51–60 of 162 posts
That seems like an utterly simplistic model. "Leadership"?
Of course they don't elect the "best" leader. What is that, anyway?
Democracies exist only to have an obviously legitimate system to replace the current leaders by new ones every few years, and thus avoid corruption from growing too large and damage the society/economy.
The difference between the "best" or an "average" leader is much less than the difference between "little" and "a lot of" corruption.
"Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Churchill, 1947 http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/nov/11/parli...
I honestly think this is the best piece of rhetoric to keep our old system in place. The system is awful, but its the best we got. I'd prefer if we brought back our philosophers and started to have large debates on the writing of new law. We are to afraid to change our old old system. Depressing.
That's why the US Congress has an approval rating worse than herpes [1] and still most people will keep their jobs thanks to lack of reform, redistricting and gerrymandering by the only people who can fix it.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/21/opinion/obeidallah-congress-fa...
The point of electoral government is people's right to govern themselves, not the superiority of their decisions. In the U.S. we mediate "democracy" through a republican government of divided and checked powers to guard against the dangers of any unified and unchecked political power. But the point of all that is to secure that right to self-government, not thwart it.
That may have been the intent but the reality is that the poor stay poor and the rich now dominate resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive. Consequently, you lose unless you happen to be one of the few in charge.
That's just not accurate at all. You can still go to college and "make it" into middle class America, even if you come from a poor background. You can also go the entrepreneurial route and make it into rich America.
resulting in a government that is increasingly dominant and intrusive.
That is the case, but it results from cultural philosophy, not from "the rich dominating".
The democratic process relies on the assumption that
citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize
the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when
they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed
an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem
to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic
elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.
A government that is competent enough to survive and incompetent enough to be unable to interfere in the lives of its citizens.
Constitutional Republic yes, Democracy no. Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom. America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The…
I came here to say almost precisely this. However, I do think it's true that people aren't smart enough for democracy, and that's a part of why we need a constitutional republic instead. Is there something wrong with that line of argumentation?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Che? He was a genocidal psychopath that hated gays and people that were religious. He personally oversaw the execution - murder - of thousands of innocent people that he regarded as undesirable or conflicting with his beliefs. Bloodthirsty, is the description he gave himself. He didn't start with democratic means, he started with sheer extreme violence. Che is one of the greatest villains of the last century.
It's a lot easier to have a united democracy when you start with a unified populace culled of undesirables, yeah? Sure, stacking the deck, but it can be made to work.
but it can be made to work
No it can't! The Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and Nazi Germany have proven that! How many more millions do you want to kill before you're convinced?
Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. From Ron Paul to Che, the entire spectrum says "no" to armed resistance until all democratic means are exhausted.
>Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. You phrase that as a positive, but it could also be phrased as a negative: Democracy allows evil people to rise to power without having to fight anyone to do it. Hitler was elected democratically.
That's not really the case. He got a fair amount of votes organically, but at some point he was just using violence and force to take power.
Despite what I see as a flawed example, I agree with your point.
This is what happens when one person writes an article, and another writes a link bait title. Here is the concise version. The well-known Dunning-Kruger effect says that the less competent people are, the less they are able to recognize competence. Someone named Mato Nagel used this as the basis of a toy computer model of democracy. The result of his simulations is that the leaders selected by democracy are only slig…
In certain other countries the majority would find the "average American voters'" perspective on issues like economics or climate change quite strange. I can think of countries where there seems to be an almost universal acceptance of global warming but a poor acceptance of free market principles, for example. My hypothesis is that in the long run education systems have a big impact on what average voters think; and…
When you have parts of the UK whose own (unofficial) national anthem is about a 700 year old war against other parts of the UK then it no wonder that a single "national identity" has never really caught on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Democracy is also the only way to effectively stop armed revolutions. You phrase that as a positive, but it could also be phrased as a negative: Democracy allows evil people to rise to power without having to fight anyone to do it. Hitler was elected democratically.
Hitler was elected democratically. That's not really the case. He got a fair amount of votes organically, but at some point he was just using violence and force to take power. Despite what I see as a flawed example, I agree with your point.