Name one authoritarian regime that qualifies as in the top 5 “best” governments ever. Just one.
Mediocre America. Mediocre UK. Mediocre New Zealand and mediocre Oz. Mediocre Nordic countries…
I think most people would go with whoever offers them the highest quality of life. Or maybe who has a good job in either system. People who have it good usually dont want to rock the boat.
We get it, but it’s a stupid proposition.
That’s kind of the point of a democracy; it has stable mechanisms for change based on the will of the people.
What the OP’s proposing is basically some sort of benign despot versus some kind of malevolent oligarchy, whereby the figurehead at the top changes based on popular vote, but the policies, etc… do not.
That’s no more a democracy than the USSR or Baath-era Iraq were. Both had direct popular ‘elections’, but nothing really changed.
If that’s the question, then I don’t see how there’s any argument- you go with the oppressor that you agree with, under the thinking that the yoke will be a bit lighter.
No, the hypothetical is that the political party you happen to oppose always wins elections. Not that this will always be the same party, or that if it is, the party will never change.
Many people change their political views over their lifetime - under the hypothetical, a person who (say) supported a socialist party (and opposed the conservative party) in their youth, then grew more conservative as he or she got older (and opposed the socialist party), would nonetheless always ‘lose’ elections - the conservatives would win when they were young, and the socialists would win when they were older.
You only get an unchanging political party in offiice if the reader has never changed in his or her opposition to a particular party. Since this is pegged to the individual, it is incorrect to say as a generalization that under the hypothetical, “… democracy **won’t **change”.
As I point out, it isn’t even true. The OP as it is worded is not that “democracy won’t change”.
The likable Dictator is at best equal to the likable Democracy. The unlikable Dictator is so much worse than the unlikable Democracy, that I’m not willing to take that chance.
Democracy.
This is pretty silly. If your particular set of values is extremely unpopular in a country, then, no, even if it’s a democracy, then it’s fair to say that the government is not going to change in your desired direction, anytime in the foreseeable future. The basic kind of society that America has is not going to change to a communist or socialist society, because most Americans don’t favour either of those things, and more importantly because the support bases for either party don’t favour either of those things. So if you want a communist country and you live in America, you’re going to have to resign yourself to the government always being hostile to your values, ‘democracy’ or not.
Well, [del]Might[/del] Money makes Right.
Thank Citizens United, people…
The German Referendum in 1934 was designed to put an end to democracy. It was to gain approval for Hitler’s assuption of supreme leadership.
“Voting” isn’t “democracy”. Voting is merely a tactic used by democracies. The essence of a democracy is the possibility of regular change, so ‘voting for an eternal supreme leader’ is not ‘democracy’.
False. The likable Dictator has much more power to turn society in a likable direction, than a likable democratic leader would.
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I don’t know what country you live in. If you state your country, then maybe I can assess whether your claim is true. Somehow I doubt it.
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Of course I’m proud to admit it, why wouldn’t I be.
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By ‘sheep’, you mean that they know what the good things in life really are, and don’t spend their time yapping about ‘OMG FREEDOM!!!’ like a bunch of whining crybabies?
As for mediocrity, yes, all those societies you mention are (I’d say) mediocre in the sense that I mean. I’d happily rank Cuba since 1959 as a better government than any the US, New Zealand, the UK or the Nordic countries have had in that time period. (I’m not sure what ‘Oz’ is). I could supply a half dozen more authoritarian states if you want.
Well, that explains a lot about your views. So, you think morality is a human construct then?
I vote for the democracy. At least I can vote and campaign to change it.
How would you describe the political structure of Germany in 1933, if not ‘parliamentary democracy’? The possibility of voting for change encompasses the possibility of voting for change in the wrong direction.
However, “the will of the people” doesn’t necessarily mean “the will of all the people” or “the will of the majority, with due respect for minority rights.” To use another example, Mississippi in the early 1800s was a democracy; they had regular elections and could vote for change at each interval. If you were black in Mississippi in 1820, would you rather stay there or move to one of the absolute monarchies of Europe?
“Democracy” is not necessarily equivalent to “freedom for everyone”; plenty of democracies have kept slaves or other underclasses, and a slave agitating for change tended to have a short lifespan. If you get lynched, neither you nor your family are better off, and the fact that in 150 years people of your ethnicity will be able to live relatively unmolested in Mississippi means what if nobody in your family survives that long?
Democracy is not an action, it is a system. What Germans did in the early 1930s is transition from a “democratic” system to a “non-democratic” system.
They did this, in part, by voting in a referendum posed by the supreme leader to ratify his supreme-leaderdom, but this fact does not thereby make his supreme-leaderdom “democratic”. Rather, he’s an object lesson in the awful consequences of following a national-romantic impulse to follow ‘heroic leaders’ into giving up on democracy.
Now, democracy does not, in theory, require the rule of law, or universal sufferage.
Only the tendency is for democracies to, in practice, require these things for functioning - the absence of the rule of law leads to democracies decaying into dictatorships, while the absence of universal sufferage leads groups not represented agitating for change, with a certain amount of moral force.
Hence, the history of most Western nations has a trend towards gradually accepting the rule of law and gradually, often grudgingly and reluctantly, extending the vote - from ‘males with a certain amount of property’ to ‘all males of the correct ethnic background’ to ‘all males’ to ‘all adults’.
This is a good point - for that person, the dictatorship might be preferable - but I think the OP’s hypothetical is a little too vague for me to change my answer based on a single example like this.
We could find examples on the other side too. Like you live in Sicily under a nobleman that you totally agree with, but the local Mafioso is making your life miserable. The nobleman wants to stop the Mafia, but has been unable to do so.
It’s right there in my Location field…
I dunno, “Police states are OK as long as I’m good” isn’t a common sentiment.
Who said anything about just talking?
It must be a particularly idiosyncratic sense, then…
This is the stupidest statement I’ve read so far this year. Probably this decade, come to think of it.
Australia. It’s a common nickname. Are you sure you should be having political conversations if you don’t know how to look things like this up?
If they’re all of the calibre of Cuba, knock yourself out…
Clearly. Prove different.
Sure. I’m not arguing that Hitler was democratic, but rather that the system that let Hitler become the supreme leader was a democratic system. The power to vote for change includes the power to vote for bad changes, including the end of the system of voting.
No it does not, and therein lies the dilemma at the heart of this poll: is a democracy that does not include strong respect for the rule of law necessarily better than a benevolent dictatorship that does? I think the answer must be NO. A democracy that doesn’t respect the rule of law decays into dictatorship, probably not of the benevolent sort, whereas an authoritarian regime that does respect the rule of law is likely to move towards a more just society (see, for example, the evolution of English government from Magna Carta onwards–it wasn’t a smooth path, and it included its fair share of bumps and a civil war, but the notion that even the king was bound to the law was established fairly early).
Therefore, the best answer to the poll depends on exactly what “political ideals” are in play. If the rule of law is one of the ideals not staunchly supported by the winning “democratic” political party, then I would not regard that nation as better than the alternative.
Voting to end democracy is not, in itself, part of democracy. It is a deliberate abnegation of that system.
There is really no paradox here - the “system of democracy” is not simply “voting”, it is the notion that the people can choose their rulers periodically, in free and fair elections. Chosing a ‘ruler for life’ is not democratic, even if the choice is made by way of a vote. Similarly, a vote that is clearly coerced by a ruler so that only one outcome is possible is not “democracy”.
In short, “democracy” is not something that is created by the mere ritual of a vote.
I don’t see it as much of a dilemma, really. Certainly there can be authoritarian regimes with a strong sense of the rule of law, and democracies without it: but all things being equal, the latter is less likely than the former. The problem with authoritarian regimes tends to be respect for the rule of law over time - it is subject to the contingencies of the particular authoritarian in charge.
We’re not talking a ritual vote, though; we’re talking a genuine, “will of the people” decision to choose to give Hitler more power.
If democracy is the freedom to choose, then it necessarily includes the freedom to choose badly, and the freedom to choose a different form of government. If the rule is “you can choose your ruler, but you cannot choose A, B, or C,” then does it matter whether A, B, and C represent suppressed political parties or Hitler’s vision of government? You are still telling people that your elections really are not free, and that they must make their choices from the “approved” list (and who gets to make the approvals?).
The OP is not positing an “all things being equal” scenario; he’s describing a specific choice between a democratic system that doesn’t share my political ideals and a dictatorship that does. The choice comes down to what my political ideals are and which system matches more closely to which ideals. (By that, I mean I and most people have an entire set of ideals, ranging from rule of law to specific economic choices, and it is unlikely any government exactly matches all of these, so there’s a set of priorities. A government that has no respect for my environmental views, but does support the rule of law, is probably better than one that exactly mirrors the former and has no respect for law.