Stupidity - the single reason why democracies never work

[Vladimir]

Obama's not on your list?


Anyway, democracy is the worst. Except for all those others.

(Everyone should know who said that)

Seriously, we shouldn't allow people who get more in benefits from the federal government than they pay in taxes to vote.

CR

Obama's not a president. He's the second coming.

And why does some guy from Romania have to go across the Atlantic for his examples? Are there no democracies in Europe? No doubt those are the only the presidents who were around during his short lifetime. Okay, maybe he heard about Regan on TV.

[Meneldil]

And why does some guy from Romania have to go across the Atlantic for his examples? Are there no democracies in Europe? No doubt those are the only the presidents who were around during his short lifetime. Okay, maybe he heard about Regan on TV.

Do you know of any Romanian leader? Had Cronos Impera decided to use an European example (other than Berlusconi, Prodi, Chirac, Sarkozy, Blair, Brown and the few other well-know leaders), everyone would wondering who the hell is that guy.

Now, I kind of agree that democracies are flawed and largely became mere public opinion contests. Education systems aim for the lowest common denominator (ie. It's okay if the guy somewhat knows how to read and write by the end of high school). Our media are mostly of terrible quality, putting the emphasis over mindless and pointless sensational news rather than trying to educate their readers (as Michael Jackson's death proved).
But then, most democracies never advocated that all citizens should be enlightened. This idea appeared with the development of new ideologies such as socialism. Voltaire (and even Rousseau, in a way), advocated that the uneducated masses shouldn't have a say in political matters. The founding fathers were also quite an elitist bunch. Liberalism (which was the dominant ideology in early democracies) was an elitist ideology, closely tied to the bourgeoisie and other upper classes. For those, the 'people' was completely unable to rule, and should let the benevolent elites do all the stuff.

Then, some people claimed that the lower-class should have a say aswell. They decided that democracies should strive to educate their citizens, turn them into enlightened and rational persons. Thing is, as you say, educating citizens causes a few issues. First, it is my opinion that many citizens don't want to be educated. Though they dislike their own state, they simply are too dumb and lazy to even try. They also distrust the educated elites, the intelligentsia, considered responsible for all their demises. Anti-intellectualism is very strong in western societies, and not only among the american right.
Then, as you pointed out, having educated citizens is tedious. They ask for stuff, they're unhappy, they want to have more weight in political matters than the rulers are willing to offer them. They disagree with eachothers, they argue, and so on. Having a bunch of voters who never read a book in their life and spend their time watching reality TV is much more convenient.

Now, obviously, that doesn't mean democracies don't work. They have a lot of issues (such as the ones pointed out by Louis: criminality, lack of order), but most democratic countries offer pretty good standards of living to their citizens. I don't buy the whole 'liberalism = democracy = wealth' theory, but so far, most democracies are doing quite a decent job when it comes to taking care of their citizens.
Some people still try to educate their fellow countrymates. Some people still try to make humanity better. Some people still care about politics. Things have been going like that for a while. While I can see how the situation is in some way getting worse, I also see that democracies have always been public opinion contests.

[LittleGrizzly]

If there was a way to get proven good governors who aren't corrupt and have the entire populations interest at heart rather than the just an elites, then a dictatorship would probably be great...

Also that thier willing to hand over the office when the time comes.

Unfortunately there is no way to gaurentee good dictators... so stuck with democracy for the forseeable future...

On the whole Bush being charming thing, he wasn't the most eloquent speaker but compared to his rival Gore he could have been Denzel Washington.

[Louis VI the Fat]

If there was a way to get proven good governors who aren't corrupt and have the entire populations interest at heart rather than the just an elites, then a dictatorship would probably be great....

If you could find me a man-God, a man with perfect ideas, only noble intentions, and incorruptible, I would still prefer democracy over his rule.


As John Stuart Mill once wrote (paraphrasing him here beyond recognition probably): a man's own decisions are the best. Not because they have the best possible outcome for him, but because they are his own.

It belongs to being a free citizen, to the human experience even, to make your own life. To make mistakes, bad decisions, good decisions, heartfelt decisions. What matters is that you make your own life.

Democracy in this respect then, is not the outcome of careful delibiration over what is the best form of government. It stems from a philosophical view of man. That of liberty, of man as a free individual. The decisions of a smart man are not worth more than the decisions of a dumb one. No more than the tears and joy of the smart man are worth more.



(Consequently, one can wonder if democracy isn't more suited to Western than to East Asian philosophy. To a large extent, developed East Asian countries, while not autocratic, are not entirely democratic in a Western sense. Possibly their communal values prefer more communal systems of government. Certainly, they function very well.)

[Cronos Impera]

The biggest problem is the following:
Both in tyranny and "democracy" the biggest criteria for establishing a winner is popularity. And that popularity is never linked to any real competence or skill. You can be competent and unpopular or popular and an incompetent moron. Like at the office you're neighbour can be either a skilled cranky bitch or a stupid popularity queen. And you'd prefer the popularity queen because she helps your ego more.

Like in dictatorships there is no real competition.All you have to do is say the magic words a few times and be PC and hug babies and you're as good as elected.Democracy and tyranny are bound because in both any real competition is supressed and all you have to do is follow a ritual routine.
In tyanny you butkiss your ideological leader and hug his image, in democracy you butkiss some abstract concepts to the same extent in your speeches.

My ideal government would have been along the meritocracy that benefited Genghis Khan on his campaign trail. For him it didn't matter if that man he elected was a bastard,as long as he did the job pronto he could keep that job. Object to that status quo and if you ware better that that bastard you could compete him and win the job.

Morale from the Genesis:
"Stop whining and start winning for Chirst's sake.The only reason you lost this battle was because you sucked more than your opponent."
Not a single democracy had the guts to say something along that lines to its fanbase.

The single day you'll find a politician brave enough to point the middle finger at his voters and than say: Vote me, you suck. And his voters to vote him despite that insult because he did his job right, than I'll have faith in democracy and claim it really promotes any real value.

In my country all democrats are just mediocre businessmen who need state contracts for their firms to survive and have no real need to improve anything. The office is theirs, the auction is won by their pet venture and a villa and Bentley soon follow.20 years of republican democracy have brought nothing except the silly routine of putting stamps on a sheet of paper and watching statitics afterwards.

Advice for a true political system:

- establish objective criteria for getting an office
- concieve a wide range of tests to be completed by the candidates including math, grammar and law
- establish brownie points for past work experience
- make that competition open for anyone older than 21
- employ foreign proffesionals to correct the test papers live in front of cameras.
- elect the men with the highest scores

Preserve the integrity of the process by establishing the commison as a power barter on the same level with Parliment, the Government and Justice. That system would work better than the beauty pagent that we call "election day" because it would encourage real competence and skill rather than rhetorics.

[Louis VI the Fat]

In my country all democrats are just mediocre businessmen who need state contracts for their firms to survive and have no real need to improve anything. The office is theirs, the auction is won by their pet venture and a villa and Bentley soon follow.20 years of republican democracy have brought nothing except the silly routine of putting stamps on a sheet of paper and watching statitics afterwards.

Romania is not a democracy. It is a mobsterocracy.

In fact, I was thinking about opening a thread about the EU's report from two days ago. Maybe I will when I have some more time.

Romania (and Bulgaria in the EU, and many other states in the former Soviet bloc) are democracies in name only. This has created a deep mistrust of democracy in this region. Democracy is associated now with mobsters, corruption, plunder. Many long for authoritarian states, aka Russia.
All I can say is, these systems are not democratic in the full extent of the word. It also shows that democracy does not mean elections and majority rule. Democracy resides in 'soft democracy'. Such as a developed civic society, a strong middle class, human rights, minority rights, the rule of law, and soberness and moderation in public debate and conduct.

Many of which are under threat in the West. Romania should be an example to all those spoiled westerners flirting with populist parties...

[HoreTore]

Romania is not a democracy. It is a mobsterocracy.

In fact, I was thinking about opening a thread about the EU's report from two days ago. Maybe I will when I have some more time.

Romania (and Bulgaria in the EU, and many other states in the former Soviet bloc) are democracies in name only. This has created a deep mistrust of democracy in this region. Democracy is associated now with mobsters, corruption, plunder. Many long for authoritarian states, aka Russia.
All I can say is, these systems are not democratic in the full extent of the word. It also shows that democracy does not mean elections and majority rule. Democracy resides in 'soft democracy'. Such as a developed civic society, a strong middle class, human rights, minority rights, the rule of law, and soberness and moderation in public debate and conduct.

Many of which are under threat in the West. Romania should be an example to all those spoiled westerners flirting with populist parties...

[Cronos Impera]

Romania is not a democracy. It is a mobsterocracy.

In fact, I was thinking about opening a thread about the EU's report from two days ago. Maybe I will when I have some more time.

Romania (and Bulgaria in the EU, and many other states in the former Soviet bloc) are democracies in name only. This has created a deep mistrust of democracy in this region. Democracy is associated now with mobsters, corruption, plunder. Many long for authoritarian states, aka Russia.
All I can say is, these systems are not democratic in the full extent of the word. It also shows that democracy does not mean elections and majority rule. Democracy resides in 'soft democracy'. Such as a developed civic society, a strong middle class, human rights, minority rights, the rule of law, and soberness and moderation in public debate and conduct.

Many of which are under threat in the West. Romania should be an example to all those spoiled westerners flirting with populist parties...

The only difference between my mobsters and yours is that while mine leech on a dead horse yours leech on a blue whale.Corruption is more easily observed in small, poor countries like Romania or Moldova than huge ones like Russia or USA.
Obama was sponsored with millions of dollars for his election, and that money didn't come from Devastation Dave's retirement fund. It came from businessmen who wanted state contracts for themselves. In Romania the politicians and businessmen are one and the same and corruption is more obvious than in other places.You vote for a mayor and he brings along his wife's venture for garbage disposal, you vote for a MP and he brings his firm for catering.
On a party list you'll find a popular statesmen "called the locomotive in Romanian slag" in the header and 20 shady figures in the footer. To get on the lists a candidate must invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in his party's treasury so when he gets his office his concern isn't for the morons who voted him, but for the few ventures which sponsored him.
The civil society is just a party of beggars who couldn't buy their membership in a top party and get employed by politicians to lampoon an opponent.
Human rights work like magic. The inmates live better lives than free men. No need for Amnesty International when an inmate can woo his girlfriend in a special cell or where an inmate is allowed to spend his holidays with his fammily while his victim lies in an unmarked grave.
The upper middle class does just fine and builds villa after villa while the lower middle class and lower classes can't even afford a rent.
Minority rights work fine too. The minorities get an equal share of the plunder. The Magyars even got half of the last government nominations despite holding barely 7% of the Parliment seats.
We had an Armenian for Finance and Economy and Gipsy for Mayor in Bucharest. But the plunder continued.
The rule of law works too.But the law is so confusing and ambiguous that you can't rely on procedures to guarantee anything.If you have good relations with the Court Archives you can have entire evidence dissapear from files. Than you're acquited because the whole procedure was incorrect. Sometimes you can even bribe your prosecutor to compromise the procedures. And if you get a NLAR (No Legal Action Required) from the judge your whole file gets into the memory hole. The law regulating procedures is so ambiguous that you need an army of lawyers to navigate through procedures alone. And judges work so slow that defendants can have their case judged for decades before any solution is given, but not before they've spent thousands of Euros on court fees.
All Romanian politicians are sober. You need to be sober when signing millon-dollar contracts for your cousin's small shop.

So Romania by your criteria for a "soft democracy" is a perfect candidate.We even got the Rainbow show up when Bush had a state visit, and Clinton said "Romania is a model for the Balkans". And minority rights ware respected in Communist times too. We had 4 hours of programming for minorities on state television and more. When the Iron Curtain fell, the party beheaded Ceausescu and split into five factions. After that the dissidents came and invested their money to make even more money and sold anything of value.

In 1990 a group of Hippie Businessmen and former dissidents protested for "democracy" and pooed on the streets for civil disobedience after they lost the elections. The miners from Jiu Valley came to supress the revolt, condemned by the the authorities as "anti-democratic" and "fascist". Those fools thought they ware defending democracy when they started beating the crap out of the students and teachers gathered in the streets. The bloodshed was greated by President Iliescu as a victory of "democracy" over "fascism" and saluted the gesture for "civil conscience". Then those students rose to power and robbed the miners silly. And then the Communists ware back in power.And then the tides changed again and an orange coalition came to power.Than the orange liberals formed a coalition with the communists again to ensure a majority.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Romania (and Bulgaria in the EU, and many other states in the former Soviet bloc) are democracies in name only. This has created a deep mistrust of democracy in this region. Democracy is associated now with mobsters, corruption, plunder. Many long for authoritarian states, aka Russia.
All I can say is, these systems are not democratic in the full extent of the word. It also shows that democracy does not mean elections and majority rule. Democracy resides in 'soft democracy'. Such as a developed civic society, a strong middle class, human rights, minority rights, the rule of law, and soberness and moderation in public debate and conduct.

Just wondering, where did you get that from? I know you are right, but still, I am curious.

[Cronos Impera]

Nice one, I wish every country was like Astralia in this respects.