Democracy is good

[Lauxa]

Democracy is good: true or false?

[vimoh]

Democracy is a good idea.

Loke motor cars. Ideally, they work well, save time, and save energy. In reality the scene is slightly different.

Same with democracy. It is a good idea.

[greatcaptain]

Yeah I would say in theory it is a good idea. I've yet to see any particular kind of government that is oustanding in practice, though. No matter what there are people in charge who are going to be too greedy.

[Parthon]

I must start with a quote -
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Sir Winston Churchill

Democracy is so far the best government invented, but I wouldn't call any of the current governments a democracy.

The closest we have is a Beaurocratic Two-Party Republic, turning the idea of democracy in a mass bid for votes once every 4 years, and almost free reign to the current leaders for the years in between.

Even considering, if a party gets in with only 51% of the votes there's 49% who didn't get the party they wanted. We can barely call it a representative democracy then. On top of that, the leading government still presents policies that go against the majority of public opinion. And furthur still, the leaders may change every 4 years, but the majority of the government, especially the department heads and policy producers don't change, so change in that area takes ages.

In the end, I agree with vimoh. Democracy *would* be a good idea. :P

[srbelnap]

All political theories are perfect in theory. It is important to observe the effects that political systems have.
No system is perfect, no set of people are perfect, but history has taught us that democracy works best (with help from ideas rooted in republicanism and federalism).

[Trezker]

Originally Posted by Parthon

I must start with a quote -
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Sir Winston Churchill

Democracy is so far the best government invented, but I wouldn't call any of the current governments a democracy.

The closest we have is a Beaurocratic Two-Party Republic, turning the idea of democracy in a mass bid for votes once every 4 years, and almost free reign to the current leaders for the years in between.

I think Sweden is better, though it still sucks a lot as we have seen proof of lately...
More than two parties makes it possible to get several minority parties to rule. This means those parties have to make an agreement, and if any party breaks the agreement another party may vote with the opposition. It's almost like veto.

The people needs more power over the rulers. But no one has figured out how to achieve that without using violence AFAIK.

[wolfshadow]

IMO Democracy is good as long as the people in a country want it and strive to make it work.I look at the old U.S.S.R and when it was a communist country and everyone said how it was horrible,but if we fast forward it to today where they do have democracy(in a way)are they really much better off today than they were all those years ago?

[Dharma]

False.
Democracy is for sheeple and a Republic is for people.

In a democracy the majority has unlimited power and the individual lacks any safeguard to their rights as an individual. The majority can just vote your rights away.

In a republic you get the perks of democracy (free elections and such) but there is a control on power of the majority via a written constitution. The individual always retains certain rights no matter how the majority votes.

[escapee]

In a republic you get the perks of democracy (free elections and such) but there is a control on power of the majority via a written constitution. The individual always retains certain rights no matter how the majority votes.

I believe the above is the best answer to Lauxa's question. Without guaranteeing the liberty & basic right for each individual, Democracy is meaningless and can even be deadly (eg: Jewish holocaust, Chinese cultural revolution and etc ) .

Ron Paul: "Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy."

Thomas Jefferson :"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

[schola]

False. Democracy is mob rule mang.

[Brutha]

Are apples good?
Are trees good?
If you have no reference it's difficult to judge something.

Democracy is a system. Sometimes it's better than other systems sometimes it's worse.

If you see the Internet Activism in South Korea against American beef because of possible BSE, you see modern mob rule.

I think that representative multiparty democracy is benefitial to having a healthy nation state.

Democracy is however not the only thing that is important. Liberality (the true sense of the word, not how you americans changed it in your political debate) is more important.
The Rise of Illiberal Democracy by Fareed Zakaria makes a good case that when you want to decide between illiberal democracy (say Sri Lanka) and Liberal autocracy (say Pakistan) Liberal autocracy is the better political system.

Democracy usually doesn't work in a country in which people don't consider themselves equal with is the central criterium for having a good democracy after Toquesville.
When people think that only people of their tribe are equal to them you usually get problems with democracy.

When people elect someone based on their tribal loyality the elected politican usually gives back favors to his tribe.

People should elected on whether you think that they are competent and have the right ideas to lead the country forward.
They shouldn't be elected on whether you will get a personal advantage when they take office whether that might be personal tax cuts (if you are for tax cuts, be for tax cuts because you think it benifits the economy but not because it benifits you personally) or because the politican is loyal to you and does what you want.

If democracy gets more direct personal advantages take more influence in policy decision which ususally leads to bad public policy.
You also give bad memes like nationalism to much space in direct democracy (the Korea example).

Instead of direct democracy you need transparency to let citizens and media point of flaws of public policy and create positive feedback loops.

[Peek]

The system leaves me cold.
I prefer a good hearted leader as a dictator, then a democratic puff head who thinks he can do what he wants, because he has the most votes.

What I really do not understand in Democracies, is that the promises made before electing are not handled as a manifest. Like when we make our goals, it only works if we hold ourselves accountable.
It is too easy to promise this and that, get elected and do nothing in the years to come. So, very nice that we can choose, but then what...???
A part of democracy should be explaining to your voters what project made progress and in what way, every year.

Maybe we can call it Goal setting for Presidents or something like that.

The system is nice, but not complete

[Brutha]

What I really do not understand in Democracies, is that the promises made before electing are not handled as a manifest.

When people elect the person who promises the most and isn't realistic with his promises, what do you expect politicians to do?

Electing politcians based on which politician promises the most benifits is a bad idea.
You should rather choose the person with the best prior history. Did the make the right choices in the past? It best to not only look at the specific person but also on their political enviroment, did his advisors do the right things in the past?

If people would make their voting decisions that way it would make sense for politicans to make promises they can keep (if the get evaluated on past action, making promises that you can keep might make them appear positively to voters).

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Democracy is good: true or false?

Like most governmental systems (and most things in general) it depends a lot on the implementation.

For a democracy (or a republic for that matter) to work well, it requires that people can:
(1) communicate freely
(2) be well educated and informed
(3) have free time and energy to participate in the political process

Compare:
(a) A society where people are well educated and informed, communicate freely and have ample free time.
(b) A society where public education is mediocre and many people can't afford private, Fox News is a major source of information and many people work two jobs just to get by.

It seems pretty clear that #a will produce a better democracy than #b.

"Democracy = mob rule" only holds if the people are a mob rather than empowered individuals.

[escapee]

Regardless of education, most people will become mob when money is devalued to the point that a slice of bread costs 1 million dollars

A hungry man is an angry man ..

[Cantando]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Democracy is good: true or false?

I would be most interested in what native American Indians think of democracy. Do you think it has been good for you?

[Sam988]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Democracy is good: true or false?

Depends. Sometimes the people don't know what's best for them. Of course this is the argument in which totalitarian governments base themselves, but i still think it is valid. The problem is that we are not smart enough to have a truly ideal regimen, where democracy and totalitarianism in a few areas exist, because people in the power would end up abusing it, so i think that for us, as the human race, currently, democracy is the best political system.

[SomeRandomGuy]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Democracy is good: true or false?

I fear that a true democracy would have horrible results. I suspect that while a segment of the population would make decisions based on what they felt was best for the whole, the majority would make decisions based on what was going to be best for them (or based on their own prejudices). It would also be extremely difficult to have all citizens well enough informed on all topics to make good decisions. Can you imagine trying to inform all citizens well enough to make a budget or tax code decision? I don't see any way that a decision could be made based on the facts, and what would truly be best. Most likely the decision would be made based on what the loudest and most well-spoken lobbyist said (as the majority would probably be swayed by them).

We don't do much better, however, in electing our officials here in the US. Most officials here are elected based on who they are, how well they give a speech or the promises they make. We have seen evidence of this in the 2008 democratic primary. Too many votes were given based on gender, race or a like/dislike of Bill Clinton. The presidential election is going to have a lot of votes cast for the democratic candidate simply out of a dislike of George Bush (and therefore the Republican party as a whole). Once this election is over it would be very interesting to see how many votes were cast based on actual knowledge of the candidates positions and history vs the number based on a personal opinion, having nothing to do with who is qualified to do the job.

The Bush tax cuts I think are a very good example of what would happen in a true democracy. Bush basically bought votes by promising tax cuts. I am not an economist, so am not qualified to say if the tax cuts were a good thing of bad thing. I do know, however, that most of the people who voted for him based on the tax cuts were doing so for their own personal gain, and not for what they thought was best for the country. In a true democracy I can see people voting for no taxation at all. We can all see how bad that would be. I bet everyone here knows people who would vote for no taxes, though, regardless of the overall impacts.

So I guess, after all of that, my point is that while democracy is good in theory, I can't imagine a society in which it could be pulled off successfully.

[Still Growing]

Show me a Democratic country ! Webster's dictionary states that Democracy is a government by the people; especially : rule of the majority.

We have the illusion of Democracy however its the minority that runs the majority here and elsewhere. (Special Interests minority)

It would be ludacris to call what we have a Democracy.

[nikkiemeh]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Democracy is good: true or false?

True, Democracy is a good thing, and this is not just for specific persons or certain officials; this is for the entire nation and its broad masses of people. Literally, democracy means the people as the ruling power. What I believed is each and everyone of us has a right to voice out or to express our opinion or one selves.

[PerDev]

Originally Posted by Lauxa

Democracy is good: true or false?

Democracy is good as we do not have any other better alternative.

[Keith]

IMO, what would be ideal (and no, I have no idea how this would work in practice ) is a system that, rather than simple voting, aggregated people's inputs.

With available computer technology, something like this should be possible. Wikipedia is far short of perfect for this purpose, but provides an early prototype of how aggregate decision-making can work.

[Brutha]

IMO, what would be ideal (and no, I have no idea how this would work in practice ) is a system that, rather than simple voting, aggregated people's inputs.

For an example of how it would work in practice: The Great Seduction: Digital fascism

Blind aggregation doesn't work in politics where decisions matter and are highly controversial.

Wikipedia is far short of perfect for this purpose, but provides an early prototype of how aggregate decision-making can work.

For controversial decisions wikipedia is governed by Admins and an Oligarchy.
Wikipedia is good for getting quanity, but I wouldn't want to have public policy written like that.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Brutha

For an example of how it would work in practice: The Great Seduction: Digital fascism

Interesting-looking site, and he makes some good points (though "the dream vs the nightmare" is a binary oversimplification and I notice his book got a 2-star review on Amazon).

Two thoughts that immediately leap to mind are:
(1) The article certainly points out some potential 'gotchas' of current 'edemocracy'. The current state is a step along the path, not the final destination, though.
(2) You can find numerous flaws in any system, including the current one. It's unbalanced to compare the merits of the status quo to the flaws of the alternatives. What's important is whether, on balance, it's an improvement or not.
(3) The article really brings home how critical it is for the populace to have access to reliable information.

(Yes, I thought of a 3rd point ).

The article is an example of people coordinating to protest an issue of concern (unfortunately, based on incorrect information). That they have the ability to do so is a good thing. That the information was wrong is tragic, but it's not significantly different to (for example) people supporting war against Iraq because Fox News said they had WMDs (I can understand the students of Korea saying "We cannot trust mainstream media reports").

There's a lot of issues around the reliability of sources of information. Yes, the students jumped too far in the direction of self-reliance and made a mistake. That doesn't mean there's not a problem with the trustworthiness of official information sources.

Originally Posted by Brutha

Blind aggregation doesn't work in politics where decisions matter and are highly controversial.
For controversial decisions wikipedia is governed by Admins and an Oligarchy.
Wikipedia is good for getting quanity, but I wouldn't want to have public policy written like that.

I didn't say that aggregation should be blind, and I didn't say that the wikimedia model should be used for writing public policy. In fact, I didn't say anything definitively, 'cos it's new turf that really needs a thorough exploration and trials before we come to any conclusions.

Wikipedia is an interesting prototype example of aggregation and helps explore some of the issues of that approach, but it's not really intended as a governmental system.

Just off the top of my head, a Constitution would serve as a check against a 'tyranny of the majority' (much as it does now) and access to accurate information should be elevated to the status of a Right.

[Brutha]

The article is an example of people coordinating to protest an issue of concern (unfortunately, based on incorrect information). That they have the ability to do so is a good thing. That the information was wrong is tragic, but it's not significantly different to (for example) people supporting war against Iraq because Fox News said they had WMDs

The question of whether Iraq had WMD's is more difficult to answer (before invading) then the BSE and American beef one.
Whether a secret weapon program exists is hard to research for an journalist or a normal citizen.
Getting difficult things wrong is also bad, but a system that gets easy things wrong is worse than one that fails when things get difficult.

Interesting-looking site, and he makes some good points (though "the dream vs the nightmare" is a binary oversimplification and I notice his book got a 2-star review on Amazon).

If you write something that goes totally against the zeitgeist you get a low rating at amazon.

I don't think that the aggregated information about which books are worth reading that amazon provides is good.
It reduces the success of books that say controversial things that people don't want to hear but should hear.

Just off the top of my head, a Constitution would serve as a check against a 'tyranny of the majority' (much as it does now)

People on the streets are a lot less aware of the framework of laws than politicans (and I don't think that politicans are good at understanding how laws work).

It's much easier for a supreme court to remove a law that got 70% of the votes in congress than it is to remove a law that got 70% of the votes in a general election where everyone was asked about the issue.
The political pressure on a court is much larger when everyone voted on the law.
And citizen reporting is also a lot less accepting about a courts authority to kill laws than mainstream media is.

Can you imagine what would happen in the blogosphere where the supreme court would kill a law that got 90% of the vote in an election where everyone could vote?
Especially when you get powerful groups that follow the anonymous model (see the anonymous vs. scientology war).

A constition alone doens't give you a balance of powers. You need a structure that is sustainable that balances itself.
How do you get a balance of powers in that system?

Maybe the turkish model where the military defends the constitution against democracy?

If you lose the balance of power, you get problems (yes, there are also other danger to the balance of power).
If you just go the trial and error way, you could blow up the political system that you have and leave nothing but chaos.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Brutha

If you write something that goes totally against the zeitgeist you get a low rating at amazon.
I don't think that the aggregated information about which books are worth reading that amazon provides is good.

I originally included the parenthetical comment "(of course, he can just write that off as a failure of eDemocracy)" but trimmed it because of size.

It wasn't just low stars. There are reviews there that go into detailed and reasoned explanations of flaws in the book.

Originally Posted by Brutha

If you just go the trial and error way, you could blow up the political system that you have and leave nothing but chaos.

Obviously I wouldn't suggest just getting rid of the current system and putting something untried in its stead. I'd say: try it out at an organisational level first. Work the kinks out. Then try it at a small government level (maybe set up a commune/town somewhere?). Then work the kinks out. etc.

Ultimately all the things you mentioned are issues to be resolved but not showstoppers.

Your earlier comment "For an example of how it would work in practice" (emphasis mine) suggests that you already hold a firm vision of a particular eDemocracy model. I think that's premature and limiting at this exploratory stage - a bit like pointing out the relative uselessness of the first computers.

[Brutha]

It wasn't just low stars. There are reviews there that go into detailed and reasoned explanations of flaws in the book.

I don't think either that he is right everywhere, but the question are important and largly unaddressed by popular internet culture, especially when it comes to politics.

Obviously I wouldn't suggest just getting rid of the current system and putting something untried in its stead. I'd say: try it out at an organizational level first. Work the kinks out. Then try it at a small government level (maybe set up a commune/town somewhere?). Then work the kinks out. etc.

You don't have balance of power issues on a small government scale because it's easy to control that from other layers of government.
You also haven't that much problem with people hacking into your system.

Obviously I wouldn't suggest just getting rid of the current system and putting something untried in its stead. I'd say: try it out at an organizational level first. Work the kinks out. Then try it at a small government level (maybe set up a commune/town somewhere?). Then work the kinks out. etc.

Unfortunately ideas that succeed are viral ideas.

It's practically impossible to roll back direct democracy even when it doesn't work and produces only junk.

I think that's premature and limiting at this exploratory stage - a bit like pointing out the relative uselessness of the first computers.

I don't criticise it because I think it's useless, but because I think that it's dangerous.
I don't have a problem with trying useless things that might have a high payoff like computers.
But when it comes to dangerous things my view is different. It's saying no to Pandora's box.

In general the problem of the Web2.0 idea that it gives everyone regardless of expertise the same power.
If you do important things where the quality of the output matter a great deal and which is important enough to do propaganda for you get junk without expertise.
If you want to use the internet in politics you should rather focus on increasing transparenz then on making decisions.

Most people who are for direct democracy are for it for ideological reasons. But the reason that it's "more just" just shouldn't count.
I want an effective system instead of one that follows some moral standard.

[Ponce]

No matter what you call it.........as long as YOU are happy you then are free.

[escapee]

Yes, Liberty = Happiness > Democracy

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.” Thomas Jefferson