Is Democracy Actually Good?

Lil Proton

Lil Proton

Liàng Proton
Le person: What!? Is democracy actually good? Is that a question? Of course it is, you moron. How can you even question that, you nazi?

Me: Alright, hold on, Let me explain mate. Democracy only works in an education population, (particularly educated in politics, economics and other relevant topics) but it doesn't work, in a stupid population. At all. Let me put it this way right.
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So there's a ship sailing across see. And every ship has a captain. Let's say the captain is voted in.

Who should vote?

The average passengers who know nothing on navigation and geology? Of course not, despite the fact that they're also in the ship, they basically know next to nothing about how the ship actually runs. Allowing the passengers to decide who's the captain is stupid. Makes sense?


How about the people educated and specialized in seafaring? You know, like the ones trained to sail across the ocean, all the other captains, and people like that. Yes, trusting those people to decide who's the captain makes much more sense

Upon common sense, the people educated should vote as most would agree. So why isn't the same thing applied to a country?


Voting should be a skill, not a random activity. And like any skill, you need to learn it. So letting people vote without an education on basic politics, economics etc is stupid.

No, I'm not saying to go back to a dictatorship, because that's equally stupid. Though, I doubt there would be much a difference on that point. What I'm saying, is that people with a basic education on politics and other necessary stuff should be given the voting option right. And it really doesn't have to be that expensive, school already teaches students useless junk, so why not have the schools teach students the necessary information on politics, up until graduation. You know, to insure that the population would at least know the risks of voting.

Think about it like this right:

Imagine in a country, there's two people running for office. A burger restaurant owner, and a doctor. Given that the population is generally stupid, who would you think will win the debate.
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Burger Restaurant Owner: Aie, look at that guy, he gives you ucky medicine and performs dangerous surgery. And VACCINES he wants children to have vaccines! While I, a proud business man will promise to give everyone free hamburgers to feed the hungry. WHO WILL VOTE FOR ME!

Doctor: Yeah, I give your children vaccines, and also do surgery, and prescribe medicine with big words you don't understand. But my policy to make these things more affordable will benefit everyone.
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You see my point, a population that's ignorant would end up voting the burger guy, and then you'll get an epidemic on diabetes. It's the same concept that's happening now.
 
I think democracies are bullshit. They're just tyranny by the majority.

I hate it when people call countries like America a democracy when they clearly aren't. America is a constitutional republic.

Lil Proton said:
You see my point, a population that's ignorant would end up voting the burger guy, and then you'll get an epidemic on diabetes. It's the same concept that's happening now.
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Everyone's ignorant in some way. The doctor would be no better in some aspects as well. Especially with American healthcare being the mess that it is now. How do we know his interests don't line up with the big pharma companies and politicians?
 
SacredWarrior said:
I think democracies are bullshit. They're just tyranny by the majority.

I hate it when people call countries like America a democracy when they clearly aren't. America is a constitutional republic.



Everyone's ignorant in some way. The doctor would be no better in some aspects as well. Especially with American healthcare being the mess that it is now. How do we know his interests don't line up with the big pharma companies and politicians?
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The example wasn't specific to America but really just a generalization of how democracy would work, I'm not American so I can't comment on how the healthcare works without being inaccurate.

Yeah the doctor will have flaws and there's risks, but compared to the burger owner, a doctor's risks is much less. The point is that in a generally ignorant population, the mass seems to be more attracted to the savory promises, (the burgers) and would diastase any potential investments or complicated risks that's more long term, (the medicine).
 
Lil Proton said:
The point is that in a generally ignorant population, the mass seems to be more attracted to the savory promises, (the burgers) and would diastase any potential investments or complicated risks that's more long term, (the medicine).
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Burgers are a blessing! YUM YUM!

My love for them aside, we're programmed to like things like that because of the easy access. It's basic human nature. Not exactly ignorance. Sometimes the risk isn't worth taking
 
Yeah, we like savory and fattening foods, but if you were to choose between free burgers and potentially improved healthcare chances are you'll go for the healthcare, the burgers are still there after all.

But if you didn't know much about healthcare at all, or any of the relevant topics, you'll hate the idea of it, and prefer the free burgers.

People also need to be knowledgable to properly decide if certain risks are worth it or not. Or, they'll just go with which idea has the best talk.
 
Lil Proton said:
but if you were to choose between free burgers and potentially improved healthcare chances are you'll go for the healthcare, the burgers are still there after all.
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Yeah I'd obviously go for the healthcare :p

Lil Proton said:
But if you didn't know much about healthcare at all, or any of the relevant topics, you'll hate the idea of it, and prefer the free burgers.

People also need to be knowledgable to properly decide if certain risks are worth it or not. Or, they'll just go with which idea has the best talk.
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In my country (America), people like anti-vaxxers are criticized VERY quickly and easily debunked. That's ONE good thing at least
 
You know, if conspiracy theorist usually belong to more then one conspiracy. Like if one thinks anti vaccines cause autism, they may also believe the government is deliberately making people sick, or something related to it.
 
Yes. Democracy always, and forever, even if it produces inconvenient idiots. Let's examine three sets of statistics in the real world.

#1: Poverty.
Percentage_population_living_on_less_than_%242_per_day_2009.png


#2: Murder.
l_1454_5e98bb62151888364dab530706dd6742


#3: Life Expectancy.
Life_Expectancy.png


Y'know, I'm noticing a pattern here. Europe and North America pretty consistently remain the least shitty. They also have some of the most sterling solid democracies and sets of human rights in the world. They operate on an economic system that effectively puts the majority of the economic impetus on individuals--currency is voting economically and they are the world's best economies.

The virtue of a democracy is that if your leader is a terrible leader, you can replace him. You can't do that in non-democracies without resorting to bloody coups. Going back to your example of "who should be the captain?" If the people elect a shitty captain, they can strip him of his powers and elect a new one. You can give everyone a brief lesson on how ships work when it comes time to elect a new captain. You can give each prospective captain a chance to argue their case--show off their skills and talents. Like shopping around for the best employee to fit a position, democracies give everyone a chance to prove themselves.

Get a shitty leader in a democracy? Replace him in four years.
Get a shitty leader in an autocracy? He rules for life or until you brutally murder him/his cronies.

When the United States had the most options available to it, it was a wonderful country. Now it has just two political parties of overwhelming power who effectively handpick who they want to rule through jerryrigging--and the system is set up in such a way that only the rich can really try anyway. That is more authoritarian and less democratic than it used to be, and the country is decaying.

Conversely, a lot of European democracies have several parties to choose from. The Scandinavian countries come to mind. In spite of forming almost constant minority governments (2+ parties coming together to form a government) they manage to not only run their countries, but make them bastions of modern civilizations that people regularly look at and envy.

Use any metric you like. You'll find, pretty consistently, that democratic nations have tended to perform overwhelmingly better to their peers for many, many years. It's not the best system, it's not without its flaws and faults, but it is the best system we have available at the present time. It is as close to a meritocratic system we can use for government without setting up a permanent ideological echo chamber.

Final Note: If/when Burger Guy fucks up, the country will suffer for four years, and then choose someone else when Burger Guy's policies turn out to be terrible. Assuming it's a functional democracy, and not Putinland, anyway. :p
 
You falsely assume I'm promoting a dictatorship, anarchy, oblatory or any other similar system, I'm not stating that at all. The point of the discussion was that democracy only works in an educated population which I quite literally state at the beginning on the argument:

Me: Alright, hold on, Let me explain mate. Democracy only works in an education population, (particularly educated in politics, economics and other relevant topics) but it doesn't work, in a stupid population. At all. Let me put it this way right.


From that, your entire point is rendered invalid because you're comparing countries with strong democracies to countries without any democracy at all whereas I'm only stating at a democracy would work in an educated population. Hence my point still stands.

If the population gets a shitty leader for a democracy, there isn't going to be an improvement at all, unless the population learns what went wrong, in other words, they're educated. If they're uneducated, then they'll just elect another stupid leader.

Your examples of democracy correcting itself to get better leaders is quite literally only works with an educated population. Which oddly enough supports my point.
 
How do you think people get educated? Experience, and having systems that support them getting that experience. Whether that's a public education system (largely absent outside of democracies), a strong set of post secondary educations (supported by the strong economy noted above), and the ability to participate within an electoral system.

The concept of democracy is as old as the Greeks and the Romans--both of whom formed the first empires of Europe and Northern Africa. They both began to decay when dictators rose to power and their descendants were increasingly disconnected from the very people they were supposed to rule over. (Eg: Nero, Caligula.) The Dark Ages of Europe are most notable for, among other things, their complete lack of democracy and human rights.

Every step toward enabling the people to rule over themselves has only led to a further and increasing effect of enlarging the total pool of potential knowledge to draw from. When armies reformed from noble-breed leaders to meritocratic machines, their efficiency became sufficient as to allow theaters of war across the globe. When individuals were allowed to strive toward scientific freedom based on their knowledge rather than the bias of absolute leaders, our nations flourished in progress--curing diseases, among other things.

There is no point in history I can even think of wherein the formation of a proper democracy with a foundation of strong human rights has led to anything other than the increasing happiness and power of any nation that has truly embraced it. I am at a loss to even try to think of an example of a nation that wound up better in the long run for abandoning democracy and becoming dictatorial.

This flies completely in the face of the idea that an ill educated populace cannot rule itself. Who is to determine whether a population is properly informed? You? Me? The government?

Historically speaking, the true test of the noble born versus the raving mob was in The Great War. The Allied Powers were--outside of Russia--democracies, and the Central Powers were Monarchies overwhelmingly.

Russia is the one nation to ultimately fail and fall into a civil war on the Allied side. It was a Monarchy--the only one.

Germany was by and far the most effective combatant in The Great War. It was also the most democratic out of all of the central powers, and its monarchy was abolished after its constant meddling arguably led to the entire failure of the state.

Austria-Hungary doesn't exist anymore. Neither does The Ottoman Empire. Both were long-term, ostensibly well educated upper nobility empires. Both were comically inept, and made military decisions so bafflingly idiotic that it defies all reason. Austria-Hungary literally sent men into the cold Russian winter in cardboard boots, and The Ottoman Empire enacted a racist genocide within its own borders because the leadership couldn't afford to look incompetent--in spite of being dramatically incompetent.

tl;dr: History does not agree with your premise. Not in the long term.

EDIT

On top of that, the absence of democracy is dictatorship. Flavour it any way you want, the two are opposites of one another--the absence of one, naturally leads to the other.
 
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My premise has nothing to do with dictatorships at all and I'm not debating to remove democracy nor have I claimed it's a bad system compared to anything.

You're derailing from the actual debate by arguing democracy vs dictatorship.

My entire premise is about improving education which will then make democracies work (better), nothing more nothing less.
Anything outside of that is not what's being discussed at all.
 
Lil Proton said:
My entire premise is about improving education which will then make democracies work (better), nothing more nothing less.
Anything outside of that is not what's being discussed at all.
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Lil Proton said:
Who should vote?

The average passengers who know nothing on navigation and geology? Of course not, despite the fact that they're also in the ship, they basically know next to nothing about how the ship actually runs. Allowing the passengers to decide who's the captain is stupid. Makes sense?
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I think they should. Primarily, because I think each prospective captain should have the opportunity to argue persuasively why it is that they know best how to run the ship. The one that can best explain their version of running the ship, deserves to run the ship.

If your argument is not against democracy, then don't argue that people shouldn't vote under any context. The only alternative for that is that only certain people should be allowed to vote, which creates a lot of terrible complications.
 
If every captain explain to the entire crew why they should select him, it only works out for the best if the crew actually knows what they're supposed to look for. A sailing 101 book given to the passengers would allow them to make the better choice. Which is the only thing I'm proposing, the availability of sailing 101 books.

Likewise, an uneducated population never has a democracy except by name. For instance, in the United States, the politician that obtains the most funds usually wins the seat, over 90℅ of the time, literally. And most funds comes from the richest individuals.

So essentially, it's an Oligarchy on both sides of the political spectrum and the title of democracy is just a title. Somewhere along the lines, the population wasn't as educated as it was supposed to be and then democracy became a cultural illusion.
 
That's perfectly fair. I misinterpreted your points then, as I wasn't sure what you meant by "they shouldn't vote." Now that's been sufficiently clarified for me to understand.

Your disclaimer at the top is well warranted. :p

Thanks for the discussion. I agree that education is the way to go, just wasn't sure exactly where you stood on that.
 
I would like to point out that most of the arguments in favor of democracy here are actually arguments for a republic form of government. America and other countries labeled as "democracies" are typically very different from the original intention of a democracy(which originated in ancient Greece). America and other countries use the term democracy to imply that the people have more power than they actually do.
 
Your analogy is terrible. Like, flat-out terrible.

Any ship would have a chain of command established before setting out based (hopefully) on things like experience and talent. The best commander is the captain and they likely have a second and third set-up in the event of them becoming unable to lead. Sure, this doesn't always hold true, but it usually is. If they really did reach a situation in which the captain was killed and a new one needed to be voted in the passengers are not dumb. They're not going to vote for some random idiot who knows nothing about sailing over even the ships janitor whom has been on boats most his life. Their own lives outright depend on it and putting someone in command who knows nothing is like begging to get deviated from your tropical cruise to hit an iceberg in Antarctica. Additionally, even if only 'the educated' were allowed to vote it would be pretty easy to figure out as they would have been designated as the crew before even leaving or, at worst, people could simply be judged by how much time they had spent at-sea before this hypothetical situation arose.

But with a country that's just not how it works. There are tons of checks and balances on the power of the president. Even if they're bone-headed idiots who won on the grounds of being pretty they usually have a congress, senate, and judiciary system capable of opposing, even outright overturning, their orders. Like, let's say that this ship had an officer on board whose sole purpose was to ensure everything followed naval code. They hold no 'real' power but, if the captain made a stupid move (like gunning full-speed ahead towards an iceberg) they could overturn their orders. Suddenly, assuming this hypothetical crewmember existed and was doing their job, things became a lot safer if the passengers did elect a dullard because at least things will be functioning up to code.

The biggest flaw, however, is that there is no way to decide who is 'educated' enough to reasonably vote. Want to make it a little form you have to fill out? You can bet one party will try to reject the forms of people who associate with/are from the opposing party. Make it so that you have to graduate college? Slap a ton of political propganda in the classroom or make your party sound like it's ideals are in-line with what's taught in those colleges and you could get away with instituting the Purge for ****s and giggles (and eradicating political opponents). Just so long as you can make your narrative sound pro-puppy and frame the cat-lovers as being anti-puppy you'll win (even if your policies are actually anti-puppy).

Then what happens to all the people who can't pass the test? The college and high-school drop-outs? The parents who gave up a degree to support a family or to follow a promising job? Their voices would now be meaningless while the dumb general studies associate degree who got through on daddy's dime and easy classes has a hand in elections. If the cat-lovers party also happen to have a lot of people in it who didn't go to college because they were at home starting animal shelters their voice has just been drastically cut and it won't be long before the pro-puppy party is putting into place laws to neuter all cats because 'of pet overpopulation' while laws in favor of neutering dogs become suspiciously under-enforced.

I've worked in city hall for many years. I've seen many good and capable people get voted out of office in favor of dullards simply for being part of the wrong party many times. However, as I watched I came to realize that it was the cities in which one political party held too much sway that this happened frequently. Places where you can become afraid to vote your political party out of fear of repercussions, especially from a socital 'elite', are the ones where problems like corruption tend to thrive the most. After all, you like cats, and that means you are an intellectually inferior monster who wants to put all puppies in cages. But us educated puppy-lovers won't let your hateful ways prevail and we'll make sure our friends stand in your way as well. Now get back to working the kibble mines you cat-loving pleb; and let us enlightened puppy-lovers lead the nation.
 
I'm pretty sure that Winston Churchill was the one who said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

Sure, there's quite a few problems. Things get stifled, poor decisions get made, an uninformed populace puts the person that they want in power, instead of the person who's objectively best at the job. But the critical point is that there's a system for choosing the leader where the leader is accountable for their actions. Once there's fallout from a bad leader, things tend to change. Definitely not perfect, but you have to look at the alternatives. There really aren't any systems where there's a purely benevolent elite who chooses the best person for the job, and doesn't abuse that power in the slightest.

So raise a glass to the concept of universal suffrage. Yeah, as a whole, we're kinda dumb sometimes, but having the freedom to be dumb is the self-determination that so many people don't have. And we're typically pretty decent at recognizing what works and what doesn't, even if it's only after the mistakes start getting made.
 
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