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The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

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Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#41

Post by inigyou »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #34

One measure of democracy is how much say you have in issues which affect you, the running of your neighborhood, your government etc. If you look at decision making at high levels, the general population usually gets ignored. Instead, powerful special interests dominate the government. Particularly with regard to foreign affairs of the USA, the oil lobby and weapons manufacturers. And look who's benefiting from the cu…

If high levels are ignoring the general population and dominated by special interests, that's an oligarchy. You agree with the article.

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#43

Post by hn_submit »

giov4 wrote: post #9
hn_submit wrote: post #7

[flagged]

I see this written here as a good representation of the current media view imposed on people ( and apparently well received ) that is actually leading to things like trump or fascism.

Trump is (mostly) not the problem. He's the canary in the coal mine. He does what his constituents want.

Other politicians were simply too thick to hear what people's concerns were so they voted for someone else.

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#44

Post by roenxi »

Balinares wrote: post #8
hunglee2 wrote: post #4

We hear a lot about what is or isn't a democracy but the reality is that very few countries today would ever be above the bar set. Even Athenian democracy wouldn't, as it was a demos of the male citizens only, supported by a large slave class. What is more important is: is it working? And if not, why not?

Which is why, instead of "democracy", it's more useful to quantify democratic . One traditional measure of such is the degree to which political power can be gained through free elections. But the research in TFA instead uses a novel measure: the weight a population has in its country's policymaking. Which yields fascinating results. Because, per the linked research, in present-time USA that weight is ~zero. Which is…

I don't think it is obvious that measure is meaningful though. The US has always been explicit that it doesn't trust the majority of the population to make decisions and has built intentional systems to keep them out. That is still democratic, the people could change those systems if they really put their mind to it, because the power does technically flow from the people if they really put their foot down.

It is pretty safe to say that the US could be more democratic. It is probably reasonable to compare it to other countries in terms of how democratic it is. But saying it is "not a democracy" is a fairly trivial observation. Republics aren't technically democracies if democracy means that the people make the decisions and win on all the disagreements. Republics are modelled on places like Rome that had a very visible and powerful oligarchy.

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#45

Post by akimbostrawman »

mertbio wrote: post #15

How can a country be democratic with only two parties?

While i agree in theory, in practice multi party systems still end up with only two sides where the biggest/most influential party on either side exerts its power over the others regardless.

Going away from parties to actual individual person voting on each topic/decision would be actual democracy but not like that has no drawbacks.

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#46

Post by sam_lowry_ »

inigyou wrote: post #42
feverzsj wrote: post #31

Democracy isn't absolute. I'd rate US style democracy 6 out of 10, while Russia is 2.

Why not 4 and 1 respectively?

Hah!

Reading about the way democracy was done in Athens, both are at 0.

In Athens, they had some 5000 people gathering together to vote every week on various matters out of the total population of around 20000 (the others were women, slaves and immigrants).

The judicial system was organized into 10 courts of 500 randomly assigned people from the above 5000.

They regularly forced the most prominent politicians to emigrate so that they do not become excessively influential.

Once Sparta took over Athens, the decision-making was restricted to 500 people first, then to the 30 tyrants.

P.S. IIRC, they had both secret and public voting.

P.P.S. Most public jobs were assigned randomly, except those that required specialized skills.

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#47

Post by s_dev »

https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy...

The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.

Otherwise it will probably slide in to being a full Oligarchy like Russia.

To me this crazy thing is the complete lack of alarm or sense of urgency from Americans on this. They seem very subdued and very complacent regarding this change.

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#48

Post by pu_pe »

s_dev wrote: post #47

https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy... The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms. Otherwise it will probably slide in to being a full Oligarchy like Russia. To me this crazy thing is the complete lack of alarm or sense of urgency from Ameri…

> The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.

Considering TFA is from 2014 and knowing the Democratic Party, I think instead of a 180 you could at best expect a 20

Re: The US is not a democracy but an oligarchy, study concludes (2014)

#50

Post by inglor_cz »

tdeck wrote: post #35
inglor_cz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this partly a question of sheer size of countries like the US and India? In Slovenia or Denmark, there may be two degrees of separation fewer between the regular voter and, say, an ordinary MP, because the parliaments and government are about the same size, but the population is in single millions. Even here in Czechia quite a lot of people actually know personally some high-ranking politician. How many America…

> How many Americans are on friendly terms with their Rep or Senator? I would imagine if you limited this to folks with $100MM+ net worth, the percentage wouldn't be so low.

This works in smaller countries as well, though. I would expect that our local tycoons know half of the Parliament and most of the ministers. And given that there is fewer very rich people here, they may individually have bigger impact on the legislation.
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