71–80 of 162 posts
It's about WHO choses what it's "the best".
The majority should choose, period.
Everything else is "I know better than other people what they SHOULD want".
Even if you "know better" by some objective criterium, it should not be up to you to decide.
Because government is about choosing what people WANT not what is BEST for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would go on to say that, IMO, the most important feature of a democracy is the periodic and orderly transfer of power every X years. Or, to put it another way, the ability to easily get rid of a leader.
Hmmm. The PRC seems to have this down. I'm not sure if that's a point against you or a point in the PRC's favor.
I hardly made an exhaustive list of all the parameters of the kind of democracy I like, so try to exercise some judgment...
Let's say I spend a lot of time prior to an election trying to understand the ballot measures and issues and candidates. Come going day, my decision is weighed just as highly as someone who watched Fox News the morning of the election, heard one of the candidates was the next Hitler and made an uninformed, fear-based decision. Ours votes are worth the same; why should I even do research then? (That's a different rant though).
I'm unfairly picking on Fox News. The vast majority of "news" is bullshit that is a distraction from the issues that an intelligent, informed electorate should care about. By turning news into entertainment, the purpose is no longer to inform and thus little of any substance is discussed by most news outlets.
So why not have a meritocracy, where only those deemed informed/an expert/smart enough get a vote? Or what if it was not one person = one vote, but rather a system where people's relative intelligences are reflected in their say in the process.
Perhaps finishing HS could earn people a second vote. Finish college, you get a third vote. If you serve in the military, you get an extra vote. Experts in a particular field could get extra votes, etc.
This seems like the rational successor to democracy. Of course this system I'm describing would need to be carefully crafted to remain fair, but I believe we can't do much worse at picking leaders and making policy decisions than we currently do in the US.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was the dominant form of voting in most democracies until about 100 years ago. E.g. in the UK, only men who owned property could vote (can't let the common man vote!). This didn't always produce a good democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy." This is…
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…
And so we have come to realize that soon, very soon, we will have to pioneer another form of government. We humans have had kings and queens, dictatorships, anarchy, communism, socialism, republics, democracies, and now it's time to move on to the next one. A few years ago when I was a young teenager who believed in the good of the world and the wisdom of people I would have thought the next government would naturall…
The human brain cannot decide on multiple complex issue, each requiring a PhD to understand, at once. This is not possible, not until we can begin enhancing human cognition.
Instead, we work around that limitation by specialization. This is how we advance our civilization anyway. We do not depend on one scientist, one genius. Rather, we build our civilization on the back of many genius and many supporting roles. Human beings doesn't have to know everything about making cars, making computers, etc. Somebody make the computer, I write a very specific application for it. Somebody else wrote the code so that I don't have to, etc.
Democracy doesn't take advantage of humans' knowledge specialties. Instead, we decide everything by popularity, tribalism, and other nonsense that doesn't predict expertise and wise decision-making.
Democracy isn't about selecting the "best leaders" - democracy is about self-determination and freedom.
How is democracy not about selecting leaders?
So, my point is that measuring democracy ("power to the people") against the purposes of aristocracy ("power to the best ones") is pretty misguided...
One thing that I am reminded of in the current zeitgeist with respect to capitalism and democracy is the 1930s and its condemnation of democracy as outdated and how fascism was the progressive way forward.
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…
People are plenty smart, it's just that democracy encourage the worst kind of decision making.
The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.*
I prefer that you answer with substance, not accusation of having a domination complex.
The elephant in the corner of the room of course is that the ancient Athenians quite deliberately didn't have a universal franchise. Property-owning tax-paying full citizens who fulfilled their military obligations voted, because they were the ones that would pay for, implement and generally be responsible for whatever was voted for.
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…