Oh, no doubt, 80% consensus is great if you can get it. But what about when there’s not? When 51% of the country wants option A but 49% wants option B, what do you do? Sure, going with option A means that 49% will be unhappy about it, but the alternative is that 51% is unhappy instead. This is what people mean when they say that democracy is the worst government, except for all the others.
Meh, we could partition the country, I suppose.
ETA: Or, you know, what people think they want is not necessarily what will actually make them happy, not exactly what they need.
There is a government that’s better than democracy: what we have, limited government where control over my life and finances is not subject to popular vote.
I’d like an answer to this…
Does Canada have an Appalachia region or a Mississippi? Canada has a provincial system which they have a great deal more confidence in because none of the provinces are particularly dysfunctional. Liberals in the US always quail at “leaving things to the states” because that means leaving a lot of people behind. But the US is too big and diverse to go for a centralized form of government, and Canada is too.
No, there’s no Appalachia in Canada, and no Mississippi. But here’s what there is, just to cite a few examples:
[ul]
[li]Alberta, a traditionally wealthy oil-rich province that has been the home of some of the most conservative political movements in the nation and every wingnut party that has ever aspired to federal power.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Saskatchewan, right next door, practically the diametric opposite, home of many of the principles of social democracy and the seed for universal health care.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Quebec, practically a nation unto itself, mostly francophone, socially very liberal but xenophobic, somewhat hostile to the rest of Canada and anglophones, which twice attempted secession. Rural Quebec is especially parochial and xenophobic, not unlike Appalachia and Mississippi just with different issues.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]The Maritimes, separated from the rest of Canada by the mass of Quebec, with relatively small economies and many of their own regional issues.[/li][/ul]
Yet the social solidarity that you claim is impossible in a large diverse nation does indeed exist. There is progressive taxation, a strong social safety net in all the provinces, a much smaller income disparity between the rich and everyone else than the US (Gini coefficient of 32.1 – about the same as the UK – instead of 45 for the US), and of course universal health care, which is managed by the provinces but subject to federal standards. Social solidarity exists in Canada, it exists in Europe, it exists in Australia.
All of these countries already embody much of Bernie Sanders’ vision. So yes, it can be done. The reason it won’t be done in the US I’ve already outlined here. The tl;dr version: the wealthy run the place, they can leverage their wealth into political power to an extent found in no other advanced nation in the world, and they’re determined to protect their interests.
There is no social solidarity in Canada as a whole(Seperatist movements attest to that), so much as their is sufficient solidarity in the provinces.
All socialists have to do to prove to Americans that their ideas can work here is to do it in California or New York.
But sometimes the A and B in my example is precisely the question of “more government” vs. “less government”. If a majority prefers more government, why should they have to put up with less government, just because a tyranny of the minority so decrees? Why should less government be the default, rather than more?
Because democracy is not the end, it’s the means. The end is liberty, so the means are restricted so that liberty is assured for the individual at the expense of making it harder for the government to do things.
You can keep saying that, but saying it doesn’t make it true. I’ve just pointed out to you how radically different some provinces are from each other, and I’ve also listed some of the important principles of social solidarity that prevail nationally.
Or Vermont? Bernie’s home state tried to implement a version of universal public health care. Didn’t work. Yet it works throughout the industrialized world. Turns out that some things require a national commitment to be feasible, even if they’re locally administered.
It’s true that single-payer started out in a single Canadian province, albeit in the limited form of public hospital insurance, but the relationship between the provinces and the Canadian federal government is quite different than that between the states and the US government, and even so, full-fledged single-payer did require significant federal participation.
Whose “end” is that? Perhaps yours, not necessarily everyone’s. Certainly not mine. Valuing “liberty” to the single-minded exclusion of all else is far from axiomatic; as a matter of fact, it’s essentially a one-line summary of an extreme libertarian philosophy. What if I would rather have a society where some personal liberties were limited in order to achieve a more peaceful and a more just society? Isn’t that just as valid? So the question Chronos asks remains unanswered.
This really is not just being pedantic … true democracy would not be a good system for precisely that reason which is perhaps why it is not what we have.
We have a specific sort of republic: a representative democracy. And we have built into it a variety of checks and balances that protect the rights and defined freedoms of minority perspectives and beliefs while also putting limits on those freedoms in service of the majority defined greater good.
Oh the saying still applies … but pure “majority rules” would suck both donkey and elephant balls.
“Liberty” is a nice motto and soundbite. As a practical item however it is as above. “Liberty” as the end is ultimately meaningless because reality is all about balancing the liberties and rights of some with the liberties and rights of others.
The true end is the much less attractive soundbite: a society that achieves the best possible, or at least the least poor, balance of liberties and rights, which sometimes restrains the will of the majority in service of protecting the liberty and rights of the few and sometimes restricts individual liberties in service of the majority defined greater good. A tricky task that and one that remains a constant work in progress.
What thread is this again? 
Well, I have a number of objections to that line of reasoning, though I do agree with your conclusion about elephant and donkey balls! Except that you’ve got 'em, like it or not: many US states and municipalities have embraced referendums (ballot initiatives) as a method of making major decisions to an extent that I’ve never seen anywhere else on a routine basis.
So you do get quite a bit of direct democracy and consequent direct majority rule, and I must say that the results are rarely good. On fiscal matters they tend to skew very heavily toward “no taxes” with absolutely no regard whatsoever for what those taxes are for, and on other policy issues they tend to skew heavily to whatever position is wanted by the guys with the most money to spend on promoting it. And nowhere in this decision-making process is there any advisory expertise, the way that a legislative body might seek informed economic or scientific advice.
Other than that, yes, you have a representative democracy, but so does everybody else. The major difference is that you have a representative democracy deliberately structured to cripple the government, along with a libertarian streak that exceptionally empowers private interests to an ever-increasing extent with regard to their control over public policy. Reversing the latter is a major part of Sanders’ platform, and it has nothing to do with being a “republic”.
OK, even granted that the end is “liberty”: I happen to feel that liberty would be best served by growing the federal government in certain key ways. You disagree. How do we know who’s right? Well, we don’t. The best we can do is to ask everyone else who they think is right. And if liberty really is increased by increasing the power of the government (or at least, if that’s what the majority think), then a system designed to limit the power of government is impeding liberty.
When someone says “national commitment”, what they mean, whether they know it or not, is “competition cannot be permitted because it undermines the system”. Vermont could only build on top of the current system, so it was too expensive. If the US as a whole did that, then it could force costs down by denying care and it would be harder for people to find alternatives. Of course, the same political headwinds that made ACA so difficult would make cheap single payer impossible. No one is giving up their health insurance, especially not the biggest funders of the Democratic Party, the unions.
I’m sure there are some cases where the government needs more power to insure liberty(such as in the case of civil rights), but the founders knew that unlimited government was a bigger threat to liberty than limited government. And where the people agree, government can be expanded. But temporary small majorities should not be able to fundamentally change our system of government.
The present constitution of the USA was ratified by a temporary small majority. The “Patriots” in the 1770’s didn’t even have a majority.
Actually, it was ratified by all the states. There was overwhelming support for the Constitution, and those that didn’t support it wanted something even more decentralized.
That is just so wrong and so contrary to everything in my direct experience that it just strikes me as a collection of talking points from the conservative playbook, much like the dogmatic presumptions you made about “liberty”. Let me briefly itemize why this is so wrong:
[ul]
[li]No, I know what I mean. “National commitment” means just what the words say, a commitment to some common national goal based on a shared set of values. It has nothing to do with “competition”, nor with free enterprise, free markets, or any of the other favored conservative buzzwords.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]A public health care system doesn’t reduce costs by “denying care”, it reduces costs by providing care under a cost-effective framework – specifically, by providing all medically necessary procedures under a uniform framework for everyone without question or adjudication, and without vast reams of paperwork, while managing provider costs. The cost benefits of single-payer are well established and not a matter of debate. Denying care is the specialty of profit-focused insurance businesses.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]Neither unions nor anyone else would be “giving up” anything because the essential medical services that everyone unconditionally needs would be provided at a much lower cost, a fact which is well established around the world. In terms of “choice”, that’s all the choice anyone needs for basic care, and beyond that, every union or employer can offer supplemental insurance to cover all kinds of extra services, comforts. and amenities – no one is stopping them. If a union wants to provide its members with coverage for hospital accommodations resembling a five-star hotel, they can go right ahead. The only ground rule is no one should ever commercialize and fuck around with basic essential medical care.[/li][/ul]
[ul]
[li]You’re right that Vermont could only build on top of the current system, and let’s understand why. First of all states collect little or no income tax compared to what the feds collect. It’s structurally different in Canada where provinces may get nearly half of tax revenues, in addition to federal transfer payments. Additionally, the US feds administer the mind-bogglingly complex Medicare and Medicaid systems which not only throws a monkey-wrench into the streamlined low-overhead goals of single-payer, it’s actively counterproductive. It’s essential to have both federal money and a tight collaboration with federal health care policy, and Vermont had neither.[/li][/ul]
I agree. But those political headwinds are based on fabricated mythologies and scaremongering hysteria. The same things that more or less make Sanders’ nomination impossible.