Must democracy "deliver the goods" to beat autocracy?
democracyorbust.bearblog.dev
democracyorbust.bearblog.dev
Democracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show.
The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on.
If you had a small group that actually frequently had 50%+1 rulings, I feel like you would fracture real fast.
This is demonstrably untrue, there are plenty of cases of stable democratic systems. They just tend to exist outside of capitalism (or stand in opposition to traditional capitalist practice). It often relies on syndicalism or federation to stay distributed. Maybe that's compatible with your "small groups" statement, where many small groups coordinate together to form big groups to get things done.
While larger democracies generally have fallen to increasing concentrations of wealth and power, I don't think we should conclude this is inevitable. We can do a lot better than this.
Perhaps the goal isn't for wealth inequality to never increase. What if instead of perpetual increase or a sharp decrease, society achieved a sin-wave like equilibrium centered around some desirable level of wealth/power inequality?
It doesn't work if the level you desire is zero. Sorry, Marxists.
You are way underestimating the malignant stupidity of voters.
> and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show.
Autocrats all over the world rejoice when they hear this type of arguments. If nothing is perfect, then every system is as good as theirs.
I'm sure that's not what you are trying to say, but unfortunately, that's the logical conclusion of what you are saying.
As another commenter said, democracies pride themselves in being transparent and true to themselves, things that are needed to be able to choose your collective destiny wisely, which is in turn the core a working democracy.
At least the Sultan of Oman is honest about him ruling and not me! We pretend to live in democracies while we live in oligarchies, because if we admited democracy has been corrupted, the house of cards would fall, since we have been building our worldview and values on the position that they are more just than others because it's the will of the people.
Finally, I'll add that liberalism is not unique to democracy, but able to fit into other governing systems.
I think there are better systems than democracy, one of them being mixed systems. Monarchism at the head of the country, democracy at the city level, and a parliament composed half and half of democratically elected local municipality representants and experts.
It looks to me you have some idyllic notion of democracy. If you use my definition (which is generally accepted) of "checks and balances and the rule of law", then a "mixed system" as you suggested definitely qualifies. But you have to realize that in all systems there will be people who lie. If you "hate when you are lied to your face", then I have some terrible news for you: you will not find any system where people don't lie to your face.
Except, possibly, in the Sultanate of Oman.
Except the checks are not working, balances favour the milion dollars lobbyists and the rule of law is applied depending on the person it is applied to.
I vote with a candidate and then "Google"[1] comes and gives him money, vacation and some good, expensive meals. How "democratic" is this ?
[1] "Google" can be any company which lobbies the EU.
I mean, yes. On its first run, a few years back, it was essentially torn apart by the parliament. Now the commission is trying again. The EU doesn't work that differently to any other parliamentary democracy; there's an executive cabinet (in this case appointed by member states) and a legislative body (elected by the people of member states).
For various practical reasons, the commission and legislature are more inclined to public conflict in the EU than in most systems; in many parliamentary democracies the executive will be reluctant to bring a bill that the parliament will reject, and its viability will be tested behind closed doors before it's brought; if the proposers don't think they have the numbers they'll never actually propose it. So you do see this sort of conflict a lot more with the EU. But it's the same basic system.
Another example, much of the article uses "China" to suggest a broad, villainous other. Like so much American media, this reads like, "What are we, China?" or alternatively, "Surely we are better than China..." Which assumes a level of backwater, out of date, poorly run culture in China.
As a concrete example, the author says something to the effect of, "China claims to have quickly built a hospital, which I very much doubt." And explains nothing further -- why do you doubt that? What evidence do you have? Or are you just relying on your audience to credulously agree that because it came out of China, it's bad or a lie?
Additionally, the article appeals to the idea that we are all self interested by our fundamental nature. That we're all programmed to survive at all costs, and the means of that survival is individual self interest. Plenty of folks (myself included) believe that our survival instinct is one of social cohesion -- we survive because we band together into social groups.
So I agree with the conclusion -- we should be fighting fascists, and we should be doing it with strong policy and aggressively pushing fascists out of shared spaces (a bar that permits one nazi to be there is a nazi bar), I just think this article doesn't make the case for that very effectively.
I do not think at all that individual self-interest is our only motor. I'm saying we underestimate the extent to which it motivates us. I should probably clarify that.
My view of China is informed by my months-long stay there during the pandemic (among other stays but that was the most ... uh... impressive one). It is my only direct experience with autocracy and I assure you it was scary as heck. Make of that what you will.
And I'm European.
China has quite developed competitive science and industry. It is very competitive internally - sometimes more free market then America (which tends to create winner takes all systems with less actual competition).
Why not, plurality of the outside world has PRC as their biggest trading partner, seeing increasingly higher tier goods. Some even visit and see delivered goods with their own eyes. It's convenient for democracies to pretend the knowable isn't knownable, that non democratic systems can deliver some things better. That failed democracies are actually autocratic failures are when slide into authoritarianism is democratic system failing. And really if one peers back throughout history, many democracies were built off the imperialism/extractive base from when countries were not democracies / periods when country was more authoritarian. Sometimes that base is substantial enough to snowball durable advantages from, sometimes the runway runs out and populist start questioning the system that squandered the lead. Or dismiss concerns because autocrats are faking their orgasms.
Are we being asked to call a spade a spade here, or what? If so, why these weasel words?
When emulating those "who went to Spain to fight Franco in the 1920s [sic]", is the idea that we should denounce fascism, but only in ways that won't offend the Party?
And please, offend the party.
And: Spanish Civil War is usually dated as 1936-39. So, s/1920s/1930s.
https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-...
The tl;dr is that Western societies sort of developed liberalism as a reaction to the vast destruction of the early modern wars of religion, and it persisted because liberal democraties tend to be more productive and better at war than their autocratic counterparts, and way better than their fascist counterparts.
The truth is our greatest ally. We need to harness it as a weapon, not abandon it in a pathetic attempt to insult our enemies and preserve the status quo.
We had truth. It's still there, readily accessible. We got here despite that.
If you have a massive ecosystem dedicated to churning out un-truths and it can crowd out truth, then the truthiness hardly matters… in the near term at least.
In the long run, truth-seeking systems work better because it’s hard to operate effectively without it. Which I suspect we’ll re-learn in a few short months.
It's a damn shame that the only sizable social network that brands itself on veracity is Truth Social.
I don't think so. I value credibility, and I'm not alone. You care about what's true, right? Almost everyone does. It's just really damn hard to figure it out. If we actually want to fix things, our job is to make that easier.
Perhaps. Sounds cyclical. I wouldn't expect that reasserted norm to hold for long.
But fuck man, that guy was a lying bullshit artist ... he was a drunk. He abused his power with women. He lied to the public, to the army, to preserve his own power. And worse. He was a terrible, terrible person by all accounts.
And frankly, in that he was not exceptional. Get some papers from the 1920s, 1930s, and compare against the history books, or against science, against the truth. Again: WTF.
No, what makes democracy work, is not truth. I don't really know what does make it tick, but truth? No way. Participation? I don't have that big a smoking gun, but I doubt it. It's the option to participate that matters, not whether people actually do. In my opinion, what matters a great deal is that the government is forced to drastically change course when a large portion of the population is unhappy (which is, let's face facts, why Trump got elected, and it is why republicans are in for a world of hurt next time)
Even today, the fact of the matter is that European governments are fundamentally forced to scale back the welfare state. It is framed as a money problem, but really it is a problem of labor availability, money is only the abstraction the government uses for everything. We're blaming the abstraction. The real problem is not being seriously discussed in any European country, instead democratically elected governments are trying to sneak in cutback after cutback because "immigrants suck" or "criminals are expensive" or ... bullshit essentially.
I concur. But the odds of that course-correct being the right one must relate to the prevalence of the truth in the population, right?
Was Churchill's election a grand triumph of democracy? I can see why you might think so. They elected what seems to have been the right man for the job, despite his flaws.
Was he really? Was that lying drunk really the only guy who could have pulled it off? Or did Britain elect a terrible person and just got lucky that his failings didn't muck everything up?
>also we need to do fascism against the fascists
I hate leftists like this the most.
>The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. Brand them the enemy of the people, in the name of societal order, zero tolerance. Don't waste your time on creating stupid values that you can rally people around.
"Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label" level of discourse.