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thinkinginpictures
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30 Jun 2021, 3:25 pm

Before you write a reply, please do yourself and everyone else in this thread a FAVOR and read this Original Post first.

- Every word of it, thank you very much.
---

Argumentum ad Populum:
Believing that the majority is always or mostly right about something.

The majority may be right or wrong, but not for the reason they are the majority.

For example, if you go to a Flat Earth Conference, the majority may likely believe in a flat earth.
They are wrong, regardless of the majority vote.

Same thing with democracy. The majority don't always know what is best for society, because what is best for society depends on a lot of things, at which scientists are better equipped at answering - than laypeople.

You'd probably also prefer a doctor treating your illness, than the carpenter or the bum on the street.
Same thing applies to running a government and an entire nation.

However, if we limit the right to vote for whatever reasons, this will be abused as an intimidation strategy like they do in Putin's Russia where any strong opposition leader is suddenly being sentenced to jail for just about anything, and therefore cannot run for president. It's being abused by Putin and his supporters to make sure he'll never face a strong opposition to his regime.

If we abolish democracy altogether and have aristocracy or meritocracy instead, it will only make things worse, because you're not solving the issue of stupid or unenlightened people getting in position of power.

Just because you're born to a seat in the "Upper House/Chamber" doesn't make you qualified for this job.

With meritocracy, it's all about money, but you can inherit all your money and get an advantage over someone who is smarter than you, but poorer and therefore gets no chance to challenge you.

Just because you're rich, it doesn't make you smarter or better qualified for the job than anyone else.
Besides, a just society must be judged on many, many other criteria than who's the best at earning money.

Trump may be good a business, but that certainly isn't the best way to run a government.

Autocracy has got the same issue as both democracy, aristocracy and meritocracy: The lack of a guarantee that the despot/autocrat is well-educated and enlightened - and even if the despot is smart and well-educated, there's no guarantee that the despot will not be selfish and forget all about the well-being of the general population.

Utilitarianism must be the moral value of any good society on which everything else rests, including its rule of government.

From a Utilitarian perspective, a democracy where EVERYBODY (including prisoners, disabled, poor and even the homeless) are guaranteed a vote, is going to keep those in government/power in check and over time (with fluctuations) increase the welfare of its citizens, because that is what most citizens would benefit from.

Besides, even if you allow convicted criminals a vote, how is this going to threaten society? If it's for everyone to see the crimes and convictions of the individual running for office, how's that possibly posing a threat to society?

Even if the majority may think it is a good idea to have a convicted murderer and drug dealing autocrat rule by meritocratic means and create a de-facto aristocracy of the wealthiest citizens, if it stays a TRUE democracy nonetheless, the majority will one day shift towards a new trend of equality, welfare and human rights.

Once you abolish democracy there is no going back.

Besides, if the people are foolish enough to vote for a convicted drug dealing murderer going to change the democracy into a dictatorship, the people deserves no better. They KNOW what will happen.

If the people is smart enough to NOT vote for that convicted criminal, the murderer/drug dealer/whatever isn't going to pose any threat to society, and thus it won't be necessary to limit his/her right to vote or running for office anyway.

What are you afraid of?

---

Is my idea or theory of democracy foolish?



Fnord
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30 Jun 2021, 3:30 pm

Whatever ... this is all Political Science 101 stuff, right out of the back of the book.  So what?

None of it proves anything.


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Tomatoes
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01 Jul 2021, 8:40 pm

The people of Libya under Gaddafi did not need democracy.

Democracy is not a system whose purpose is to optimize society. Instead, it's a method to get the consent of the majority of the population so that the authority can exert real power upon the minorities. That power may be beneficial, or detrimental, depending on the strategies used and the promoted moral values.

Most people, when they get comfortable, do not want to take risks. If the purpose of democracy is to make people comfortable, then the voters will vote for the candidates who offer predictable outcomes. You can use other systems than democracy to achieve the same effect.

Too much government makes democracy a morality system instead of a political system. And within a morality system, it does not make any difference for with political party you vote for. The outcome will always be the same. It takes an outsider to draw the cards, a politician with some Aces up his sleeve, whose first letters of his last name is 'Tru', and the last part is not 'deau'. Mmmmm...


Remove corruption, blackmail, mental instability and cluelessness, then democracy will stop being foolish.



Jiheisho
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01 Jul 2021, 8:53 pm

Most officials are voted into office with a minority vote--most people don't vote.

Also, we elect people to govern. This is why we have laws that protect minorities and don't simply act to maximize the benefits of the majority.

I think your idea is not really describing democracy in the way it works.



Tomatoes
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01 Jul 2021, 9:37 pm

Jiheisho] wrote:
Also, we elect people to govern. This is why we have laws that protect minorities and don't simply act to maximize the benefits of the majority.


Yes, that's what I said about the consent. About the laws relating to minorities, that's also what I said. But I never talked about 'maximizing the benefits of the majority'. I talked about the majority being comfortable (not as independent of fortune, more as food/entertainment). Maximizing the benefits, it's optimizing for some variables. But with so many variables and so many people, it will never be done (unless eugenism and transhumanism and the flattening of culture). Probable that the main purpose of democracy is to allow some homogeneity of comfort and liberties in a multicultural/multiethnic industrial/postindustrial scenario.

Jiheisho wrote:
I think your idea is not really describing democracy in the way it works.


You may be right. I was thinking about how democracy seems to work in Quebec/Canada.

But I know that America is not a democracy. It is a representative republic.



thinkinginpictures
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02 Jul 2021, 7:10 am

Jiheisho wrote:
most people don't vote.


In most Scandinavian countries, the percentage of the population exercising their right to vote, is quite high - as high as 90 %.

If the people you elect to govern can be just about anyone, and not just an elite class - then you have democracy.

Democracy can be many things. It just means rule of the people (or rule of the mob, it depends on the perspective).
In ancient Greece where they invented democracy, it also didn't mean a vote to anyone. It meant a vote to any free male above the age of 30. This did not include slaves, women or the poor.

If they could impose such harsh restrictions on democracy and still be able to call it a democracy/rule of the people, then what's wrong with having anyone - including the poor, have a say in who runs the government?



carlos55
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02 Jul 2021, 7:39 am

An alternative system may be like the movie “starship troopers” where only “citizens” can vote.

To be a citizen you have to serve in some way usually in the military, or maybe for women / disabled people in civil society maybe?

Some say it leads to a higher caliber of decision making, others it creates a two tier society that excludes people.

Similar to China where you have to join the communist party to vote for decisions I believe.


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naturalplastic
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02 Jul 2021, 10:48 am

The idea that "more than half of the population is right more than half of the time" is indeed unproven speculation.

Got any better ideas?

Monarchy served the human race for thousands of years. So it has a long proven track record.

But lately even monarchy has let countries down. And I mean REAL monarchy. Absolute power being handed down through inheritance. Not namby pamby modern monarchy like they have in Japan, and the UK (republics pretending to be monarchies for show). I mean the real deal like they had in France in 1789, and in Russia up to 1917, and in Iran under the Shah.

The two most high profile absolute monarchies in the present day world are Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. And both are proving to be disasterous for their people.



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02 Jul 2021, 11:01 am

carlos55 wrote:
An alternative system may be like the movie “starship troopers” where only “citizens” can vote.

To be a citizen you have to serve in some way usually in the military, or maybe for women / disabled people in civil society maybe?

Some say it leads to a higher caliber of decision making, others it creates a two tier society that excludes people.

Similar to China where you have to join the communist party to vote for decisions I believe.


Prior to the global fall of Communism all of the Communist Bloc countries were run like China is now. They were run by their respective Communist Parties (about five percent of the population of each country) who acted as an elite to "guide society" towards the future utopia.

However pre Industrial societies that dabbled in democracy (the ancient Greeks, Renaissance Italy, and colonial America) also had voting limited to a property owning elite minority. With the Greeks citizenship itself was limited to a minority.



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02 Jul 2021, 12:02 pm

Tomatoes wrote:
But I know that America is not a democracy. It is a representative republic.


Wrong. Oligarchy.


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02 Jul 2021, 12:27 pm

Aspiegaming wrote:
Tomatoes wrote:
But I know that America is not a democracy. It is a representative republic.


Wrong. Oligarchy.

It can be both. Republics can be nice, they just have an overwhelming tendency to favor those who already have power--political or otherwise.

Its part of the mainstream technocratic political mindset that the public needs to be insulated from decision-making because they are too stupid. Rather, we are meant to accept a 'professional' political class to be qualified to make the decisions for us. This benefits the wealthy, as it is easier to buy the vote of one person as opposed to the votes of a million.


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02 Jul 2021, 2:24 pm

An erzatz democracy like we have today is an even worse idea.



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02 Jul 2021, 2:26 pm

Aspiegaming wrote:
Tomatoes wrote:
But I know that America is not a democracy. It is a representative republic.


Wrong. Oligarchy.

We are a constitutional republic on paper, but, unfortunately you're right. We are now an oligarchy.



carlos55
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02 Jul 2021, 3:21 pm

Mr Reynholm wrote:
Aspiegaming wrote:
Tomatoes wrote:
But I know that America is not a democracy. It is a representative republic.


Wrong. Oligarchy.

We are a constitutional republic on paper, but, unfortunately you're right. We are now an oligarchy.


Unfortunatly I dont think the US is a great example of a democracy. Its been a two horse race for more than a century or more, where either party have to have several billion just to take part. This prevents any grass roots democratic party ever coming to power.

Its a system ironically closer to Iran`s where candidates are carefully vetted & selected by the system and presented to the people & called "democracy", maybe that`s partly why the US hates Iran, it sees something of itself there.


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02 Jul 2021, 3:54 pm

It is true that the idea of majority being right is a red herring. However, in a democracy, the majority being right is never the point. The point is that the majority of people in a nation CONSENT to the laws they vote on.

The USA is not strictly speaking a democracy. It is more/less Democratic at the state level, but not federally. State and Fed governments follow a republican model that has more/less democratically elected REPRESENTATIVES that craft laws and provide leadership. The same concept as a democracy—the majority of people vote their CONSENT to be ruled by those they trust to make decisions on their behalf.

What people in the USA get beleaguered about is that majority rule means minorities become marginalized. Minorities end up being protected, though, because the United States has separation of powers. Executive and legislative actions are always subject to judicial review, for example. Now...in recent decades we have experienced the judiciary ACTING legislatively even though it is not the proper role of the courts to do so. In the past near-century, the judiciary has favored victim classes. So even though elections end up being by majority, it has been personal grievance groups that have really driven court decisions and legislative actions, not really the majority, and it has become it’s own weird sort of ochlocracy. It’s to the level that the federal government will tell you who you have to bake cakes for whether you want to or not. I think people should be able to refuse.



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03 Jul 2021, 7:22 pm

in practice, democracy serves as vehicle to slow down change. it prevents rulers from making fast decisions, because it requires a propaganda campaign first - I mean, imagine section 1021 of the NDAA (Which allows the US Government to hold anyone it deems a terrorist in custody, without the right to a trial) without a decade of post 9/11 propaganda. ah, yeah, Obama signed that one into law.

Trump only convinced half of the population with his campaign, so everything was happening a bit too suddenly for the other half. But hey, Biden hasn't changed much, and it's okay now, now that we all got used to children in cages....


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