While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[christos200]

Ok. I will stop talking with idiots like you.

Spoiler :

And yes, I know that I will get an infraction for this.

 

[christos200]

By the way, if any serious person wants to continue the discussion about democracy and western morals in the Islamic and East Asian world, just PM.

I wont post again on this thread.

 

[Daftpanzer]

The only answer is love.


Link to video.

 

[Crezth]

South Korean and Japanese democracy was not imposed by it's people on it's leadership, but by the USA occupation. Not to say that despite this, democracy failed in South Korea until the last few years. As for Turkey, it has always been closer to the West. Taiwan is the exception, not the rule.

Japanese pursued democratic reforms purely of its own volition under the Meiji reformation. That these collapsed in the wake of depression and disaster, and that the replacement government was so vile, should not speak to some cultural incompatibility with democracy.

As for South Korea, how so? Because of that whole business with Park Chung Hee?

And what about India? They're Asian and they have a pretty okay democracy and stuff. And Pakistan's, at least, is no less progressive than those in Central and South America.

Turkey has been "closer" to Europe? How so? Because it conquered parts of Europe? Well, so did the Caliphate (see: Iberia), and yet there is no democracy there.

I think you need to get your facts straight.

As for democracy, I believe that only those who are educated (have graduated from certain universities) should vote. How can you expect someone who does not know with which countries we border, or some basic economics, or the geopolitical and military situation to vote?

Well, what if the educated discriminate against the uneducated?

 

[das]

Well, what if the educated discriminate against the uneducated?

Like how, other than taking away their voting rights? It seems the main concern for progressive democrats in this regard is that the uneducated status tends to overlap with immigrants/ethnic minorities or with lower classes, not the discrimination against the uneducated as a block.

I don't care for democracy at all, myself. I do think it can be a useful instrument in some circumstances. I do also find the idea that educated or propertied classes are somehow necessarily more intelligent and responsible as citizens to be laughably optimistic. Don't forget that education is also a means of dissemination for various bizarre ideologies that the Great Unwashed may have more of a resistance to (on the other hand, the latter may be more susceptible to more blatant, populistic demagoguery of left-wing or right-wing flavours).

 

[Crezth]

Like how, other than taking away their voting rights? It seems the main concern for progressive democrats in this regard is that the uneducated status tends to overlap with immigrants/ethnic minorities or with lower classes, not the discrimination against the uneducated as a block.

Nope, don't put words in my mouth. I oppose this discrimination on the basis of class, mainly. Refusing voting rights to people who haven't (graduated college? high school?) is functionally imitative of landed voting, and furthermore makes no sense - there's virtually no guarantee that college graduates are well-educated on social issues (and certainly no guarantee that they know enough about foreign affairs to make logical decisions - and notice that I didn't say "more," because I think we can take it for granted that college graduates know "more" on average than non-graduates, but "more" is not enough to unite Germany or keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons). Then we have to consider non-graduates who are nevertheless well-educated and productive members of society - Zuckerberg comes to mind, and I can't imagine denying him the vote on the basis that he never officially graduated from Harvard, instead opting to make billions by starting a new business. You might as well restrict the vote to only the wealthy, in that case, and we're back to square one with the unwealthy not being represented and being concomitantly oppressed. The matter of representing people's interests while ruling over them has been an issue since time immemorial.

This is not to say that democracy erases these problems, but it's a lot harder to oppress people when they have functional, working representation in government. This is, in my mind, why liberal, functional democracy is desirable - it restricts the ability of rulers to oppress.

The next big step in restricting oppression, then, is to abolish class entirely. But one thing at a time.

 

[das]

What exactly do you mean by "oppression"?

EDIT: I am sorry for asking for this, but it seems a crucial concept to your argument, and I do not want to "put words in your mouth". There are some people who think being forced to pay taxes or serve in the military or not say illegal words is "oppressive", for instance, as well as even more esoteric variants.

 

[ChiefDesigner]

Like how, other than taking away their voting rights? It seems the main concern for progressive democrats in this regard is that the uneducated status tends to overlap with immigrants/ethnic minorities or with lower classes, not the discrimination against the uneducated as a block.

I don't care for democracy at all, myself. I do think it can be a useful instrument in some circumstances. I do also find the idea that educated or propertied classes are somehow necessarily more intelligent and responsible as citizens to be laughably optimistic. Don't forget that education is also a means of dissemination for various bizarre ideologies that the Great Unwashed may have more of a resistance to (on the other hand, the latter may be more susceptible to more blatant, populistic demagoguery of left-wing or right-wing flavours).

das, I think this is some seriously flawed reasoning. I think you're underestimating the role democracy has in providing accountability. I would argue that governments without a healthy opposition that is perceived as legitimate inevitably trend towards corruption and nepotism, and that there's no way to have an opposition movement without free and fair elections, and the certainty that you can wait awhile to regain power.

 

[das]

das, I think this is some seriously flawed reasoning. I think you're underestimating the role democracy has in providing accountability. I would argue that governments without a healthy opposition that is perceived as legitimate inevitably trend towards corruption and nepotism, and that there's no way to have an opposition movement without free and fair elections, and the certainty that you can wait awhile to regain power.

Democracy, or more precisely, the rule of law (as it is possible to have democratic elections without much of a pretense of the latter) can certainly help limit the abuse of government power. But to me this seems like a secondary consideration. The purpose of government is not to prevent government abuse; preventing government abuse is only important inasmuch as it helps the government function properly in providing external security and internal justice and stability. But being forced or tempted to pander to the population or popular movements or having its hands tied by the law when dealing with more immediate problems makes democracy a trade-off that offers a situational advantage at best if we don't just look at the experience and the problems faced by a few western and westernised countries (the fact that even those are always very tempted to break the law and cheat the populace in some way or another is already pretty telling, I think).

 

[Crezth]

What exactly do you mean by "oppression"?

EDIT: I am sorry for asking for this, but it seems a crucial concept to your argument, and I do not want to "put words in your mouth". There are some people who think being forced to pay taxes or serve in the military or not say illegal words is "oppressive", for instance, as well as even more esoteric variants.

What exactly is your point? That oppression is inescapable (because too some people, no matter how little it is it's too much) so we might as well be undemocratic?

I think people have a natural vested interest in not being abused and coerced, and giving people the right to take part in the decision-making process of parceling out abuses and coercions limits the extent to which they will suffer from them. Peasants will definitely tell you if the peasants don't want higher taxes; aristocrats might not be so sure.

 

[das]

My point was to ask you for a definition of oppression, because there are many different definitions out there. Personally I simply do not like that term - it is far too nebulous and easily stretched out. But if you insist on using it, then I would like to know what you mean by it.

The latter part of your post is a good argument for representation (perhaps along an estates-based scheme, specifically), but not for democracy. It does not explain why the executive branch should be selected for by means of a popularity contest and why any societal minorities should be left at the mercy of a government elected by some form of majority vote (the fact that no real, long-lasting modern democracy is so stupid as to actually give power to the people without enough safety mechanisms to sharply curtail the influence of the people on the government accounts for why those democratic countries can indeed be fairly decent places to live in or at least avoid some of the shortcomings of their more autocratic counterparts - but I am not sure that is a good argument for democracy as such, as opposed to for some specific constitutional arrangement that can be as undemocratic as possible).

 

[ChiefDesigner]

Democracy, or more precisely, the rule of law (as it is possible to have democratic elections without much of a pretense of the latter) can certainly help limit the abuse of government power. But to me this seems like a secondary consideration. The purpose of government is not to prevent government abuse; preventing government abuse is only important inasmuch as it helps the government function properly in providing external security and internal justice and stability. But being forced or tempted to pander to the population or popular movements or having its hands tied by the law when dealing with more immediate problems makes democracy a trade-off that offers a situational advantage at best if we don't just look at the experience and the problems faced by a few western and westernised countries (the fact that even those are always very tempted to break the law and cheat the populace in some way or another is already pretty telling, I think).

I don't think your point holds.

inasmuch as it helps the government function properly in providing external security and internal justice and stability

You say that the state has three roles -- to provide external security, internal justice, and internal stability.

To do so, the state enacts a protection racket -- it maintains a monopoly of force, provides security in exchange for taxes. However, without governmental accountability, the extractive mechanisms of the state are inevitably turned towards the enrichment of the people in control of the state apparatus. The role of the state must be to provide good governance; propaganda about a just but undemocratic state is just that -- propaganda.

There is no non-democratic state where the rule of law governs, because without accountability, the leadership will inevitably succumb to temptation to pervert the law, and they face no consequences for doing so.

 

[Lord_Herobrine]

I missed a bunch over the weekend

 

[das]

You say that the state has three roles -- to provide external security, internal justice, and internal stability.

To do so, the state enacts a protection racket -- it maintains a monopoly of force, provides security in exchange for taxes. However, without governmental accountability, the extractive mechanisms of the state are inevitably turned towards the enrichment of the people in control of the state apparatus. The role of the state must be to provide good governance; propaganda about a just but undemocratic state is just that -- propaganda.

There is no non-democratic state where the rule of law governs, because without accountability, the leadership will inevitably succumb to temptation to pervert the law, and they face no consequences for doing so.

A good argument, but hardly absolute. Firstly, accountability does not have to take the form of American-style or European-style representative democracy. Secondly, the rule of law is useful in some situations and obstructive in others, as with all such institutions - for one thing, they make it harder to punish criminals who can sometimes do even greater damage to a society than a corrupt government.

All things being equal, yes, having some form of accountability is indeed preferable. But all things are never equal, which means that it's always a trade-off between keeping the government in check and keeping parallel power structures in a society in check. Then there is also the fact that democracy relies on an active civil society, if not outright on what seems to me to be a frankly unrealistic ideal of citizenry. When such things are not in evidence, any sort of democracy imposed would be a sham at best, dead and replaced by an even worse variety of authoritarianism at worst.

I will not press the point that democracy obviously is not immune to being subverted by its ruling elites or becoming an oligarchy. I will however point out that this is an added risk that makes it not seem like a particularly worthy buy to me.

 

[Crezth]

My point was to ask you for a definition of oppression, because there are many different definitions out there. Personally I simply do not like that term - it is far too nebulous and easily stretched out. But if you insist on using it, then I would like to know what you mean by it.

Fine, let us not say oppression. Let us, instead, say "the imposition of suffering and coercion upon people by other people." And let us suppose it is a variable we seek to minimize. My assertion: democracy is a useful tool to facilitate in minimizing this variable, perhaps the most optimal.

The latter part of your post is a good argument for representation (perhaps along an estates-based scheme, specifically), but not for democracy. It does not explain why the executive branch should be selected for by means of a popularity contest and why any societal minorities should be left at the mercy of a government elected by some form of majority vote (the fact that no real, long-lasting modern democracy is so stupid as to actually give power to the people without enough safety mechanisms to sharply curtail the influence of the people on the government accounts for why those democratic countries can indeed be fairly decent places to live in or at least avoid some of the shortcomings of their more autocratic counterparts - but I am not sure that is a good argument for democracy as such, as opposed to for some specific constitutional arrangement that can be as undemocratic as possible).

Yeah but I think democrats have already figured that part out. We've been doing this checks-and-balances thing for awhile.

All I'm arguing is that if you seek to minimize that "the imposition of suffering and coercion upon people by other people," it serves you well to include more people in the political process. Talkin' 'bout voting and holding seats in the legislature or executive. Otherwise the marginalized parties get shafted, more often than not. This is well-documented throughout history. If it isn't ethnicities shafting other ethnicities, it's the upper class shafting the lower one.

Admittedly this still happens in democracies, but at least in democracies the peasants have recourse other than beheading the king.

 

[ChiefDesigner]

A good argument, but hardly absolute. Firstly, accountability does not have to take the form of American-style or European-style representative democracy. Secondly, the rule of law is useful in some situations and obstructive in others, as with all such institutions - for one thing, they make it harder to punish criminals who can sometimes do even greater damage to a society than a corrupt government.

I disagree. Compare Western representative democracy to authoritarian rule on the Singaporean, Chinese, or Russian models. The PAP and CCP are hopelessly corrupt; their economic success comes in spite of their governance model.

Judge the utility of the rule of law by its outcomes. The rule of law leads to procedural justice, and the knowledge that everybody is treated equally under the law; consider the alternative, which is pervasive injustice perpetrated by corrupt judges and magistrates. One of these outcomes leads to procedural justice -- even if a guilty man goes free under a technicality, he was treated fairly under the law. The alternative inevitably leads to nepotism and corruption, because humans act in accordance with their own interests when those interests conflict with a just outcome.

Thus, if the role of the state is to enforce justice, then just outcomes are in every case superior. Furthermore, the pursuit of justice does not take away from a state's ability to defend itself or pursue internal stability; arguing that procedurally just outcomes detract from stability, because a criminal goes free who was obviously guilty, is a fallacious argument. How do you determine he was obviously guilty?

All things being equal, yes, having some form of accountability is indeed preferable. But all things are never equal, which means that it's always a trade-off between keeping the government in check and keeping parallel power structures in a society in check. Then there is also the fact that democracy relies on an active civil society, if not outright on what seems to me to be a frankly unrealistic ideal of citizenry. When such things are not in evidence, any sort of democracy imposed would be a sham at best, dead and replaced by an even worse variety of authoritarianism at worst.

Now you're just moving the goalposts -- you're demanding things of a democratic form of governance that you don't require from non-democratic forms of governance. Better simply to shoot dissidents?

I will not press the point that democracy obviously is not immune to being subverted by its ruling elites or becoming an oligarchy. I will however point out that this is an added risk that makes it not seem like a particularly worthy buy to me.

I'm baffled. You argue that democracy is bad because it leads to oligarchy, then you argue that oligarchy is good?

 

[Dachs]

frankly, this discussion needs some Deliann Mithondionne

 

[das]

@Crezth - With the qualifications I added earlier (democracy requires some specific prerequisites that might not exist in a given society and has some specific disadvantages in the core sphere of "minimising unnecessary suffering" that, say, 18th century-style enlightened despotism lacks - though it certainly has other, different ones), I have no genuine problems with that assertion.

I'll just note that the king isn't always the biggest of the peasants' problems, and sometimes is much better positioned to solve the other problems than a duly elected peasant elder is. IMHO (and this is purely a historical rather than logical argument) autocracy has a better track record of actively helping people in the 18th-19th centuries than democracy did - compare the way abolition of serfdom happened in Austria or even Russia with how the abolition of slavery happened in the USA, or the industrial legislation of arch-reactionary Tsar Alexander III with that of contemporary USA. On the other hand, its pitfalls can also be much worse.

EDIT:

Judge the utility of the rule of law by its outcomes. The rule of law leads to procedural justice, and the knowledge that everybody is treated equally under the law; consider the alternative, which is pervasive injustice perpetrated by corrupt judges and magistrates. One of these outcomes leads to procedural justice -- even if a guilty man goes free under a technicality, he was treated fairly under the law. The alternative inevitably leads to nepotism and corruption, because humans act in accordance with their own interests when those interests conflict with a just outcome.

Thus, if the role of the state is to enforce justice, then just outcomes are in every case superior. Furthermore, the pursuit of justice does not take away from a state's ability to defend itself or pursue internal stability; arguing that procedurally just outcomes detract from stability, because a criminal goes free who was obviously guilty, is a fallacious argument. How do you determine he was obviously guilty?

My argument is more that democracy can be ill-equipped to handle organised crime, political extremists and the subtler forms of corruption.

Now you're just moving the goalposts -- you're demanding things of a democratic form of governance that you don't require from non-democratic forms of governance. Better simply to shoot dissidents?

I am saying that democracy needs some things to function, like any advanced form of government. In other words: an advantage of authoritarianism is that it does not require an active civil society or a high (IMHO - seldom if ever realistic) level of responsibility and political literacy from the citizenry. Democracy has higher requirements to even function as you propose it.

I'm baffled. You argue that democracy is bad because it leads to oligarchy, then you argue that oligarchy is good?

I do not argue either of those things. I argue that democracy is an experiment that does not even have a strong guarantee of working as advertised (to say nothing of it working as advertised being as necessarily beneficial for society as it is claimed), which in my mind makes it less worth trying.

EDIT EDIT:

frankly, this discussion needs some Deliann Mithondionne

I may have to look into that. At least some good things can come from this argument.

 

[Crezth]

I'll just note that the king isn't always the biggest of the peasants' problems, and sometimes is much better positioned to solve the other problems than a duly elected peasant elder is. IMHO (and this is purely a historical rather than logical argument) autocracy has a better track record of actively helping people in the 18th-19th centuries than democracy did - compare the way abolition of serfdom happened in Austria or even Russia with how the abolition of slavery happened in the USA, or the industrial legislation of arch-reactionary Tsar Alexander III with that of contemporary USA. On the other hand, its pitfalls can also be much worse.

What? The 18th-19th century is like, the premiere time of monarch-killing in all of European history. The best thing the monarchies have going for them in this time frame is beating Napoleon. The rest of the time, it was mostly carrying on with that stupid nonsense of land ownership and shooting people every ten years who disagreed. As for Austria and Russia, if you said "I think the king's a sodding moron" it was off to the dungeons with you. Maybe monarchs emancipated the serfs (eventually), but they also actively opposed the abolition of serfdom. Think Tsar Nicholas I, whose mistrust of the Decembrists was successful in postponing any kind of crucial modernization on Russia's part until much later. Under the Tsars, the situation got so bad that the entire country was embroiled in a horrible civil conflict that was only ended when one group of sociopaths triumphed over the rest. America did surely have its own problems with lunatics and traitors, but only one major rebellion in 200 years is pretty good. And we didn't even need a king to tell us that slavery was bad.

Your argument is that there's a give and take - some places, democracies succeed; others, monarchy is more effective. True enough, but I'd tell you that the average is that democracies are far better for their people than monarchies.

 

[das]

What? The 18th-19th century is like, the premiere time of monarch-killing in all of European history. The best thing the monarchies have going for them in this time frame is beating Napoleon. The rest of the time, it was mostly carrying on with that stupid nonsense of land ownership and shooting people every ten years who disagreed. As for Austria and Russia, if you said "I think the king's a sodding moron" it was off to the dungeons with you. Maybe monarchs emancipated the serfs (eventually), but they also actively opposed the abolition of serfdom. Think Tsar Nicholas I, whose mistrust of the Decembrists was successful in postponing any kind of crucial modernization on Russia's part until much later. Under the Tsars, the situation got so bad that the entire country was embroiled in a horrible civil conflict that was only ended when one group of sociopaths triumphed over the rest. America did surely have its own problems with lunatics and traitors, but only one major rebellion in 200 years is pretty good. And we didn't even need a king to tell us that slavery was bad.

Your argument is that there's a give and take - some places, democracies succeed; others, monarchy is more effective. True enough, but I'd tell you that the average is that democracies are far better for their people than monarchies.

That's quite a lot of rhetorical exaggeration. I'll try not to take it too seriously. I'll just note that the actual situation with regards to all of those things varied immensely under monarchies from place to place and from time to time - some monarchs had been much better about criticism than others, some had abolished serfdom much faster than others.

And as for not needing a king to tell you that slavery is bad - I'm not so sure. One could as easily say that you desperately needed one, but didn't get one, which is why it took you so damn long. Conversely, if Austria was a democracy (or slightly less implausibly, a parliamentary monarchy), I am not at all sure if it would have abandoned serfdom as early as it did, considering how it was only done over the fervent opposition of the landowner class that was likely to dominate any kind of parliamentary arrangements. Returning to America, though, it took you many decades for some part of your society to decide that slavery is bad while another decided that it was actually very good - and then it took you several years of bloody war to actually resolve the issue, only to botch a large part of it during the Reconstruction when much of the public and the politicians rapidly lost interest in taking care of former slaves. Say what you will about monarchy - but no one in Russia or Austria fought a civil war to preserve serfdom, and the government did not stop trying to help the freed serfs after the reform, even if you could argue that it still did not do anywhere near enough.

EDIT: Also, you seem to be suggesting that Russian and Austrian peoples had to be told that serfdom was bad. Even if we assume that this is true, isn't that an argument in favour of a strong monarchy that can, in fact, abolish it despite lacking any sort of popular support and against a democracy that, if experience is anything to go by, would take much longer to realise that this is not a very equitable system?