Could you put forward your list of top 10 non-democracies so I can am compare them to Western Europe and the Anglosphere?
-
Do you know which nation lock up most of it is citizens? Not China, it is United States. Please back up that source that for the average Chinese citizen the chance of going to prison is very high. Fact is only very few activist that call for revolution gets lock up by the government, and no, not for a long time, vast majority of millions of people that uses proxy does not get locked. You have higher chance of getting locked by download torrents here in US than using proxy in China.
-
Again, compare China GDP per capa, whom only started the economic reform with the nation that had it is own industrial revolution in the early 1900s. Oh and again, GDP per capa is not the only determinate of a country’s power, once can aruge that Luxemburg have far higher per capa than US, but can you argue that Luxemburg overall is a more powerful/successful nation than US? If not, then you should also look at China’s overall GDP. Unless you think of course, the rule does not apply to the good old USA.
-
Uhh have you see China’s economic expansion? They grow by like 30 times in just a few decades, and since you didn’t disagree with me the fact that rest of the world open factory that pollutes in China I assume you agree with me on that one,
Nope I cannot not, because as I already said, democratic system has became the norm in modern 21st century as a result vast majority of nation on earth are by definition democratic. And I want to argue that this system might not be the best form of government for everyone, and that there might be other form of government that better suit different societies.
The fact that I can list just more failing democratic than successful ones supports my thesis. My point is not to argue that all non-democracies are better than democracy.
So if you are calling me on that one, and think it proves your point, then yes sir you won this argument.
Amusingly, the very same debate features prominently in what is often considered the first self-conciously historical work - the History of Herodotus, in which he has seven Persian nobles who had just staged a coup debating the best form of government - democracy loses:
Fine then. Buh bye.
I think overall, the reason democray is not working in vast majority of the state that tries them is becaues there are many pre requsites of democracy.
-
All the basic need must be meet, food, shieldter etc… One cannot bother to vote if they are starvint, this is happening in most of Africa and India.
-
The people must not see politics as a one sum game, where the winers takes all, one must undrestand it is ok to give and take, to win and lose sometimes in a democracy. Many society are nto ready forthis, they often see politcans as an extendion of other matters such as blood fude and relegious confict, this is what happening in Middle East.
-
Democracy must work in a society where people are somewhat educated and can make conscious decision base on critical thinking, this is missing in many African and South East Asia democracies, and increasingly United States as well.
-
The society itself must respect the right of law, where corruption is not be the accepted norm from all part of the society, this is missing in Latin America, South East Asia.
-
The government must be willing to implemented programs that directly involves the people, and the people in turn must also expecting the government to intervene into their life as well. This is very much missing in India and Africa democracies.
I see we the United State government sometimes really don’t’ analysis each nation’s society background, but instead we just push on democracy to them regardless what or who they are. And this often result in tragic consequences.
For many societies, they should really not adapt democracy so willingly unless they are ready.
Bye, next time please read beyond the first 2 words if you bother to participate in the conversation in the 1st place.
For instance, they are really terrible at spelling.
Yes indeed, my spelling is horrible, and thus it invalid my whole argument.
But seriously, don’t hold back, whatever you want to say, go ahead.
And who are the people doing all this testing and giving of power? If only there was a system where everyone could have a vote in picking these people out so as to guard against a small group of people abusing the system for nefarious purposes. Nah, that’s a crazy idea. And these rules… what is to prevent those in power from changing the rules?
If the people have no input into the actions of government, then the government can, and usually will, be hijacked by someone or some group who does not have the interest of the people in mind. You have to start with an understanding that people will do evil things if given the power to do so. The OP is making the implicit assumption that people naturally tend towards “good action”. We have seen this to not be the case over and over again in history.
Like I said just a idea, and yes in theory if the selection process is fair, if the educational system is right, if they were given the real power it would work, this is to solve the problem of gridlock in democracy and the at the same time, the evil dictatorship.
Ender’s Game actually had such a school, the school was actually for training of military commanders, earth was under threat, and they need to train up bunch of brilliant genius to command the army, so with that kind of motivation, the process is somewhat fair in the selection and training. But yes, I highly doubt such system would be put in place for normal government.
How do we ensure the selection process is fair, and what is the consequence if it isn’t?
How do we ensure that the education system is right?
You are proposing that democracy is not the best system. In your OP you outlined some of democracy’s alleged shortcomings, but you didn’t:
-
Explain why those shortcomings are not inherent in other systems.
-
What system you are putting forth as better.
You’re new here, so maybe you don’t know how debates work. It is up to you, as the OP, to present a better system and thus prove that democracy is not the best system. It is not up to us to disprove your thesis.
Ok let me clarify of 2 of my thesis.
-
Democracy is not one size fit all shoe for all nations on earth, there are many prerequisites that a society must achieve before it can be successful transform into a democratic system. It is a bad idea to slap on democracy in any society regardless of their cultural background. This is why we are seeing so many democratic nations are also some of the most failure government in the world.
-
Even for successful democracies, there are limitations that is inherent in it is system, just like I have listed from point 1-9.
That idea I have base on Ender’s game, is NOT what I think is the best government, I think there no ultimate form of government for human society. And democracy by far, is not the best form of government as vast majority of people are thinking.
So I guess, if you want to force me to come up with a system that I can say is “BETTER” than democracy, then I can’t. And this is now the whole point of this debate.
And judging from vast majority of the replies on this forum, people are arguing with me that indeed, there is no better alternatives than democratic systems.
But if you really force me to make my position more clearly than a system other than democracy that also works, I would have to say the current Chinese style government works just as well for China.
Because it was under that system, where political power is highly concentrated, they were able to carry out the extremely successful reform, the reform that was need to improve the nation, remember, they were actually poorer than than Ethiopia by the late 1970s, and even so, the government was extremely reluctant to change. But because of the system they had, one person was able to convince others and carried out the reform, it have really dramatics improved people’s life. China have brought over 500 million people out of absolutely poverty in just 20 years, this is unprecedented in human history.
It was also under this system, they were able to quickly decide what is the best way to spend the revenue and carry it out. They made an effort to let go of military, and instead of developing the economy, in a normal democratic state, this would be very hard to do because the military industrial complex always have one of the highest lobbying power. But under the authoritarian system, the decision was made easier.
It was also under this system, they were able to cut through a lot of red tapes to attract foreign direct investments from other nations, and by contract although India’s wage is actually far lower than China’s, but they can’t nearly attract nearly the same amount of investments. Because they didn’t invest into infrastructures like China did on a massive scale.
It was also under this is system that they were able to make very harsh decisions, some of them ended up benefiting the nation overall, some of them did not, but the ones that did really paid off. For example they build the 3 Georges Dam, which is the largest in the world, at the time it was being build, there was a lot of negative coverage and opposition, they had to forcible relocated over 1 million people, flood many of the ancient grounds, in a democratic nation this would been impossible to do because of many oppositions. But the government was able to weight the cost and benefit and in the end, they choose to do it, and they relocated 1 million people. In the end, the dam was very successful, today it is able to generate enough power to reduce 100 million tones of greenhouse gas each year, it is also able to prevent many floods that would have killed thousands of people, for example in 1998, before the dam was build there was a flood that killed over 7000 people and cause billions of damages, but since the dam was build there had been 2 major flood that was actually even bigger than that, however the dam was able to completely eliminated the disaster, instead it was able to store up water and release them slowly down stream.
Another example is that China know it is one of the most polluted place on earth due to economic growth, and because of this the government is able to invest vast amount of money into renewable energy research, just few years ago they became the #1 producer of renewable energy on earth, and just 10 year before that, they were not even on the top 10 list. And they are also investing most amount of money into renewable research than any other nation. Basically the government know what is needed and without any opposition like oil companies, they just went ahead.
The top 7/9 of Chinese leadership are engineers by degree, they are not elected by the people, but each of them have very tough experiences, they all have governed territory that are larger than Germany or France, and they are only selected base on their performances, not popularity. That means the leadership can often make the right decision to do what is right with very little opposition from like democratic nations.
So what I mean is, authoritarian government that can actually use good judgement and carry successful economic reform better than democratic government that cannot for example India. China started the economic reform in 1978, at the time they had almost the identical GDP as the democratic India same year, population was also similar. But now it is the year 2012, China’s GDP is 400% of India’s while the population is still very similar. China faced even as much problems as India 30 years ago, but the authoritarian government was able to successively navigate it is way through success, while the democratic India was not.
China is not perfect today, they still face many problems such as income inequality, rich poor divide, gender imbalance etc… but they have show that the authoritarian government in the right time and right place is better than democratic system.
I also think for the future in this rapid changing world. I think authoritarian government is more needed to navigate through all the rapid changes that is needed than the grid lock democratic government, and I mean successful democratic government, if you want to take into vast majority of other democratic government around the world such as Haiti, Indonesia, Philippine etc… there is no match.
The problem with China, though, is that it’s much easier to “catch up” than to be the first. IOW, it took China less time to go from agrarian to industrialized (although China is still largely agrarian) than Western countries, because we had to discover all this industrialized stuff. China, so far, has mainly been copying things that other countries have already done. Once they fully “catch up”, I doubt that an authoritarian country like China will produce innovators that allow them to surpass Western countries unless they become more democratic.
Still, for every “China”, there are other failed authoritarian countries where tens of millions of people have died. So, I’m still not buying that the Chinese model is reproducible around the world.
Sorry, I struggled to take this seriously after reading the opening gambit.
True, but you can’t prove that China can’t innovation if they don’t have a democratic system, I hear about this a lot. That their system cannot produce innovator, however there is really no proof of that. They are sending millions of students all over the world to study, a lot of them decides to come back after they are done, they can also attract many people all around the world to work there because they have the the money. And actually the political control is not as harsh as you hear from Fox News, people don’t get arrested randomly on the street or get shot because they express their opinion, that is more of China in the 1960s or North Korea today. I think it is actually the economic system with competition that truly determines innovations. And remember, some of the major inventions in the worlds are produced by ancient Chinese, whom have a much more repressive political system than modern day China.
I agree with the catching up part, the technology they received from all over the world played the largest part, but think about it, if they can do it, why can’t other nations achieve the similar result? Why not democratic India? democratic Haiti, Philippe etc… Because after all, there is actually more technology transfer restriction to China than to all of these nations. (google China Dual-Use Export Regulations)
Just because you have the ability to take in new technology, does not mean you will be successful automatically. It still takes a conscious political reform from the top leaderships to start it all, and why didn’t other nation’s leadership did the same thing?
I agree just like for every successful democratic nations, 10 fail democracies fellows behind. The same thing can be said for authoritarian government. But think about it? How many China has it been? So far just one, and they are not spreading the political system all over the world like United States spreading democracy, so who is to say, if they do decide to spread their system, it won’t work?
Centralized government with good technical expertise governing a state driven capitalism. I think the wild card is actually getting the good government in the first place, maybe you can argue that the Chinese leadership is not easily reproducible in other nations.
Yeah I know, my fail grammar means this whole post is actually a joke.
Actually I remember something, South Korea and Taiwan all develop their economy to what they are today base on an authoritarian government, which heavily controlled the economy and political process. it was only recently that they transformed into a democracy. And Japan come close as well, for many decades, they were governed by 1 party only which very little opposition.
One can argue that to develop a nation from poor, a more centralized nation is better than a democratic one.
But my concern does democratic nation have what it takes to make all the changes in the rapid changing future.
To be fair, the question itself, “Is Democracy the best form of gov’t?” is one which should have been asked and answered in high school. And ‘best’ is subjective, not objective.
No democracy is perfect: but it’s the best ‘worst’ option available. Nothing you’ve written/postulated here changes that.
Feel free to actually read through all my posts. Unless the grammar bother you too much.