democracy. Politicians are particularly good at "selling" it to the public with all sorts of marketing strategies.

In practice I think it's hard to fight that the ultimate goal of any form of government is to make the government itself persist.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#23

Post by yahwrong » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #10

litoE wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Karl Popper ("The Open Society and its Enemies") puts it best: a democracy is not defined by how the governed elect our leaders, but how they get rid of them. Popper came to this idea when looking at Hitler's Germany. Hitler came to power through elections and then used the existing laws to become absolute dictator. But clearly his government was not a Democracy, so clearly the fact that elections had been he…

I note in this context that threatening to lock up either Hillary or Trump are not helpful. Say that in 2020, Trump loses the election, and feels that if he leaves office, his political enemies will find a way to imprison him. He therefore has very strong incentive to find a way to stay in power. That really might not be what you want...

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Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#24

Post by i_am_nomad » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:20 AM UTC

Matt Stoller puts this into context in his recent and excellent book “Goliath,” specifically the pro-monopoly, proto-fascist forces dominating America at the time. And of course, he brings this forward to the present, where we are currently contending with and suffering from monopolization.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#25

Post by erichocean » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:25 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #14

Iv wrote: post #5

I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.

It also optimizes for leaders who will maintain a middle class. I thought CGPGrey laid this out very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

> It also optimizes for leaders who will maintain a middle class.

And yet, since the early 70s, the middle class in the US has continually eroded—with no end in sight. So much for theory.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#26

Post by erichocean » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:27 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #5

I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.

That reminds me of a truism I heard about protesting:

The purpose of protesting is to demonstrate the need for violence to the fence-sitters. If protesting results in change non-violently, so much the better. But the purpose is to demonstrate that violence is absolutely necessary.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#27

Post by brownbat » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:29 AM UTC

Iv wrote: post #5

I'll restate something that's often misunderstood about democracy. The use of elections is not to find the "best" leader (for any definition of "best" that you have) but to prevent civil unrest. It offers an alternative to pushing for opinions violently in order to be heard. For this it needs to offer a credible and legitimate path towards political changes.

Malcolm X's speech on the ballot or the bullet puts this really profoundly.

History is full of bloody revolutions. It takes democracy to make them bloodless.

https://youtu.be/Sc4BPYIqm6k

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#28

Post by blotter_paper » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:37 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #19

Iv wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a retired diplomat who was defending the highly criticized policy of offering retired dictators a comfortable and protected life in France. He was explaining that this was a condition to many peaceful transitions. This is balanced by the desire to keep leaders accountable and is a compromise against the rule of law. Saying that this applies to the US is really saying you have dictators who abuse their…

1. Some on the left believe that Trump deserves prison, not just removal from office, and are quite public about saying so. 2. Some on the left fear that Trump will not leave office when the rules say that he must, and are at least somewhat public about saying so. You don't have to believe either of these things to see the problem. The more they shout about #1, the more likely they are to create the conditions for #2…

...unless you're optimising for other things, like keeping leaders accountable to laws. If you believed a given leader had broken laws which would theoretically result in their imprisonment under the current system, and you believed that pursuing their imprisonment would definitely cause them to seek illegal extensions of their power, you still couldn't come to a "should" statement about whether or not to pursue legal action without weighing the competing goals of "enforcing the rule of law" and "preventing further abuse of power" against each other and deciding which one you care about more (perhaps with some assumed probabilities of various outcomes attached) -- and that's if you accept that the ends justify the means, meanwhile the means-over-ends crowd will want to pursue justice even in the face of armageddon.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#29

Post by pdonis » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

ajna91 wrote: post #7

"If we substitute the word indifference for the word liberty, we shall come much closer to the real intention that lies behind the classic argument. Liberty is to be permitted where differences are of no great moment. It is this definition which has generally guided practice. In times when men feel themselves secure, heresy is cultivated as the spice of life. During a war liberty disappears as the as the community fe…

The key thing to remember about Lippmann, though, is that when he says these "lucid" things, he is not actually complaining; he's describing what he and people like him intend to do to "manufacture consent". Lippmann actually had no problem telling the people lies if he thought it was in a good cause. His objection to the lies others told was not that they were lies, but that they were not in what he considered to be a good cause.

Re: The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

#30

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Dec 28, 2019, 2:57 AM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #25

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also optimizes for leaders who will maintain a middle class. I thought CGPGrey laid this out very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

> It also optimizes for leaders who will maintain a middle class. And yet, since the early 70s, the middle class in the US has continually eroded—with no end in sight. So much for theory.

Yes, but put that in perspective. The middle class in the US today is significantly larger and better off than in most dictatorships in the world, and there are structural reasons for that.