Interesting, I would interpret democracy as the ability for others to control my life; the ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
Interesting, I'd disagree though. Say you live in a fascist society or a feudalist society, you get absolutely no say. Democracy allows us to make decisions that influence our own life, however we must obviously respect the fact that we live in a society with other people, and they must be respected. Beyond living in a vacuum, we have no real way to ensure absolute individual freedom, however a completely democratic society is one way of reconciling the thirst for individual freedom with the necessity of cooperation with others.
>The ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
This is absolutely a valid concern, which is why I believe in a rigid groundset of rules on which all laws and rules must comply (consitutions/bill of rights) which respect the rights and liberties of individuals to ensure they have maximum freedom with respect to other individuals in society. This isn't a groundbreaking idea, but I do believe we need to re-evaluate these approaches in a modern context, as most countries were established in a time before progressivism was dominant.
I want to preserve the culture I grew up in. I want everyone to contribute to society. I want a culture where what you get is what you worked for. I don't want "diversity" or a bunch of people from other countries to move to the town I grew up in.
Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
In my mind, it would be an absolute travesty to allow the distant majority to vote for the destruction of the culture I grew up in.
Yet you have moved to California? Can you hear the irony?
>> It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
You don't have. You just have to accept other people think differently and want different things to you.
How is diversity diametrically opposed to equal opportunity and hard work? From what I can see you can have all of the above without any issues.
>Having moved to California from Iowa, I can totally understand how Californians value diversity and equality (not necessarily equal opportunity) above all else. But where I'm from, people value equal opportunity and hard work. It's very hard to see the merit in one culture, being from the other.
Can you phrase your political philosophy in terms of real proposals rather than thought-terminating cliches? When I hear the term "value" or "values", I reach for my gun.
Consider what might happen if Clinton win and more corruption scandals appear about her, or if Brexit is halted somehow. Things are getting less stable over time.
I am however not saying that a purely democratic society would eliminate all of societies ills, I'm saying it would make many of the constructs which perpetuate these sorts of problems would become non-viable.
These are hardly the only alternatives. In case you haven't noticed, the other people here aren't implicitly contrasting democracy with e.g. monarchy; they're implicitly contrasting it with anarchy (probably anarcho-capitalism).
Again, there's lots of possibilities out there. Personally I like the idea of futarchy, though it's untried. But that's not the point; the point is, there's a lot of degrees of freeom here.
In my opinion, anarcho-capitalism is merely feudalism, with some brainwashing for people to accept their fate. There's a reason some prominent anar-capitalists want to be differenciated from anarchists.
Remember, "capitalism" is an overloaded term. Sometimes it means what you describe, and sometimes it means the free market. Make sure you know what sense it's being used in in a given context, or you can't have a meaningful discussion! In the case of anarcho-capitalism, it refers to the free market. (But even though that works out in this case, you really should be wary of reasoning based on names.)
There's also a reason all anarchists want to be differentiated from ancaps ;)
Yep, but you have exact same right to control life of others, so things are balanced.
> the ability for the majority to gang up on a smaller group and impose laws which benefit the majority in lieu of the minority.
Constitution and court protects us from abuse, so don't worry about minorities in Constitutional Democracy.
Centralisation of power is the issue, it doesn't matter if that centralised power is held by governments or by large corporations, the end result is a tilting of the playing field in favour of those with the most power.
That's probably because you're thinking in terms of how things actually are, rather than in terms of vague emotions tacked onto political buzzwords. A classic mistake.