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Comment by shingen | Hacker News Reader

Constitutional Republic yes, Democracy no.

Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom.

America and many other systems have long since proven that freedom through constitutional protections with representative government does flourish. Those systems specifically flourish by protecting the weak from the powerful, the minority from the majority. The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument. The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.

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The 'people aren't smart enough' is a fascist, asinine argument.
People are plenty smart, it's just that democracy encourage the worst kind of decision making.

The only time I see that used, is when someone has a complex to dominate others.*

I prefer that you answer with substance, not accusation of having a domination complex.

What about Peter Thiel wanting to make a sea-based libertarian country that doesn't have a democracy because people arn't smart enough to keep it libertarian? (Granted, they could leave by relocating somewhere else, but that is true of most countries anyways.)

Not true. Immigration laws are a huge barrier, an insurmountable one for some.

the seasteading institute is not only for libertarian countries. The point is to enable experimentation and competition in governments. One group of seasteadders can create a commune, one a voluntary society, one can create a dictatorship...

Come visit Weaselia for the climate, stay because we didn't say you could leave[1].

[1]Weaselia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weasel Brand sweatshops.

Anytime someone lays out an argument by stating that some other group of people isn't intelligent enough to self govern, you should be suspicious of the character and intentions of the person making that argument.

Whether that applies to Thiel or not I have no clue, I haven't seen all his statement on the libertarian colony proposal (I've just seen brief discussions on it).

If, the 3pt14159 was referring to seasteading http://www.seasteading.org

Then the entire purpose is to try and live in the absence of government through voluntary cooperation and nonaggression. It's unfortunate that an experiment like this cannot take place on land - no government will ever voluntarily cede control of land & people that it does not own.

In general the theory is that current government functions can be better handled by the market. That is, police and justice can be better served when they are enforced through voluntary contracts. For instance, the war on drugs, abusive police, the TSA, and all sorts of other detrimental policies will be more difficult to maintain when the people are your customers.

In reality, "a customer" is whoever pays the most money for something you are selling. In the modern world, this would be corporations and rich individuals, not "the people".

The rest is left as an exercise to the reader.

> In reality, "a customer" is whoever pays the most money for something you are selling. In the modern world, this would be corporations and rich individuals, not "the people".

If this were true, corporations and rich individuals would own everything. They don't. Also, if it were true, nobody but corporations and rich individuals would be able to buy anything. Are you having trouble buying groceries because corporations and rich individuals have snapped them all up?

The correct definition of "customer" is "anyone who pays any price for what you are selling, that you are willing to sell it for". As long as the item is worth less to you and more to the customer than a price you can both agree on, the transaction is a mutual gain for both of you.

In a true free market, if there are no such customers--because what you're selling isn't worth enough to any of them to pay a price you are willing to accept--then you go out of business. Since in such a market you can't force anyone to buy your product--they only will if it's worth more to them than what they pay--you can only stay in business by providing mutual gain. That principle would apply just as well to services like law enforcement, if they were provided in a true free market.

> If this were true, corporations and rich individuals would own everything. They don't.

Uh, there is very little they don't own or control, to be honest. Even if they didn't, assuming the current trend of privatizing even the most essential services continues, it will be the case in just a couple of decades.

> Are you having trouble buying groceries because corporations and rich individuals have snapped them all up?

Am I having trouble buying some groceries, because rich people have pushed prices so high, or in some cases because corporations buy all of them in order to resell them in a different, more expensive form? Why, yes. But I digress.

> In a true free market, if there are no such customers--because what you're selling isn't worth enough to any of them to pay a price you are willing to accept--then you go out of business.

Do you seriously think a service like TSA is not useful to any corporation? Like franchise shops in airport lounges selling bottles of water at three times the market price...

Also, your reasoning completely ignores forces, like advertising, which are used to create artificial demand. They would still exist in a free market, probably even more so (because competition would be even harder).

> That principle would apply just as well to services like law enforcement, if they were provided in a true free market.

Rich people would enjoy premium protection at premium prices, and poor people would receive little or no protection because they cannot afford more. Wouldn't that be fun, eh? Reminds me of the US healthcare market, that other miracle of the Free Market.

Do you really think the US healthcare market is a shining example of the Free Market Gone Wrong? The US health system is anything but free market, the government has its influence at every level. To start off with, let's pick on a topic often picked on here, patents: http://www.dklevine.com/papers/imbookfinal09.pdf After you've read that, let's note that I can't as a chemical manufacturer produce any drug I want at any quantity I want and sell it, and as a consumer I can't buy any drug I want even out-of-country, where in a free market I could do both these things. People die waiting for new drugs or procedures to go through the process, it's not uncommon for people to go out of country to a US-trained doctor to have the procedure/treatment because it's illegal in the US. Some free market we have.

People die because they cannot afford insurance. Some people will never be able to afford any insurance because the price they can pay will always be zero.

Thinking everything in life can be self-regulated by market forces is madness. What next, should we buy and sell the right to vote? The right to pray? Why not the right of property itself? Or the right to live?

Hold on, you didn't address my point. Do you really think the US system is an example of the free market naturally at work and at failure? Given that you've responded can I assume you read the linked PDF so that we have a broader base of shared context?

You seem to be putting words into my mouth; I may indeed believe that for a world where market forces are the only forces, that world is a better one than our current world, but I don't see how you would arrive at that from my above comment alone. There are plenty of people who see the obvious problems that for instance patents in the health industry cause yet don't want to remove all regulation or government influence in the industry. For my own views of the FDA specifically, I think it's important to have an agency whose word the public can trust that a particular drug or whatever is "safe". But such an agency doesn't have to be public, and in any case its power should closer resemble the ESRB's power rather than the FDA's current power (which unless I missed something over the past decade has included the power to arrest anyone at gunpoint who tries to sell an orange on the premise that it prevents a disease like scurvy).

Since you did ask it, this rhetorical question does have an interesting answer you're probably not aware of:

> What next, should we buy and sell the right to vote?

This seems to be working pretty well for corporations. Extrapolated to a government leads to neocameralism: http://distributedrepublic.net/archives/2008/12/18/rampant-m...

I came here to say almost precisely this.

However, I do think it's true that people aren't smart enough for democracy, and that's a part of why we need a constitutional republic instead. Is there something wrong with that line of argumentation?

Its not that they are too smart or not, it is that far too many are too greedy or too lazy.

In a system where people are protected from one other by individual rights, someone being too lazy or too greedy (if that is even possible) can only hurt themself.

How can your laziness or greed affect me?

Here's what's logically wrong with that line of argument:

Smart / dumb are relative scales, so there will always be smarter, and dumber, no matter what you do. If you filled a society with what we currently define as genius level intellects, there would be the equivalent to dumb people amongst them - the dumb people would have 145 IQ's and the smart people would have 180 IQ's --- you get the idea.

Majority rules will always allow one group to optionally eat the other, and violate the rights of the minority. Whether that minority is the dumber 49% or the smarter 49%, either scenario is equally morally reprehensible.

Peikoff would say: think in extrapolated principles. Look up the first serious conversations Peikoff had with Rand (she couldn't get him to think in principles). Whether you're dealing with smart people with 250 IQ's, and 'dumb' people with 160 IQ's, the smart people might decide they know what's best for the 'dumb' people (and proceed to violate their liberty). The principle remains whether you're dealing with 70 IQ's and 160 IQ's or much higher scales of intellect.

Do we know each other? :-) I'm going to just take for granted in this response the common ground we obviously have.

FYI, I definitely think "people are not smart enough for democracy" is the wrong way to make the argument, because it misses the point; democracy is not the ideal to be striving for. But I'm not sure that it's wrong per se.

I usually take "dumb" and "smart" to really mean "ignorant" and "not ignorant" in a certain context. (Mabye I should not take them to mean that, but anyway.)

So, a democracy of people who were truly not ignorant about principles of government--i.e., they fully support individual rights--would work fine. Conversely, the reason democracy does not work is because people in general are ignorant of the proper principles of government and would trample individual rights.

I guess there is a key difference between the purpose of the government and the mechanism. Democracy can be thought of as either. In the former case, it's clearly wrong. In the latter case, it's just dangerous and suboptimal.

However, I do think it's true that people aren't smart enough for democracy

What does that even mean?

The majority of the people are not to be trusted with judging how to run their country, so we have to put intermediaries and dilute the majority's will?

batista, I think you have a penchant for arguing with me :-)

I think the right way to go is a constitutional republic, in which the "way the country is run" is strictly defined ahead of time. Then, the elected representatives have to act within those strict parameters. You could call the constitution an "intermediary that dilutes the majority's will" if you want.

I certainly belive that individual rights have to be protected from the will of the majority. Or, the minorities have to be protected from the will of the majority.

Keep in mind that everyone is part of a minority sometimes, and everyone is part of a majority sometimes. Depends on the issue.

Working forwards we see that more 'minorities', such as slaves, women, and homosexuals have had their rights protected over time.

So working backwards you can see that the system failed to protect the rights of minorities.

So working backwards you can see that the system failed to protect the rights of minorities.

I think you mean that it failed to protect the rights of some minorities.

But even at that, the system provided a framework through which those deficiencies could be address, while at the same time minimizing "leakage": as much as I complain, it appears that we've gained a lot more in human/civil rights than we've lost over that time.

How is this different from America or most other modern democracies?

"Democracy" just means "majority rule." In a democracy, the majority can trample the rights of the minorities. In a constitutional republic, those rights are protected by a constitution that is very difficult to amend.

America today is somewhere between a true democracy and a true constitutional republic. Officially, it is a constitutional republic, and most of the key individual rights are protected (free speech, etc.). Unfortunately, there is no separation of state and economy, and your wealth can (and is) seized arbitrarily.

There is also a very large spate of regulations that severely curtail your proper right to act as long as you don't violate the rights of others.

So basically, the mechanism of a constitutional republic still exists in America, but its actual purpose has been sundered.

This split between "democracy" and "constitutional republic" is something being pushed more and more, but it's really a fantasy peddled by some US-based politicos with vested interests in devaluing the concept of democracy and making you accept the fact that you should be happy without it.

A "constitutional republic" is something defined by a set of laws with certain specific elements in common: having a constitution and being a republic (which is also quite a loose term, used to define "anything that is not a monarchy" -- Iran is also a constitutional republic, for example, albeit a theocratic one).

A "democracy" is not a comparable entity. Can you please point out any country who defines itself, in official terms, as a "Democracy"? Even classic Athens didn't call itself such a thing. This is because democracy is not a set of laws: it's a declaration of principles, an abstract utopia of where your laws should come from (i.e. "the people"), traditionally associated with some sort of voting system. On the formal level, there is no clear definition of a complete form of government called a "democracy"; it's commonly assumed such a thing involves some sort of voting rights (better if universal), but that's about it. The term is used to indicate the utopic state where government is carried out "by the people" in its totality. There has been no such perfect government throughout history and probably there never will be, but it's an utopia from which real forms of government can find justification and inspiration.

You can compare a "constitutional republic" to a "constitutional monarchy" or an "absolute monarchy": they are all specific forms of government with very specific common formal traits. A "democracy" is a completely different concept. You live in a constitutional republic based on democratic principles, i.e. a democracy... albeit a flawed one, like all of them are. You should strive to make your republic as genuinely democratic as possible, not renounce your rights "because after all we've never been a democracy".

I know more history than the average person, and I totally, utterly disagree with you.

From what I understand, the US Founding Fathers explicitly wanted to avoid a democracy, which was seen as an unjust system that punished Socrates and was associated with the downfall of Rome (at one point, the Roman emperors apparently had to essentially feed the populace in order to maintain enough popularity to stay emperor, bankrupting the state).

Rather, they wanted a system that protected individual rights. You know, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That is explicitly opposed to a system of rule by the majority or rule by the people.

The US was not supposed to be a democracy.

And regardless of the historical details, why would I want to be ruled by the majority? I want to rule myself, and I have no desire to rule others. That's the only morally proper attitude.

Regardless of what they were trying to do, the founding fathers created a democratic system -- who is "we the people", if not literally the "demos" ?

Are laws not written in an assembly by majority vote?

Are you not electing representatives by majority vote?

And this has always been the case in the US system.

See my other post here about the different types of majority and how they can represent different things and/or failing at representing the will of the demos. The fact that the founding fathers were trying to avoid the worst elements of democracy doesn't mean they didn't want a democracy at all; if that was the case, they'd have just nominated a new King and be done with it. No, they were establishing a government by "we the people", which is the exact definition of a democracy. Whether or not they misused the term to indicate the "tyranny of majority", which is a separate concept, does not mean that we should keep misusing it in modern scientific and political debate.

batista, I think you have a penchant for arguing with me :-)

Hah, I didn't even notice the name, was just urged to argue!!! ;-)

Keep in mind that everyone is part of a minority sometimes, and everyone is part of a majority sometimes. Depends on the issue.

Yeah, that's what I commented just now above. You have to allow for protections to the minorities for this very reason, but not for all individual rights. As a farfetched, but real example, not for, say, NAMBLA rights.

Democracy isn't desirable. Mob rule is a terrible system of government. Democracy != voting; Democracy != freedom.

Really? And who said democracy == mob rule?

Mob is a weasel term, to imply "people when take decisions as a group are inherently bad".

Well, people taking decisions as a whole has been quite nice when it happened and while it lasted (or was allowed to last). I'm thinking the Athenian Democracy, various communes, etc.

And it's not like any other system of government is better. Besides true democracy, everything else is tyranny, including representational democracy. Democracy means "the people should be governed exactly how the majority of them likes to". No bait and switch representation, no BS.

Careful: democracy is not about majority, but rather (literally) "government by the people"; there is quite a difference. There are various types of "majority", and all of them fail at fully representing "the people" as a whole, unless it's a 100% majority where nobody abstains (and even then, one would have to argue about who was allowed to vote and how).

This is why any robust democratic system will have, on some subjects, "qualified" majorities (where the threshold is set much higher than 51%, or abstained votes are counted against, etc etc) or "relative" majorities (where the most popular option wins, even when it doesn't represent at least 50% of the votes) as well as the "simple" majority (usually 50% + 1 or 51% of the expressed votes). They're different ways of really interpreting "the will of the people" on different subjects. A proper democratic system recognises the importance of respecting minorities and the volatility (and gullibility) of popular sentiment, and safeguards itself against wrong decisions. Many fascist governments were democratically elected and survived re-election, but they were not democratic in nature.

If the majority of synapses in your brain should decide tomorrow that shooting yourself in the foot is a good idea, despite "a small but vocal minority opposed to the plan" (i.e. your foot), that doesn't mean that it'd be in your real interest to do so.

Athenian democracy was subject to bouts of mob rule - note the treasurer incidents. Courts were barbaric, and really amounted to popularity votes as jurors had little legal oversight. At the assembly level, for their credit, the criteria for citizenship required military training and voting for war generally meant you had to actually do the fighting - hence the level of peace.

Mobs form when there is no responsibility for their vote or actions. That's why in unrestrained democracies, the mob majority can disenfranchise the minority so easily and quickly.

> Democracy means "the people should be governed exactly how the majority of them likes to". No bait and switch representation, no BS.

Direct democracy without constitutional checks is tyranny. The majority would just vote the minority into slavery. This is such an obvious consequence of what it seems you're advocating that I must be misunderstanding you.

Constitutional Republic yes

This is a form of Democracy.

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