Yeah, but “democracy” looks exactly like western liberal democracy, right? Multiple parties and uses some European country as an example? All third world countries are dictatorships and should bow down to the superior ways of their white overlords? Or they just don’t know what real democracy looks like and they’re misled by Islam or something? Real democracy is a racist as fuck country like Finland, that has de-industrialized, has an economy of basically only consumers, exports nothing and imports everything from the global south that carries the social and environmental burden of actually producing everything? Democratic socialism seems to only be for the imperial core, the rest of the world is just too backwards to understand it, I guess.
(These are rhetorical questions, I know it’s not what you sound like, but it’s what it seems like all of you people are implying with pretend civility.)
If you don’t both-sides the genocide of Palestinians or the war on Iran, by bringing up that they aren’t democratic systems of government so that somehow makes them deserve getting bombed more than if they were. (If you do, then I just don’t have to talk to you.) If you can believe that, than you do actually believe that the struggle against imperialism matters more than the ideals of democracy.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better, even to the point of undermining the democratic process itself? Sure we could argue at some point democracy had the effect of improving living conditions but should we expect that to be true forever in all circumstances?
I dont believe that democracy is valuable as an end unto itself, it is a tool that should serve its people and if it stops doing that we shouldn’t be dogmatic about it. Authoritarian systems certainly arent the way, and I would guess what we need doesnt even have a name yet.
Democracy works, the problem is we don’t have a true democracy. We have corporate capitalist democracy. It’s a system that makes most people think it’s democracy — but it’s not.
Democracy and capitalism can not exist in the same stratosphere if democracy is to succeed.
The conditions under which democracy works are well understood.
You need a populace educated on how the society and government works at least in its broad strokes. That education should also instill a preference for democracy and describe the pitfalls of other systems.
An independent media system to keep the voter base reasonably informed.
Systems in place to prevent corruption.
Every single one of these have been eroded over 1-2 generations by crony capitalism to enable wealth accumulation.
I would not say that democracy in the US is a reasonable example of what democracy can look like. It is what happens when democracy is being deliberately sabotaged.
You also need a fully open and transparent government, any information being classified top secret or anything of the sort means you cannot have a democracy. No secrets can be allowed, ever. And really the only way to reasonably guarantee stuff like that is to make officials surrender all privacy related rights for life, just permanent publicly open insight into every aspect of your life, past, present, and future if you want to pursue office. I’d argue for attaching 24/7 live streamed cameras to them during their time in office as well. Obviously this would only currently work for rich countries with obscene military expenditures, like the US, but if the big guys were to do it then it would eventually be safe enough for the rest of them.
This seems extreme. I agree with more transparency of politicians, but I don’t see our current problems as stemming directly from the fact that our military has top secret information and an intelligence service.
I mean small bits of democracy exist everywhere. Charity groups often work as a democracy. The youth organization I was in as a kid operated as a great democracy.
There are little democratic groups all over the world working just fine. It’s the large scale corporate hellscape that keeps it from working for us as a whole.
Idealist philosophy is the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. Just totally decouple your goals from actual reality, and make zero plans on how to get there, then critique movements that fail to measure up to your pie in the sky. You see, actually achieving things is secondary to these people, what REALLY MATTERS is looking like a good person when you’re doing it. “They don’t want power, they just want to endlessly critique power.”
The ruling class has put in place a system that is impossible to change without doing horrible, violent, and socially unacceptable things, that is why it’s so stable.
I really wished we lived in this world where convincing people of your ideas was enough to bring systemic change, it just won’t for some things.
Pointing out the flaws in some democracies is not a great argument when every other system is so clearly inferior. To answer your question, democracy requires a culture that supports it. It won’t work everywhere and it doesn’t work overnight.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better
How are you determining “better” and “worse”? In most cases, there’s no way of knowing what is “better” or “worse” sub species aeterinatis, because most government decisions are not optimizing a single parameter, and are instead making a judgement call by choosing one of multiple options from a Pareto frontier. With democracy, the people get what the majority of people want. Majority rule is better than minority rule.
There’s a big difference between the ideal democracy and the bastardization of a democratic process we have in America, much like how Marx’s vision of communism is hugely different from any actual communist implementation. I personally don’t believe that any one governing/socioeconomic system taken in a vacuum is the right answer, they all seem to rely on humans being fundamentally good-natured but it just isn’t true for much of the humans attracted to positions of power.
an ideal democracy would be a democracy where the people have power, as opposed to one where money rules. such is the case in the fake ‘democracies’ under capitalism. it’s not just america and it’s nothing to do with humans needing to be ‘good natured’.
The problem is “the people” in a democracy literally just amounts to “the majority”, and would thus favor the average and the interests thereof over the interests of underprivileged minorities. Can we count on the average person to be concerned about the well being of those who lack the collective power they enjoy? As of now, I would say definitely not.
i don’t think that rich people are inherently better any respecting the rights of minorities.
the current system demonstrably does not protect minorities either.
also the current system actively manufactures consent through media ownership and economic coercion. capital owners play a major role in that process.
what looks like majority opinion is often manufactured preference serving capital. a democracy where people had actual material security and genuine information might produce very different majorities.
Elections are not democratic because the candidates are always elites of some form. Even with universal sufferage and an egalitarian society there will always be a selection bias towards people who want power and people who are good at winning elections (but not necessarily good at governing). A real democracy would have election by lottery to ensure every segment of the population was represented. This hasn’t ever existed because past governments who elected by lottery (e.g. Ancient Athens) had only a small percentage of society represented as citizens.
After I found out about Lottery Democracy, everything clicked into place. I can finally have a true political goal that I can actually see working. Easy to convince people too, if people just watched the Lottery Democracy video from Spectacles.
I’ll check it out, thanks. I always just think about the way my academic department is organized as an example. There’s a rotating chair, and nobody wants to do it because it’s a bunch of bureacratic bullshit, but people do their time and then go back to getting actual work done. This is how politics should be.
If you value any economic system above democracy, you’ll end up being authoritarian no matter what your preferred system is.
You call this a democracy? The entire system is built to extract wealth from the working class
Call what democracy? I didn’t post about any place in particular. But no, the US is not a healthy democracy if that’s what you are getting at.
Yeah, but “democracy” looks exactly like western liberal democracy, right? Multiple parties and uses some European country as an example? All third world countries are dictatorships and should bow down to the superior ways of their white overlords? Or they just don’t know what real democracy looks like and they’re misled by Islam or something? Real democracy is a racist as fuck country like Finland, that has de-industrialized, has an economy of basically only consumers, exports nothing and imports everything from the global south that carries the social and environmental burden of actually producing everything? Democratic socialism seems to only be for the imperial core, the rest of the world is just too backwards to understand it, I guess.
(These are rhetorical questions, I know it’s not what you sound like, but it’s what it seems like all of you people are implying with pretend civility.)
If you don’t both-sides the genocide of Palestinians or the war on Iran, by bringing up that they aren’t democratic systems of government so that somehow makes them deserve getting bombed more than if they were. (If you do, then I just don’t have to talk to you.) If you can believe that, than you do actually believe that the struggle against imperialism matters more than the ideals of democracy.
How do you justify democracy when people are voting for life to be worse instead of better, even to the point of undermining the democratic process itself? Sure we could argue at some point democracy had the effect of improving living conditions but should we expect that to be true forever in all circumstances?
I dont believe that democracy is valuable as an end unto itself, it is a tool that should serve its people and if it stops doing that we shouldn’t be dogmatic about it. Authoritarian systems certainly arent the way, and I would guess what we need doesnt even have a name yet.
Democracy works, the problem is we don’t have a true democracy. We have corporate capitalist democracy. It’s a system that makes most people think it’s democracy — but it’s not.
Democracy and capitalism can not exist in the same stratosphere if democracy is to succeed.
The conditions under which democracy works are well understood.
You need a populace educated on how the society and government works at least in its broad strokes. That education should also instill a preference for democracy and describe the pitfalls of other systems.
An independent media system to keep the voter base reasonably informed.
Systems in place to prevent corruption.
Every single one of these have been eroded over 1-2 generations by crony capitalism to enable wealth accumulation.
I would not say that democracy in the US is a reasonable example of what democracy can look like. It is what happens when democracy is being deliberately sabotaged.
You also need a fully open and transparent government, any information being classified top secret or anything of the sort means you cannot have a democracy. No secrets can be allowed, ever. And really the only way to reasonably guarantee stuff like that is to make officials surrender all privacy related rights for life, just permanent publicly open insight into every aspect of your life, past, present, and future if you want to pursue office. I’d argue for attaching 24/7 live streamed cameras to them during their time in office as well. Obviously this would only currently work for rich countries with obscene military expenditures, like the US, but if the big guys were to do it then it would eventually be safe enough for the rest of them.
This seems extreme. I agree with more transparency of politicians, but I don’t see our current problems as stemming directly from the fact that our military has top secret information and an intelligence service.
Citation needed
There has never been a democracy, so we don’t know if it works or not. Democracy is an ideal state. We all live under a dictatorship of capital.
I mean small bits of democracy exist everywhere. Charity groups often work as a democracy. The youth organization I was in as a kid operated as a great democracy.
There are little democratic groups all over the world working just fine. It’s the large scale corporate hellscape that keeps it from working for us as a whole.
Idealist philosophy is the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity. Just totally decouple your goals from actual reality, and make zero plans on how to get there, then critique movements that fail to measure up to your pie in the sky. You see, actually achieving things is secondary to these people, what REALLY MATTERS is looking like a good person when you’re doing it. “They don’t want power, they just want to endlessly critique power.”
The ruling class has put in place a system that is impossible to change without doing horrible, violent, and socially unacceptable things, that is why it’s so stable.
I really wished we lived in this world where convincing people of your ideas was enough to bring systemic change, it just won’t for some things.
Amerikkkan politician in the gif, lmao.
…Judge Judy? She’s not a politician. She’s barely political at all. She hasn’t even been a real judge since 1996.
Sorry I don’t watch slop I couldn’t know about that. I’m sure she’s very close to the real thing.
Pointing out the flaws in some democracies is not a great argument when every other system is so clearly inferior. To answer your question, democracy requires a culture that supports it. It won’t work everywhere and it doesn’t work overnight.
When the dollar can vote you no longer have a democracy.
How are you determining “better” and “worse”? In most cases, there’s no way of knowing what is “better” or “worse” sub species aeterinatis, because most government decisions are not optimizing a single parameter, and are instead making a judgement call by choosing one of multiple options from a Pareto frontier. With democracy, the people get what the majority of people want. Majority rule is better than minority rule.
Bourgeois democracy is minority rule tho, I want a democracy where money doesn’t have a voice
There’s a big difference between the ideal democracy and the bastardization of a democratic process we have in America, much like how Marx’s vision of communism is hugely different from any actual communist implementation. I personally don’t believe that any one governing/socioeconomic system taken in a vacuum is the right answer, they all seem to rely on humans being fundamentally good-natured but it just isn’t true for much of the humans attracted to positions of power.
an ideal democracy would be a democracy where the people have power, as opposed to one where money rules. such is the case in the fake ‘democracies’ under capitalism. it’s not just america and it’s nothing to do with humans needing to be ‘good natured’.
The problem is “the people” in a democracy literally just amounts to “the majority”, and would thus favor the average and the interests thereof over the interests of underprivileged minorities. Can we count on the average person to be concerned about the well being of those who lack the collective power they enjoy? As of now, I would say definitely not.
i don’t think that rich people are inherently better any respecting the rights of minorities.
the current system demonstrably does not protect minorities either.
also the current system actively manufactures consent through media ownership and economic coercion. capital owners play a major role in that process.
what looks like majority opinion is often manufactured preference serving capital. a democracy where people had actual material security and genuine information might produce very different majorities.
I didn’t say that though, so how about you go have this imaginary argument with someone else.
Elections are not democratic because the candidates are always elites of some form. Even with universal sufferage and an egalitarian society there will always be a selection bias towards people who want power and people who are good at winning elections (but not necessarily good at governing). A real democracy would have election by lottery to ensure every segment of the population was represented. This hasn’t ever existed because past governments who elected by lottery (e.g. Ancient Athens) had only a small percentage of society represented as citizens.
After I found out about Lottery Democracy, everything clicked into place. I can finally have a true political goal that I can actually see working. Easy to convince people too, if people just watched the Lottery Democracy video from Spectacles.
I’ll check it out, thanks. I always just think about the way my academic department is organized as an example. There’s a rotating chair, and nobody wants to do it because it’s a bunch of bureacratic bullshit, but people do their time and then go back to getting actual work done. This is how politics should be.
Let me know when you come up with a way to force people to accept an unpopular system without an authoritarian regime.