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Comment by boringuser2 | Hacker News Reader

The people clearly support the Iranian government.

Whether or not you or I have anything to say about that is pretty irrelevant as I am not an Iranian citizen, and you are unlikely to be one.

von Mises once said that every government is fundamentally democratic because even the most autarchic government requires the governing consent of its people. This is clearly true.

This whole "people in the West get to decide whether or not a government is valid, but also they are evil bad guys" thing is really getting old.

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This is absurd nihilism. If we change the meanings of words then any sentence can mean anything and stating "every government is democratic" is a clear example of that.

It's a metaphor meant to help you understand that the conceits with which you have been raised, namely that Democracy is a sacred system held only teneuously by a few Western states and that the narrative that there are oppressed peoples that are held hostage by their state and we must help them are geopolitical lies you've fallen for.

Really smart people frequently use these metaphors that bust unquestioned cultural mores. Comparison is a very powerful tool.

Western countries are not run on direct democracy, because it is known to fail quicker. They're representative systems.

What you are essentially talking about is mob rule (direct democracy) which is a risk for any government, but for it to really manifest in a way that threatens the state it has to fail to balance the basic needs of the people and also become out of touch with any of their strong expectations which go beyond the basic needs.

If people have low expectations and have adapted to their environment, then it's not that much of a threat. This gets further solidified by punishing anyone that goes against the state and censoring any information that is inconvenient.

Many authoritarian governments have failed to be comprehensive in handling those aspects, but increasingly the oppression and control of people is becoming perfected.

The assumption that all people everywhere have sufficient opportunity, free communication, education and numbers to successfully push back against their government and thus it is always their fault that their government exists seems like a result of overlooking the very long study of imbalances in power between people and government. You cannot leave this to an assumption as an uncontestable law, which is precisely why the United States is setup the way it is to make sure the people have power and communication in order to check the government.

> people clearly support the Iranian government

Relative to anarchy, sure. The problem with this construction is it deterministically leads to anarchy, from time to time, which is miserable not only for the people involved but also for all of their neighbours. The point of peaceful transitions of power is avoiding that interregnal anarchy.

People are stupid and thats the point.

The weste had the chance togo through a science-fueled phase which won the minds against religion and so as a CONSEQUENCE people were convinced.

Now the biggest wave is religious fundamentalism (whatever that means by the way) so people follow that as the sheeps they are.

Democracy is the best system at the exception of the others, but its not perfect and can be challenged or abused

I don't accept your premise, the idea that Democracy is particularly good or special isn't so obvious to me, but it's such a contentious discussion given that the US has armed itself to the teeth with the concept that it is democratic propagandistically that I can't belabor it.

Largely, I would caution you to regain the wisdom of the West's greatest forebears and arm yourself with the knowledge that you don't actually know very much at all.

> the US has armed itself to the teeth with the concept that it is democratic

Pure democracy turns into majoritarian, partisan anarchy. We’ve known this since Athens. But it’s forgotten by modern Americans, for whom more democracy is seen as good for its own sake, and that leads to foreign policy mistakes by our elites.

That said: countries with democratic elements have clear advantages in economic development, scientific output and tendency towards peace (as well as effective warmaking). We should want more democracy, for moral and self-interested reasons. But your narrow point, that simply promoting more democracy everywhere, all the time is counterproductive, is accurate.

I'm not happy with your explanation because I feel it demonstrates that even an ostensibly smart, reflective person isn't outside their own cultural bias.

I can disprove your conception in about a half of a second by citing the economic, social, political and technological miracle, that no democracy has even come close to replication thereof, that was ... 1930s Germany. FDR was also inspired himself by similar autarchic methods of government, and saw the US through a devastating conflict with a fierce (and even technically and strategically superior) enemy.

Then we trip the programming and conversation goes buck wild.

Suffice it to say, merely because the West is exemplary and it happens to be in the current thrall of a political order doesn't mean this political order can be credited with the Wests exemplary status.

> the economic, social, political and technological miracle, that no democracy has even come close to replication thereof, that was ... 1930s Germany

And then what happened? It’s almost a given that autocracies outperform in the short run, given a good leader.

Across history, balanced political systems have been at the core of great civilisations. In the West, but also in China (oligarchies), the Indus Valley (actual democracies) and in North America (mostly oligarchies). When strong emperors reigned, the civilisations were flashes in the pan.

I was hoping you weren't going to step on this landmine, the fallacy that literal might makes right.

The "inevitability of the defeated" is very provincial. Its tempting as you become a great sage and prognosticator simply because you can look at any historical event and say "this was a predictable nd inherently just outcome".

History was on the razor's edge as WW2 Germany blitzed through the defenses of most of Europe single-handedly. It was a feat enabled by fierce technical superiority, organizational superiority, even ideological superiority as the people were souped up on national identity. The autarchic form of government in play was a powerful cocktail that enabled Germany to accomplish outsize things in a very short period of time. A similar argument can be made for FDR"s America, as a lesser for would have been defeated at Pearl Harbor.

Note that I am not interested in a moral discussion of their government because that is a quick way to cut off critical thought. Obviously, I don't support the murders of any government.

America is properly described as “Democracy with American characteristics.”

As Denis Leary said, you can have a big democracy cake and walk right through the middle of tianemen square, but we got the bombs

Sorry I actually meant the Churchill expression "worst system but better than the other"

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