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[1333054030] This Democracy thing

Anonymous. Fri 30 Mar 2012 00:47:00 No.101437 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By:

And so, a few weeks ago when I fired off my email to my local democratically elected representative raising my concerns about an upcoming change in the copyright legislation, I expected it to disappear into the void like so many job applications.

Only to receive a response ten minutes ago, informing me that my concerns, shared with many others, had been brought to the minister proposing the legislation's attention, and that he'd received an answer that might be of interest to me.

And it genuinely was.

Democracy works.

Anonymous

2

Anonymous Fri 30 Mar 2012 02:05:00 No.101438 Report

Quoted By:

Democracy works in a non-idiot society. The solution is direct democracy, where idiots will vote for the first few times (because they're selfrighteous morons). Because of terrible decisions, the country will crash and they will realise that they're too stupid to mess with such matters, leaving it to the rest of people.

Anonymous

3

Anonymous Fri 30 Mar 2012 02:44:00 No.101439 Report

Quoted By:

>>2
This is true of any political philosophy, not that they all work but everyone is doomed to have a shitty life if most people taking part are complete morons.

Pretty much everyone who spoke or wrote about democracy back when it wasn't an abstract concept said quite a lot about this, that people need to be intelligent and that tyranny of the majority is a very real possibility.

Despite this they are ignored by most people who probably also tell you about how important and wise the same historic figures they ignore are.

Anonymous

4

Anonymous Fri 30 Mar 2012 02:45:00 No.101440 Report

Quoted By:

It works fine until 51% vote on something and you're in the other 49%.

Synonymous

5

Synonymous Sat 31 Mar 2012 08:43:00 No.101483 Report

Quoted By:

Wise old historic figures eh?

"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to eat... Liberty is a well armed sheep."

As much as I love that quote it only dawns on me now how terrifying it would be to be a part of the majority with a well armed minority attempting to push it's ideals on other people...

In an Idiot-proof world though, the well armed sheep wouldn't blindly wave it's weapons and try to get what it wants against the will of the majority. I believe this one is better fitting.

"It is the right of the majority to rule, with respect to the minority."

Anonymous

6

Anonymous Thu 05 Apr 2012 02:54:00 No.101536 Report

Quoted By:

>>3

I disagree. More authoratarian styles of government work well no matter how stupid the people are -- simple reason being that the governemnt is not beholden to said idiots. The king decides, and that's the end of the matter. Monarchs are also more prone to take the long term view of society, because if the civilization goes belly up, he can't pass the kingdom on to junior. He's not going to do the same kind of stupid shit that modern democracies do -- things like deficit spend the nation into oblivion, or cut taxes to the point that it affects the future solvency of the country.

Anonymous

7

Anonymous Thu 05 Apr 2012 03:54:00 No.101540 Report

Quoted By:

>>6
Most people have a shitty life under any authoritarian style of government, so by that standard they fail hard like a train full of fail choo choo-ing at full speed off an incomplete bridge into the valley of terrible fucking ideas.

Anonymous

8

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 02:23:00 No.101577 Report

Quoted By:

>>2
If a population is dumb enough to screw up like that, they'll also be too dumb to figure out that the crash was their own damn fault.
(I'm just too tempted to say something about Yankees here…)

Anonymous

9

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 02:43:00 No.101580 Report

Quoted By:

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what to eat. Liberty is a well armed sheep.
This sounds eerily accurate, given how famous sheep are for their brainpower…

>>6
The problem with monarchs, is that being one single, absolute ruler for life, it all hangs disproportionately heavily on that one single individual. And given the nature of monarchies, there's not much in the way of suitability tests to measure a candidate up against.

In other words: If your monarch is intelligent, educated and sane, with healthy visions for his nation, good advisers and an intelligence gathering system that works, etc, then all is fine. The system works, no need to fix it.

Which is precisely the problem. When's the last time a nation actually did work this well? After all, the higher you fly, the longer you'll fall.

Anonymous

10

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 04:10:00 No.101584 Report

Quoted By:

The only real democracy is Direct Democracy, where a consensus is reached through open voting behind a round table. Parliamentary Democracy is an illusion, where voters have to pick among equally corrupt candidates, all of whom were approved by the Jews. Look at Obama with all the Jewry behind him - and you'll see the true nature of "Democracy".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_kampf

In his work, Hitler blamed Germany’s chief woes on the parliament of the Weimar Republic, the Jews, and Social Democrats, as well as Marxists. He announced that he wanted to completely destroy the parliamentary system, believing it in principle to be corrupt, as those who reach power are inherent opportunists.

Anonymous

11

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 13:01:00 No.101586 Report

Quoted By:

>>10
The only real democracy is Direct Democracy

Sure, but how is democracy itself even desirable?

Anonymous

12

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 15:57:00 No.101590 Report

Quoted By:

>>10
Which is, of course, completely impractical. The reason we have representatives is because we don't have the time to get together every god damn day and vote on every single issue that comes up. It's a full time job. It would only work in small communities, not nations.

Anonymous

13

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 18:09:00 No.101591 Report

Quoted By:

in a monarchy, all that needs to go wrong is a one person is corrupted. in a rep dem, a small group of people, if corrupted, can fuck things up. but in a direct dem, a far larger population has to be corrupted. to give a counter arguement to myself, like a boss, conversely in a monarchy we just need one person to be considerate much more likely. hmmmm... probabilistic symmetry

Anonymous

14

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 18:11:00 No.101592 Report

Quoted By:

direct dem also allows for a larger influx of ideas; a billion heads are better than one...

Anonymous

15

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 19:55:00 No.101595 Report

Quoted By:

>>13
according to your premises the strategy to take would be direct dem as it would be the maximin, the minimal lose (or the maximum minimum payoff hence the name maximin) the outcome would be the same in all (i.e corruption) but we have to multiply it to the probability and hence the minimal lose would be direct dem. just game theory

Anonymous

16

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 20:13:00 No.101596 Report

Quoted By:

It might be true that a leader, particularly a monarch can be corrupt, but it's also true that democracy can be equally corrupt. For an easy example, look at the social welfare programs and the tax issue. Democrats have made their entire platform "Vote for me and I'll give you welfare" while republicans have made "vote for me and I'll cut your taxes". Both are in essence saying that voting for that party will result in goodies from the public treasury -- no matter whether it's good for the country. The result is a gradual emptying of the government coffers in the form of either giving people welfare or not collecting enough taxes to cover the cost of government.

The second problem is that while a monarch would have an interest in whether his policies will make the country worse long term, elected officials have no such concern. The democratic election shortens a government's vision to the length of an election cycle. If the term is 4 years, then the policies put into place only have to work for that timeframe. That makes it possible to do all kinds of stupid things that any fool could see will create huge liabilities -- because those liabilities will not be seen for 20 years, long after the people putting those policies into force have retired. Can't happen as easily in a monarchy -- if the policies make the government likely to collapse, it also makes it likely that our monarch won't be able to pass his country on to his children or that a revolution will replace him. Thus national survival directly helps him and his children.

Anonymous

17

Anonymous Fri 06 Apr 2012 23:29:00 No.101601 Report

Quoted By:

>>16 you've only made an argument (a valid one) against rep dem not direct dem as election cycles, nay, elections are only relevant to the former. what about direct dem, isn't the survival of a population in the best interests of the same population?

Anonymous

18

Anonymous Sat 07 Apr 2012 00:44:00 No.101602 Report

Quoted By:

There are so many other factors to consider when examining whether or not a monarch is a good idea, it's not just a numbers game. For example, give one personal absolute power and tell them that they're greatest and chosen by God and give their ego as much fellatio as possible and they'll most likely turn out to be a legendary piece of shit. Just examine past and present absolute rulers for a myriad for examples. There's so much more to consider, like corrupt advisers and all sorts of other shit.

Patrik Berglund Jersey

19

Patrik Berglund Jersey Sat 07 Apr 2012 10:56:00 No.101609 Report

Quoted By:

Synonymous

20

Synonymous Sat 07 Apr 2012 18:27:00 No.101613 Report

Quoted By:

>>14
Problem with a large influx of Ideas is something called Noise. 3+ million people generate ideas... a good percent of them will not be valid and many will be similar enough to be called echoes. In a Monarchy, the Monarch simply chooses to make the decision themselves, outsource for ideas and decide on that, or decide that the decision is unimportant and dismisses it...

Centralization of power does have the value of expediency.

Anonymous

21

Anonymous Mon 09 Apr 2012 18:11:00 No.101644 Report

Quoted By:

>>17

Well, the problem with that is that we aren't the borg. We don't really have a collective, we have individuals. And what that means is that there's no collective interest, just individuals. If you have a society where the majority of people are poor and and few people are rich, they'll vote to confiscate the rich man's money and give it to themselves (the same phenomena is why welfare benefits keep going up). People will likewise try to decriminalize activities they like reguardless of the affect such activity has on the rest of society. Drugs would be legal, even though it's had a dreadful affect on the health of the nation. Pot smoking contains the same chemicals as chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes dipped in ammonia, and destroys work ethics. Opiates literally destroyed the productive capacity of China in the last century, leading to them being first divided up among European powers and then conquered by Japan. But if the people like drugs, drugs will be legal.

Another problem that's never addressed is the problem of people simply not understanding the issues that they're asked to decide on. Forgein policy or military issues would be big, but equally as large is the problem of deciding on business problems. Or education for that matter -- there are a ton of problems that require a lot of expertise to deal with, but direct democracy guarentees that the people deciding won't know enough to really make a rational decision.

Expediency also has its benefits as there are many issues that must be decided fairly quickly. The world is a lot faster than it was in 1787, or even 1987, so the need to decide on policy quickly and decisively is pretty clear. By the time the democracy has an election on the notion of a new transport hub the other party may have gotten another deal elsewhere. I've seen this exact thing at the local level. my city could have been a cargo-hub for Chinese goods. Woulda given the city a lot of jobs. Unfortunately by the time the elected officials began to deal with the problem, the ship sailed. Then they lost out on the jobs from the hub.

Anonymous

22

Anonymous Sat 28 Sep 2013 10:17:00 No.109281 Report

Quoted By:

Indian court allows 'none of the above' choice to voters

INDIA'S Supreme Court recognised the right of voters to reject all candidates polls, in a move seen as a key reform ahead of general elections due next year.

A bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam asked the election commission to change electronic voting machine ballots to give voters a choice of "none of the above".

"Democracy is all about choices and voters will be empowered by this right of negative voting," he said, ruling on a petition by the non-profit People's Union for Civil Liberties. Until now, voters had no rights to reject candidates despite demands from activists to create such a provision. - AFP.

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[1333054030] This Democracy thing