Erdogan hands cash to supporters at polling station
youtube.com
youtube.com
I have nothing against this video as a Turkish person opposes Erdogan. Biggest notes he is handing out is like 10 USD as of today's exchange rate. It is just an image of elder person taking care of the young.
i vote for my local representative exactly because he will use tax payer money to improve my street and make sure zoning rules make my buildings more valuable.
any winner takes all system are not very good to begin with. then you have the EU (actual EU, not countries in there) which fix this but screw up separations of powers
It is true that the democratic system has failed: quality journalism died and the truth with it, the rich have a huge separate-from-society system for wealth hoarding, we have absolute mind boggingly massive monopolies across different fields, the middle classes in many countries are seriosly suffering, corporations don't give a shit for any externalities such as addiction or the environment or the truth, the young have no bright future in sight.
The answer is an actually functioning democracy with proper immune system that prevents wealth & power centralization over time, and has honest 3rd party sources of truth.
That said, he's not a dictator just because we don't like the result.
There was an election, Erdogan won it.
We can say 'he controlled the media' - maybe true - but that accusation could easily be levelled at democracies everywhere. The reality is democratic systems are flawed, like any system of human design. We cannot abstract democracy into a standard which can never be achieved. He is the democratically elected leader of Turkey, in Turkey-style democratic system. We can argue about how bad a leader he is as a separate matter!
I wanna zoom on couple of your points: 1. "democratic systems are flawed, like any system of human design" 2. "We cannot abstract democracy into a standard which can never be achieved"
What could the solution look like? A benevolent dictator, implemented an AI god, is the first obvious "solution" that comes to mind, but feels dubious, for the same obvious reasons haha. Do you have deeper thoughts about the matter?
> "...illustration of the [FAILURE] of the democratic system" i would add. handing out cash at polling stations isn't part of a strong, well functioning democracy.
You're both right. Liberal democracy fails without the right non-liberal ideological supports. Pure liberal democracy, in isolation, turns into a tyranny of the majority handing out cash and other benefits to its supporters.
The person who was elected once for representing people is bribing people to keep his power.