Any feasible alternatives to democracy?

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Socialism

Democracy with a good deal of socialism is probably as good as it will get. This will never happen. Somehow a large portion of the US calls themselves Christians while absolutely refusing to share anything the have with others.

Anyways...

The main problem with Democracy and a mostly free market is over time wealth and power have a tendency to all gravitate to a handful of people. You can see this in the US right now. When the majority of the country says they want their broken healthcare system fixed and a large number of unions and businesses are asking for a overhaul so they can compete with other countries and all you get is 8 months of nothing, you know there is a major issue.

Yucch!

ruveyn

the sollution is that we'll either kill ourselves, or we'll finally allow the A.I. to ascend and govern us with intelligence.

This is one of the key problems I've thought of as well.

I'm talking in very general terms here, and this is basically just what I see, but a lot of people seem to be either the rich who would oppose socialism because they don't want to share, or the sections of the poor who continue to aid the rich because they believe that one day they will win the lottery or something and will become rich themselves. Then there's that age-old argument that the rich use to justify inequality: the belief that the poor have no money because of laziness. When my friend (who is middle-class bordering on rich) said this to me, I asked him if he thought Paris Hilton deserves a living more than I do (he replied that they should bring in a 60% "stupidity tax" for the likes of Paris Hilton. I'm sure this would be unenforcable and would probably be classed as discrimination, but hey).

I guess my point is that a lot of people wouldn't willingly accept socialism (largely because of the bad press the very word "socialism" receives) even though it probably wouldn't be too difficult to avoid a lot of the problems faced by the former USSR (my friend's main argument against socialism is that "communist cars are crap". I think he's confusing correlation and causation, but when I said this, he didn't know what I was on about).

I suppose this means that we need to fix the reputation of socialism, or just impose it on the people until they notice it's actually quite good. The second option doesn't sound right to me, so on second thoughts, it's probably a new attitude that is needed, as opposed to a new system.

It's tempting to think that because our society is more technologically advanced than it's ever been it must be more politically advanced than it's ever been too. Maybe it isn't, who knows? Democracy clearly has its flaws, but I think it could be improved by removing voting rights from women. Seriously, a woman could watch two guys having a debate, and it wouldn't matter what either of them said, she'd go for the guy with the nicest teeth.

It would mean that gina will never be able to vote beside her intelligent and toughfull message just above yours... What a shame.

Last edited by Tollorin on 27 Oct 2009, 1:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Regardless of whether or not the first part is true, the second part is flawed. Women clearly show longstanding political propensities based upon their age. Usually younger women are liberal and older women are conservative, so if the matter were teeth, I would think that would be ridiculous. The best argument I can see is that women are more psychologically biased to be risk-averse, which causes them to vote for bad governmental policies that men would tend not to vote for, and even then you would only make this argument if you were a conservative or libertarian as the policies women want seem to be those that increase the size of government to provide more services to the populace. (and note, I think this is just on average, not to say every woman did this, and I think this argument was made by John Lott's book Freedomnomics and that the facts I cite are in there as well, so it is not as if I am so creative to originate this argument... at least if my memory is working well)

Isn't Democracy an incredibly vague term? It has meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people, I mean its doubtful we today would look at Greek democracy as particularly representative of the system as a whole in today’s world. What I’m getting at is that you maybe asking for an external solution to an internal problem: We don’t need to look that far out.

An elective republic where courts and a strong executive balance the "will of the people, at this instant in time" is about as good as it gets. But without the rule of law, any government will be bad.

The fundamental flaw in a pure warm-body democracy is people are easily stampeded. This is seen in the referendum system many states in the US. People make up new rules, pass them, then the courts have to strike them down because they violate basics rights. Repeat.

We're working on that

I prefer the thought of a benevolent dictatorship. It's been shown in past monarchies that a benevolent king/queen/emperor/pharoah/whatever you want to call it, can easily bring about a "golden" age for that country and fix a great many things while promoting a great deal of prosperity. The downside being that a malevolent leader in the same position can cause just as many opposite things.

Basically, if you could pick a Queen Elizabeth, or King Arthur, or Ramses I, or Alfred the Great, or Emporer Zhu Yuanzhang, then you'd be fine and dandy and could make one helluva nice place to live.

Then again, you could get a Hitler or Queen Mary or Pharoah Khufu.

bear in mind how it was Queen Elizabeth's throne was established.....the old man wasn't exactly the people's king.

The folks in Washington are working on imposing it seems as well.

As for the people who want a dictator, how would you feel if George W Bush or Richard Nixon were presidents for life? How do you think these folks in Washington would act if they didn't have to answer to the people?

The US Republic was created at a time when people living thousands of miles from the seat of power couldn't express their wishes in anything less than months, due to the delays in the communication technology of the time. (Ie. horses over very poor roads, or ships.) Most people didn't travel more than 30 miles in their entire lifetimes. A Congressional district was very uniform in political makeup.

In today's world, a single district has little homogeneity, and I can say my "representative" has never represented my political views, no matter where I've lived. I would propose that representation be decoupled from geography. Instead, allow each citizen to appoint a proxy to vote on his behalf, much in the way that corporations and large not-for-profits (including AAA auto insurance and the NRA) work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_representation
http://www.directrep.org/

What is bad about absolute rule is when it's hereditary, or based on the guy who kills the most people or is the best military leader. The first case leads to a moron leading the country because Daddy was important (George W. Bush), the second leads to a psychopath/sociopath running things, I'd say Hitler is the most significant example of a pure sociopath as unquestioned god-king.

If there was a fraternity of geniuses running things, and entry was determined by some form of intelligence test (although it would need to be far superior to the modern IQ test, or maybe a multiple test system could work), AND the leaders picked their successors like during the time of the Five Good Emperors, a benevolent dictatorship could work. The thing is, we'd need to identify the smart kids early, maybe around puberty, and send them to special schools to prepare them for their future responsibilities. Using the Davidson Academy of Nevada standard, which I think is the top tenth of one percent, would provide us with more than enough people to run the system once it was established.

I think that proper education in the correct setting, along with proper parenting, is vital to making sure the system doesn't take a bad turn. If a genius grows up in an abusive family, and/or is harassed at school, he is likely to drop out of society. Some geniuses are wanderers, or hermits; others are resigned to living on welfare. Some become serial killers. I can't think of a serial killer off the top of my head who had a high IQ, maybe Ted Bundy. There are killers who were never caught, and they may have been geniuses. The Leopold and Loeb case in the early 1920s was two genius teen boys who had a homosexual affair who decided they were smart enough to commit the perfect murder. It was an intellectual exercise.

Anyway, proper training of genius people to create and maintain a fraternity of the educated and smart who would rule would be the best way to go. I'm thinking of something like the group of scientists in Asimov's Foundation novels who preserve technology after the collapse of a future civilization, or maybe something like a monastic order of geniuses.

Oh, and the people in Washington DON'T answer to the people. Robert Byrd has served in his seat since the 1950s. Strom Thurmond served for 50 years. 93% of Congress is reelected, year in and year out. The remaining 7% determines the political leanings of Congress. But most reps get elected for decades on end, making a de facto life term.