Comment by michaelkeenan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelkeenan | Hacker News Reader

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I used to believe that democracy was the best system. I believed in it as fervently and as automatically as a 16th century Spaniard might believe in Catholicism. Can you blame me? No-one in my society opposes democracy. No-one sane anyway.

In the last couple of years, I've encountered well-reasoned opposing views for the first time.

Is democracy a means to an end (good government), or an end in itself? If it's an end in itself, the argument is over. How tragic that good governance - a life-and-death-issue - is trumped by an ideal.

If democracy is the means to good government, then it might be worth reconsidering our assumptions. Growing up good Catholics, oops I mean democratic citizens, we all know that opposing ideas such as despotism have irreparable problems and are the cause of most of the death and destruction in the world. Instead of giving up, let's try fixing those problems. Perhaps the situation has changed since people first started telling each other about the succession problems of despotism. Maybe technology can change the government industry, just as it has revolutionized so many other industries.

So let's back up, and consider how to get an effective x, where x is a cup of coffee or a laptop or anything else. One way might be to get everyone to vote on what kind of x they like, and then give that to everyone. This is of course a terrible system, and not Starbucks nor Apple have that kind of system.

Much better to have competition. I'd be terrible at making coffee or a laptop, and it's best that I'm not trusted to make those things, or to choose who would be good at making them. Nor ought I to be trusted with running a country or choosing who to run it.

So, I think an ideal world might be a world of many smaller governments, each competing for consumers/citizens. Apply the creativity and efficiency of startups to the governing industry. I want a world of Singapores and Hong Kongs and Liechtensteins, where I can pick my government provider approximately the same way I pick my ISP or my employer.

Of course there are problems. So solve them! What better decrepit, corrupt, monopolizing old industry to fix than the governing industry? A Peter Thiel-funded startup is trying (http://seasteading.org).

In the last couple of years, I've encountered well-reasoned opposing views for the first time.

You didn't happen to run into one Mencius Moldbug, did you? ( http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/ ) I've been going through a similar crisis of faith.

The book that put me over the edge was "The World of Yesterday" by Stefan Zweig. He lived through the transition of Austria from monarchy to democracy. Zweig pines for the days of monarchy, when taxes were a mere 2%, inflation non existent, there was complete freedom of speech, you did not need a passport to travel between countries, and warmongering politicians were far fewer in number. People need to learn that the ability to put a piece of paper in a box once every four years is totally unrelated to personal freedom.

That's right! I was vulnerable from reading about Bryan Caplan's book about rationally ignorant voters (http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-caplan/the-myth...), and then I discovered Moldbug and he tipped me over the edge.

Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll look into it.

Democracy is neither a means to an end, or an end in itself. It's a form of government. It's not an opinion. Perhaps you meant "My opinion about democracy: is it a means to an end for me or an end to itself"

That would make more sense, but then you would not be talking about democracy, you'd be talking about your own opinion (which you're very well entitled to do)

Democracy is just a closer representation of the natural legislature of the body politic than many other forms of government. In fact, true democracies are so close that Hobbesian Law usually takes place, which is why a representative republic is much more tasty than true democracy.

BTW, there are no true democracies in the world today as far as I know. Thank goodness.

>BTW, there are no true democracies in the world today as far as I know. Thank goodness.

So what's the difference between a representative republic and a democracy? Are you actually actually saying that for a country to be democratic all government decisions would have to be made by everyone?

Yes.

The last true democracy was Athens, I believe. At least well-known true democracy.

In a representative republic, we elect people who then make decisions for us. Much better system for a lot of reasons. One reason is that crowds have a tendency to be very emotional and fickle.

The truth that no-one in mainstream politics will acknowledge is that democracy is fundamentally incompatible with a universal franchise. People can vote things for themselves out of proportion to their own contribution or risk. It's valid to wonder, say, if people who aren't net contributors to the public purse should have a say in how it's spent.

I wonder if a lot of this is simply a lack of good knowledge on what the differences are and how each system is flawed to one degree or another.

As in this thread, most people don't know the difference between a democracy and a representative republic, or why a bicameral legislature has certain values over a unicameral one.

As you point out, even in a representative republic, it becomes easily possible for representatives to compete to form voting blocks in an effort to get more resources than other voting blocks. It doesn't take very long for the system to begin eating itself.

"funadmentally incompatible" seems a little extreme to me, but I'll agree there are worrying tendencies.

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