What's so bad about not having democracy?

[OldBoomer]

our version is 4 years, but wouldn't limiting majority rule be something else?

A Republic is limited majority rule. Any system where you have a separation of powers you have a limited majority rule.

 

[Hygro]

So what if you weren't allowed to voice dissent?

Reason alone.

 

[SebastianAllen43]

Democracy is the best form of government. while not perfect, and it doesn't always work as good as it should, there is so much more freedom allowed to people under a democracy. Also if the people in charge aren't doing a good job, the public can fire them next election. No one is guaranteed unlimited power.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It's great to not have democracy.

As long as I call the shots. Well, actually no, the person that calls the shots tends to get assassinated. You want to be no.2 or 3, just out of the public eye.

 

[Traitorfish]

We all agree that democracy is the best form of government, but we don't trust ourselves to handle it directly. Instead, we appoint a class of intermediaries, or ritually validate the self-appointment of this class, to handle this dangerous substance on our behalf. After all, what kind of mess would democracy be, if it was left to the public?

 

[Hygro]

We all agree that democracy is the best form of government, but we don't trust ourselves to handle it directly. Instead, we appoint a class of intermediaries, or ritually validate the self-appointment of this class, to handle this dangerous substance on our behalf. After all, what kind of mess would democracy be, if it was left to the public?

Let's party.

 

[luiz]

We all agree that democracy is the best form of government, but we don't trust ourselves to handle it directly. Instead, we appoint a class of intermediaries, or ritually validate the self-appointment of this class, to handle this dangerous substance on our behalf. After all, what kind of mess would democracy be, if it was left to the public?

Probably a lot of banned minarets. Or more likely, banned mosques and banned immigrants.

 

[onejayhawk]

We all agree that democracy is the best form of government, but we don't trust ourselves to handle it directly. Instead, we appoint a class of intermediaries, or ritually validate the self-appointment of this class, to handle this dangerous substance on our behalf. After all, what kind of mess would democracy be, if it was left to the public?

We don't all agree. Hence the thread.

Democracy, in its true form does not work well above the townhall level. At some point, as states become larger, some for of representation must take over. The key is not the form, but the principle of the rule of law, equally applied, and response of the representatives to the represented.

J

 

[Yeekim]

We all agree that democracy is the best form of government, but we don't trust ourselves to handle it directly. Instead, we appoint a class of intermediaries, or ritually validate the self-appointment of this class, to handle this dangerous substance on our behalf. After all, what kind of mess would democracy be, if it was left to the public?

I suggest a little experiment - each time your parliament has to vote on an act of legislation, try to "shadow vote".
Let us know how you keep up.

 

[Hehehe]

Whatever comes next - unless you think the worst form of government is in the same time an ultimate and perfect one. I hope it's not the case and there is a room for improvement.
I have a few ideas about what it can be, which I described in another thread a couple of months ago, but I don't think details are very important now.

Democracy isn't perfect, but it's the best we have. I don't know the system you are proposing, so perhaps I shouldn't judge it too harshly, but let's just say that I'm not excited about it.

Democracy does have its flaws, but at least democracy tries to respond to the concerns and needs of as many people as it can. The same is not true for any other system. Democracy may be "tyranny by the majority*", but what is the option? Not making decisions at all? Or making decisions that the largest amount of people possible agree with, like in a democracy?

Sure, in the real world, democracy may not always work as intended. Nothing ever does, this includes competing political systems. I see no obvious reason as to why an "enlightened dictator/party" would be able to make better decisions than a democratically elected ruler, and that is assuming that the said autocrat really is enlightened.

And all of is in theory. This isn't even getting into the history of alternatives to democracy, and how those have ended up (do we even need to go there?).

*Democracy does have some limitations on what people can vote for. People have unalienable rights.

TL;DR: Alternatives to democracy are always worse, and I've yet to see anything that would challenge this belief

 

[Perfection]

Because under authoritiarian regimes truth is supressed. I like Truth.

 

[Mise]

In addition to what's been said already, democracy provides us with a peaceful way of resolving disputes in what should be lawful and what should be unlawful, what should be defended by application of a common force and what should not, and so on. Practically speaking, we don't all agree on these things, so we need some mechanism of resolving those differences. You might say that, in this hypothetical, we live under a benevolent dictator, where there is peace, stability, prosperity and so on. But for whom? We all know that you can't please all the people all of the time. There will always be some winners and losers of any given law, policy, system, society or economy. Liberal democracy provides us with a mechanism to resolve these differences peacefully.

 

[Traitorfish]

I suggest a little experiment - each time your parliament has to vote on an act of legislation, try to "shadow vote".
Let us know how you keep up.

Are we so certain that the legislation working its way through parliament is always necessary, or even useful? A lot of what any given parliament does seems to be repealing or revising the work of the previous parliament. At a certain point, if we keep allowing group of people to create problems that only they can fix, we've got to start asking what the public is actually gaining from it all.

 

[Yeekim]

Are we so certain that the legislation working its way through parliament is always necessary, or even useful?

"Always" is a strong word. I'll settle for "mostly" or "often", but for the sake of experiment, we could agree on you shadowing half, or even just a quarter of all changes, and I bet you'd still be hopelessly swamped.

Technological change (taking place at ever-increasing speed) is what drives legislative change.
Unless we collectively agree to "go Amish" and ban technological innovation at one point, the implications are pretty clear I believe.

 

[Traitorfish]

Technological change (taking place at ever-increasing speed) is what drives legislative change.

That's quite the claim.

 

[Yeekim]

That's quite the claim.

Honestly, I believe this is self-evident, but I'm curious to hear you argue against this.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't intend to deny there are other drivers, but I believe they are rather minor in comparison.

 

[red_elk]

Democracy does have its flaws, but at least democracy tries to respond to the concerns and needs of as many people as it can.

It does have its flaws, which should be resolved. For instance, current system tends to bring rich populists into power, the people who are best at running election campaigns instead of being the best in administrative work.

And all of is in theory. This isn't even getting into the history of alternatives to democracy, and how those have ended up (do we even need to go there?).

We don't need that, indeed - that would be ideological dispute which leads to nowhere. Let's just say that it was never proven that Western type liberal democracy is universally applicable and inherently superior system of government comparing to all the others.

 

[Traitorfish]

Honestly, I believe this is self-evident, but I'm curious to hear you argue against this.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't intend to deny there are other drivers, but I believe they are rather minor in comparison.

Well, what's the mechanism? The immediate cause of most legislative change- that is, legislation that isn't just fussing around existing laws, or standard partisan back-and-forth- is political change, that is, change in the political outlook and expectations of voters, and it would seem to most observers that the immediate cause of political change is social, cultural and economic change, at least as often as technological change. So the argument is that social, cultural and economic change is always, ultimately, technological, and that is a very big claim.

For example, recent moves in favour of LGBT rights do not seem to have a self-evidently technological cause; yes, the internet and other technologies have helped open public minds, but that's as a means, not a cause, and most of this legislation has a clear origin in LGBT activism dating back to when personal internet access was limited to a few students and academics, if not earlier.

The root problem is that technology does not invent itself. People invent it, in accordance with their own needs or wants, and those needs and wants are shaped by their cultural, social and economic context. It's not enough for the technological potential for a printing press to exist, for example, if a society doesn't want to invent it. The Near East had the potential to develop a sophisticated iron-working culture for hundred of years before it actually did so, because the cultural, social and economic conditions did not exist to make iron preferable to bronze.

Looping back to the topic, it also seems that technological determinism sits uneasily alongside representative democracy, at least as it now exists. Politicians are not particularly technological adept, or, at least, they aren't selected on the basis of that adeptness. Some are seeming technological illiterates; "it's a series of tubes", etc. You've pointed out that most voters don't have the time to investigate every piece of legislation out forward- but what is time without understanding? What good would an entire set of people dedicated to fussing over legislative minutiae be- as if politicians spent most of their time legislating rather than simply politicking- if they did not understand the significance of the legislation in regards to technology. The implication would be, if not the abolition of representative government, then it's restructuring along very different lines, either corporatist or syndicalist, depending on your political preferences.

 

[Mise]

Well, what's the mechanism? The immediate cause of most legislative change- that is, legislation that isn't just fussing around existing laws, or standard partisan back-and-forth- is political change, that is, change in the political outlook and expectations of voters, and it would seem to most observers that the immediate cause of political change is social, cultural and economic change, at least as often as technological change. So the argument is that social, cultural and economic change is always, ultimately, technological, and that is a very big claim.

For example, recent moves in favour of LGBT rights do not seem to have a self-evidently technological cause; yes, the internet and other technologies have helped open public minds, but that's as a means, not a cause, and most of this legislation has a clear origin in LGBT activism dating back to when personal internet access was limited to a few students and academics, if not earlier.

The root problem is that technology does not invent itself. People invent it, in accordance with their own needs or wants, and those needs and wants are shaped by their cultural, social and economic context. It's not enough for the technological potential for a printing press to exist, for example, if a society doesn't want to invent it. The Near East had the potential to develop a sophisticated iron-working culture for hundred of years before it actually did so, because the cultural, social and economic conditions did not exist to make iron preferable to bronze.

I agree with this. It's is a good argument that most legislative activity deals with things that people care about and that affect people's lives, rather than merely technological changes.

 

[Hehehe]

It does have its flaws, which should be resolved.

Yeah, but if there are things to fix, then it should be done by tweaking the system rather than replacing it.

For instance, current system tends to bring rich populists into power, the people who are best at running election campaigns instead of being the best in administrative work.

I can't help but to think that you're referring to the election of Donald Trump. Trump won his election because significant segments of the American public had serious problems, which the American political class was completely ignoring (while sometimes outright deriding this same class of people). If anything, to me, this seems to be an argument in favor of democracy and against the supposed enlightened elites. Of course, it is true that the election of Donald Trump hasn't solved any of these issues, but it has forced some people to at least talk about these things. If you want to read more about why Trump was elected, I suggest this article by Geopolitical Futures.

We don't need that, indeed - that would be ideological dispute which leads to nowhere. Let's just say that it was never proven that Western type liberal democracy is universally applicable and inherently superior system of government comparing to all the others.

Now this is a big can of worms you've opened up here. It is true that Western type liberal democracy might not be applicable everywhere (most notably, I'm thinking of places like China or the Middle-East) for various reasons. This is a complicated topic, and I'm not saying that I don't support democracy in those places. All I'm saying that some interventions in favor of democracy haven't gone that well and I don't know how to solve these countries' problems. But all of that seems to be besides the point. With the way the question in the OP was setup, I assumed that we're talking about current Western liberal democracies possibly shifting away from that model.

As for inherent superiority, yes, liberal democracy is inherently superior to all other systems. These is true both in theory and in practice. In theory, democracy addresses the needs of largest amount of people possible. In practice, Western style liberal democracies are the best places in the world to live in. Comparisons to systems that do not exist in practice are always difficult and a bit redundant. I could argue that in theory, if I were an enlightened dictator, I would solve all the world's problems and everything would be perfect. But would that actually happen in practice? We'll never know.