Are the Russians right, that there is freedom beyond democracy

[Kimstu]

@Sam Stone

The U.S. is not a democracy - it’s a constitutional republic.

This assertion depends on very specific, and in practical terms unworkable, definitions of “democracy” and “republic”. In real life, we do speak of the US being a democracy, just as we speak of “bringing democracy to Iraq” or Israel being “the only democracy in the Middle East” and so forth. The nomenclature issues were well explained in the relevant Cecil’s Mailbag thread:

“Democracy,” strictly defined, refers to the method of government wherein the members of the group vote directly on all matters of legislation. “Republic” comes from the Latin ‘res publica’, and refers only to the nature of the government, ‘a thing of the people’ (that is, not a monarchy), without actually making claims as to how the leaders are selected.

In recent times, the term “republic” has been bandied about by just about every country, with a popular vote or no, on the claim that the government and the people were subject to the same law. Covers just about everybody except for hereditary monarchies […] Because of that, modern-day nations with elected governments have often prefixed their “republics” with other adjectives, and although “democratic republic” does not literally mean “representative democracy” (i.e., in which the people elect representatives, and the reps make the laws), that’s what it’s been used for over the last few decades or so. […]

Direct involvement of the people is a nice concept, but for matters of day-to-day government, a strictly democratic system is impractical. […] That’s why on a large scale we elect legislators to work for us, and they are charged with making legislative decisions on our behalf. In other words, our republic is governed by a representative democracy.

@Sam Stone

A rule of thumb is that you cannot have an intrinsic freedom to something that requires someone else’s freedom to be taken away to provide it.

This doesn’t make a lot of sense, though. Almost all human activities require some kind of compromise between the freedom of different individuals to act as they desire. Designating certain kinds of activities as “intrinsic freedoms” is merely arbitrary.

Yes, all societies do have to make somewhat arbitrary decisions about what freedoms they choose to consider essential or inalienable or what have you, and what freedoms can be infringed or sacrificed or compromised, and to what extent. But these are deliberate choices. Freedoms (or rights) are consciously defined by human societies: they are not “intrinsic” or “natural” or “inherent”.

[Little_Nemo]

What is true, however, is that you cannot have freedom while having the state control the economy. State intervention in economic affairs removes individual’s choices in who they want to deal with, how they want to sell their goods and for how much, etc. So while you can have a free, capitalist economy under a democracy or a benevolent dictatorship, freedom is absolutely incompatible with Communism or Socialism. By definition, Communism and Socialism take choices away from people and substitute them with commands issued from a controlling power.

99.99% of the people in this country are never going to be in charge of a large corporation. For them, there’s no effective difference if the businesses they deal with on a daily basis are owned by a faceless corporate board or a faceless government bureaucracy - the only people who are really affected by the distinction are board members and bureaucrats. Bill Gates and Richard Parsons are no more subject to my control than George Bush and Nancy Pelosi are.