Should we stop the democracy experiment?

[Kinguendo]

Democracy is the best form of government, as the people are in control and you aren't oppressed without hope of government change without revolution, but it should be direct, none of this electoral shit (I'm American, pardon my ignorance on British systems). Also, the secret ballot must be preserved, as when you introduce social factors and others knowing people become retards, unlike what they are alone.

And to Max, first of all, sorry for posting and thus ruining my 666 posts, and second, your motto is dead on for what people are like: smart alone, retards together.

Wait, wait, wait... woman with flames, I am pretty sure that communism as it is SUPPOSED to be is the best form of government. People are actually in control, like they have a say in everything... The problem with people is they are lazy and they dont want a say in everything, you have seen the voter turn out... In general it is pretty poor, now imagine that with every government decision... people would stop caring before long, especially with the boring stuff like "where EXACTLY should we put these 3000 speed camers?".

To be honest, I'm not seeing too big a difference between the two. Both are, at least in theory, governments totally run by the people. Communism just has more emphasis on distribution of wealth. I went with democracy because communism, thanks to the emphasis on even distribution of wealth (a good thing in theory), tends to develop a powerful central government that is rather oppressive (*cough*stalin*cough*). That and some capitalism is helpful, as long as it's well regulated and there's constant push to improve. It's just bad when selfishness with no regard for others starts to take its toll.

In practice there would be a need to elect officials to handle certain tasks, I just don't think they should have the great power and dominance they have. They should just be people we get to handle the dirty work because of their competence and because we can't be bothered, and we'd monitor them and be able to replace them, of course.

Ah but that is Communism in practice not Communism in theory, so far no one has done it properly. Not how Marx saw it. Also, democracy isn't an exact definition. As Communism is referred to as THE most democratic form of government, provided it is done right.

I was just saying capitalism has some virtues if kept in check, and as you said about people getting bored, you need some officials. Also, in a true democracy (none of this republic crap) the people are in complete control. There's no effective difference between the two, as I said earlier.

And yes, communism hasn't been done in its ideal form yet. Human corruption and that Russia was probably one of the worst places for it. Communism works best in a small, industrial, resource-rich country. Russia is a huge, rural, and resource-poor country. Communism doesn't work too well on a large scale, and I'd say the same thing to varying extents with other forms of government.

Yeah, nothing works.

 

[Kinguendo]

snip

It's true. I don't want to argue with you.
It's draining.
I don't know how, but you actually take the fun out of arguing, which is just...incredible.
Somehow.

I've had to read this about fifty times, but I think I'm finally ready to respond to it. The problem was that each time I tried reading it I would start thinking about all the times I've seen babies being shaken, and I would just start laughing uncontrollably. But I'm good now.
Get your facts straight, I got suspended for wanting to lick that mans nipples in special sauce.

I've seen worse deflections, I guess.

Holy crap, Max is being serious... this is either going to be awesome or really, really painful for someone... *COUGH* The Volume *COUGH*... Lets see, or is that it?

Not really.
Familiarize yourself with this term:

pyrrhic victory.

And you'll understand why I don't feel like arguing with The Volume.

What? You cant be bothered winning at such a cost... but what would you actually lose? Incurring heavy losses would suggest there are more than just 2 people involved in this argument but there arent, so it must mean that you feel you would personally lose too much in winning.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

Edit:
The only reason why I didn't say just flat out IQ tests, which I completely would agree with, is because that would never be accepted in a democratic system.

I'd be against flat out IQ tests, because (a) the IQ is just too abstract a value to use it as a measure of ability to vote, unless we use it just to exclude the borderline unintelligent, who probably don't vote anyway, and they're less than 2% of the population anyway (b) I'd much rather go for a test which examines your knowledge of political theory (to ensure you understand what they're talking about), basic law concepts, some basic facts about your country's history, and basic economic theory. Not anything fancy, but I think that a lot of the problems we have with democracy come from the fact that a lot of people fail to realize that 2+2=4 and hence, 4-2=2. Instead they prefer to think of the budget as a Bag of Holding with infinite amount of gold pieces in it.

The problem with capitalism, as I said, is when total selfishness becomes a problem. The government council's falling would just be an inability to handle the sheer amount of data. The board of directors falling would be trying to get profits at all costs, and if they control the entire market (like Buy 'n' Large), they might do catastrophic things to get profits, or at least compromise the good of the people, which in my opinion is far worse.

Which... can actually be said of any other system as well. Now, I've seen quite a few people (I'm not directing that at you) saying, basically, "capitalism's NEVER gonna work, because people are selfish - but communism, oh, that's so cool! And what you've seen in USSR was not real communism, because people were selfish, but if we try communism, it'll surely work, because this time around we won't be selfish, see?"

The point I'm trying, rather ineptly, to make is that all the existing political systems hinge on the assumption that everyone involved in the decision-making process thinks about more than just their own asses - and that's never the case.

Among the current systems, I think democracy is the best one - not because it speeds up advancement, quite the contrary in fact. In my opinion the biggest advantage of democracy is that the amount of people involved in the decision-making process just clogs the gears so effectively that screwing everything up is nigh-impossible before feedback kicks in.

The problem with how it's currently done, however, is that the government terms are just way too short. Most significant economic moves take time to bring results. A little example of what I mean - the current economic crisis is in main part the result of decisions made by the Clinton administration. And yet the Bush administration gets all the blame, simply because it happened during his term in office. In fact, it works both ways - it is not uncommon for governments to take credit for all the positive results of former government's decisions, basing this on the fact that it happened during THEIR term.

 

[A random person]

That and some capitalism is helpful, as long as it's well regulated and there's constant push to improve. It's just bad when selfishness with no regard for others starts to take its toll.

F.A. Hayek put it best when he talked of the free market being superior to a planned economy because it takes an intelligence capable of dealing with more data than any government council can handle.

Of course, if that's why the market works, there's really no difference between a board of directors with a monopoly over the market and a central planning committee.

If one company took control of the entire market, then yes there would be no difference. When capitalism has constant competition, as it should, then the management of the economy is split up.

Certainly. The problem, of course, is that capitalism is not like the olympics: we don't hold it every four years. Heck, we don't even usually hold over times from race to race: to win the gold medal, you have to beat everyone in the pool from the same starting block.

The problem is that in capitalism, there's such a thing as competitive advantage: we wind up in equilibriums where the economy winds up managed by a few minds because however inefficient that may be, those few minds can crush the competition through competitive advantage as opposed to any real superiority.

Exactly. If there's constant competition to improve, then it works. But capitalism has the unfortunate tendency to put a few in ultimate power, with almost no means outside of government action or colossal stupidity on their part to unseat them. As I said earlier, once that happens, the one driving force of capitalism, competition, is removed or at least greatly diminished. The flaw in a lot of capitalist thought is the notion that success is solely decided on the quality of goods and services and that big companies stay in power because they are simply better, when really they're just so big and strong (from past success, granted) that they don't have to try as hard anymore. And of course kids, this is called a monopoly, and they must be destroyed.

 

[LCP]

Im appalled the ammount of morons who support communism.

 

[A random person]

Democracy is the best form of government, as the people are in control and you aren't oppressed without hope of government change without revolution, but it should be direct, none of this electoral shit (I'm American, pardon my ignorance on British systems). Also, the secret ballot must be preserved, as when you introduce social factors and others knowing people become retards, unlike what they are alone.

And to Max, first of all, sorry for posting and thus ruining my 666 posts, and second, your motto is dead on for what people are like: smart alone, retards together.

Wait, wait, wait... woman with flames, I am pretty sure that communism as it is SUPPOSED to be is the best form of government. People are actually in control, like they have a say in everything... The problem with people is they are lazy and they dont want a say in everything, you have seen the voter turn out... In general it is pretty poor, now imagine that with every government decision... people would stop caring before long, especially with the boring stuff like "where EXACTLY should we put these 3000 speed camers?".

To be honest, I'm not seeing too big a difference between the two. Both are, at least in theory, governments totally run by the people. Communism just has more emphasis on distribution of wealth. I went with democracy because communism, thanks to the emphasis on even distribution of wealth (a good thing in theory), tends to develop a powerful central government that is rather oppressive (*cough*stalin*cough*). That and some capitalism is helpful, as long as it's well regulated and there's constant push to improve. It's just bad when selfishness with no regard for others starts to take its toll.

In practice there would be a need to elect officials to handle certain tasks, I just don't think they should have the great power and dominance they have. They should just be people we get to handle the dirty work because of their competence and because we can't be bothered, and we'd monitor them and be able to replace them, of course.

Ah but that is Communism in practice not Communism in theory, so far no one has done it properly. Not how Marx saw it. Also, democracy isn't an exact definition. As Communism is referred to as THE most democratic form of government, provided it is done right.

I was just saying capitalism has some virtues if kept in check, and as you said about people getting bored, you need some officials. Also, in a true democracy (none of this republic crap) the people are in complete control. There's no effective difference between the two, as I said earlier.

And yes, communism hasn't been done in its ideal form yet. Human corruption and that Russia was probably one of the worst places for it. Communism works best in a small, industrial, resource-rich country. Russia is a huge, rural, and resource-poor country. Communism doesn't work too well on a large scale, and I'd say the same thing to varying extents with other forms of government.

Yeah, nothing works.

I still say rip off Athens.

 

[Dys]

No, we cant just make a u-turn and try something else now. Our capitalist societies are made for our brand of democracy. Leave it the way it is.

Democracy and capitalism are not interchangable, other than America there are very few western countrys that could really be called a capitalist society.

Also, democracy is a flawed idealogy, for very much the same reasons as communism is. That would be why we have never seen a real democracy, only variations that try to minimise its flaws.

Realisticially, if I was given the option to change my political system (in Australia), I'd pretty much be giving local governemts the boot (all they seem to do is raise revenue and install speed humps everywhere...less than useful, the state government can assign local teams to replace them), as communication between governments is attrocious and is where a lot of money is wasted. Election ad. campagns would be banned, they are unnecissary, only affect morons who shouldn't be voting anyway and cost are funded by taxpayer money. Governments have a maximum 1 term served, so they can cut the bullshit about preserving their career and stop making it look like they're being useful and actually be useful.

 

[Bulletinmybrain]

Democracy doesn't work, so you know. We have a republic, not a democracy- in a democracy, every person votes on every thing.

Democracy means any government where the law-making authority flows from the consent of the people. Every person voting on everything is *direct* democracy. Where people vote on the people who vote, it's called *representative democracy*.

In other words, all republics are democracies, but not all democracies are republics.

Representative Democracies are defective by design, the politicans will pander to the public to win the election and then just dick around in office.

A direct government like athens is much, much more effective.. But, there is currently the problem of reaching everybody.

Actually, the problem isn't reaching everybody, the problem is reaching each other. See, direct democracies work when everyone voting can talk to each other. We--including myself until I saw others make the case--underestimate the value of having the people who do the voting in contact with each other. Just like we want juries to deliberate and not just push a button as if this is "Who Wants to Be a Convict" we want the people who vote on things like laws to do so after they've had contact with the other people voting.

Otherwise, we wind up with special interest groups in place of politicians pandering to the public to win ballot referendums like what happened in California. Direct democracy would only eliminate the issue of pandering to voters if we banned political advertisements and political parties and political organizing.

Most people care very little about elections unless it is the president. So yes, the problem is also reaching everybody. Maybe with science we could make a deus-ex sort of system, with a subconcious machine relaying thoughts to a supercomputer for all decisions.

 

[Kinguendo]

Democracy is the best form of government, as the people are in control and you aren't oppressed without hope of government change without revolution, but it should be direct, none of this electoral shit (I'm American, pardon my ignorance on British systems). Also, the secret ballot must be preserved, as when you introduce social factors and others knowing people become retards, unlike what they are alone.

And to Max, first of all, sorry for posting and thus ruining my 666 posts, and second, your motto is dead on for what people are like: smart alone, retards together.

Wait, wait, wait... woman with flames, I am pretty sure that communism as it is SUPPOSED to be is the best form of government. People are actually in control, like they have a say in everything... The problem with people is they are lazy and they dont want a say in everything, you have seen the voter turn out... In general it is pretty poor, now imagine that with every government decision... people would stop caring before long, especially with the boring stuff like "where EXACTLY should we put these 3000 speed camers?".

To be honest, I'm not seeing too big a difference between the two. Both are, at least in theory, governments totally run by the people. Communism just has more emphasis on distribution of wealth. I went with democracy because communism, thanks to the emphasis on even distribution of wealth (a good thing in theory), tends to develop a powerful central government that is rather oppressive (*cough*stalin*cough*). That and some capitalism is helpful, as long as it's well regulated and there's constant push to improve. It's just bad when selfishness with no regard for others starts to take its toll.

In practice there would be a need to elect officials to handle certain tasks, I just don't think they should have the great power and dominance they have. They should just be people we get to handle the dirty work because of their competence and because we can't be bothered, and we'd monitor them and be able to replace them, of course.

Ah but that is Communism in practice not Communism in theory, so far no one has done it properly. Not how Marx saw it. Also, democracy isn't an exact definition. As Communism is referred to as THE most democratic form of government, provided it is done right.

I was just saying capitalism has some virtues if kept in check, and as you said about people getting bored, you need some officials. Also, in a true democracy (none of this republic crap) the people are in complete control. There's no effective difference between the two, as I said earlier.

And yes, communism hasn't been done in its ideal form yet. Human corruption and that Russia was probably one of the worst places for it. Communism works best in a small, industrial, resource-rich country. Russia is a huge, rural, and resource-poor country. Communism doesn't work too well on a large scale, and I'd say the same thing to varying extents with other forms of government.

Yeah, nothing works.

I still say rip off Athens.

I think we should all give Marshall Law a go... although I think I may be refering to that old, martial arts, cop drama.

 

[Kiutu]

All forms of government work best when done right and bad when done wrong. Democracy though allowes for easier recovery. Bad president? Vote for a better one. Bad monarchy/dictatorship? Bloody war. But, a Dictator ship could be great, if the leader is a pure good person and without dissenters. It is not the governments that are flawed but humans.

 

[A random person]

Edit:
The only reason why I didn't say just flat out IQ tests, which I completely would agree with, is because that would never be accepted in a democratic system.

I'd be against flat out IQ tests, because (a) the IQ is just too abstract a value to use it as a measure of ability to vote, unless we use it just to exclude the borderline unintelligent, who probably don't vote anyway, and they're less than 2% of the population anyway (b) I'd much rather go for a test which examines your knowledge of political theory (to ensure you understand what they're talking about), basic law concepts, some basic facts about your country's history, and basic economic theory. Not anything fancy, but I think that a lot of the problems we have with democracy come from the fact that a lot of people fail to realize that 2+2=4 and hence, 4-2=2. Instead they prefer to think of the budget as a Bag of Holding with infinite amount of gold pieces in it.

The problem with capitalism, as I said, is when total selfishness becomes a problem. The government council's falling would just be an inability to handle the sheer amount of data. The board of directors falling would be trying to get profits at all costs, and if they control the entire market (like Buy 'n' Large), they might do catastrophic things to get profits, or at least compromise the good of the people, which in my opinion is far worse.

Which... can actually be said of any other system as well. Now, I've seen quite a few people (I'm not directing that at you) saying, basically, "capitalism's NEVER gonna work, because people are selfish - but communism, oh, that's so cool! And what you've seen in USSR was not real communism, because people were selfish, but if we try communism, it'll surely work, because this time around we won't be selfish, see?"

The point I'm trying, rather ineptly, to make is that all the existing political systems hinge on the assumption that everyone involved in the decision-making process thinks about more than just their own asses - and that's never the case.

Among the current systems, I think democracy is the best one - not because it speeds up advancement, quite the contrary in fact. In my opinion the biggest advantage of democracy is that the amount of people involved in the decision-making process just clogs the gears so effectively that screwing everything up is nigh-impossible before feedback kicks in.

The problem with how it's currently done, however, is that the government terms are just way too short. Most significant economic moves take time to bring results. A little example of what I mean - the current economic crisis is in main part the result of decisions made by the Clinton administration. And yet the Bush administration gets all the blame, simply because it happened during his term in office. In fact, it works both ways - it is not uncommon for governments to take credit for all the positive results of former government's decisions, basing this on the fact that it happened during THEIR term.

Selfishness is an issue either way, but it's less of an issue with government, with some corrupt officals, than with a corporation, dedicated solely to maximizing profits. And I have to say people aren't always selfish, sometimes they are trying to help.

Also, you're probably right about democracy. It does cause standstills thanks to the sheer number of different opinions, creating an equilibrium. I think a lot of it is scale, though, and smaller democracies would probably be swifter in change.