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Comment by FrankyHollywood | Hacker News Reader

"The only two benefits of democracy..."

In my opinion the one major benefit of democracy over all other forms is that a terrible leader can be voted away within 4 years. It's a political system with garbage collection :)

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Potentially even more important: a leader (terrible or otherwise) who loses power does not have to fear being murdered by his successor, and can hope to regain power. Thus, they have a much smaller incentive to use desparate (i.e. violent) methods to stay in power.

That's why the true test of a country's switch to democracy are not the first democratic elections, but the first democratic change of power.

If only it worked that way.

Under democracy you optimize for just a single metric - popularity. If leader is terrible and popular no garbage collection will occur.

Rise of populism is inherently built into nature of democracy itself.

I mean this is essentially how it works now but it didn't have to end up this way in the US. As-written we actually have a very nice electoral college where the people don't directly elect the president but instead choose someone (hopefully?) qualified to evaluate the candidates and vote on their behalf. And the states have the freedom to impose requirements on the elector nomination process so you get qualified people.

But a consequence of the states being able to independently decide how those electors are chosen lead to every state basically having a law that says that "you vote for the candidate instead of the elector, and the elector's don't actually matter and must follow the popular vote."

I really dislike the system as it exists now because the people directly electing 2/3 of the government in a checks and balances system kinda ruins the whole thing.

But we all know what happens with over-aggressive garbage collection: lost data, errors, cache misses, and lots of wasted cycles.

The term limit on the Presidency was a mistake.

It's not that easy to vote out a leader in some countries because the leaders control the state machinery. They present an illusion of free and fair elections but use their entrenched power to influence the vote through bribery, disenfranchisement by making people believe their vote doesn't count among other sinister tactics.

If terrible leaders could be voted away there would be no politicians in power.

If we go on a tangent and debate leadership, I agree that the current crop of leadership examples are pretty bleak around the world. What makes a good political leader? Are there examples in the past of objectively good leaders? Is it always at the expense of the neighbouring tribe and what happens when your hood is planet-scale?

What if there aren't any terrible leaders per se, just that none of the leaders feel 'right'? What if the leaders that replace them in the next election cycle also lack voter confidence?

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