[QUOTE=Winston Churchill]
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=E. M. Forster]
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
[/QUOTE]
Democracy is often viewed as being equivalent to freedom (of a sort), since it means that the people govern themselves and decide for themselves what rules they should live under.
So if they’re not being governed well, they have only themselves to blame.
I’ve gotta go with this. If I’m going to be governed by a conglomeration of idiots, I’d like to have a vote and enough confusion for my particular brand of idiocy to be not worth the trouble or turning the whole of the state after it.
Does “democracy” require “one man one vote” principle? Because I can think up at least one system of an (arguably) even more representative government than the one we currently enjoy that doesn’t involve popular elections at all.
Well, we could have sortition instead of election. I.e., if we chose Congresscritters at random, like jury duty, we would have a Congress that really represents the people in the sense of being a statistically reliable representative sample of them, and likely to feel about things in general the same way the general population would if polled. But, then we would not have a Congress, we would have a focus group; it would be unqualified to do anything but vote up-or-down on executive proposals; and you do not want a random-choice Executive.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I admit it was confusing. However, I said that monarchy or dictatorship were “efficient solutions.”
Some were efficient and some not at governing. However, that’s not what I mean. Rather, they are direct, self-evident, and immediately demonstrate a method of governance.
I would relate it to the Aristotlean “Efficient Cause.”
That reminds me of a thought I had. The ideal democracy and the ideal absolute ruler would look very similar to each other; they would both serve the needs and desires of the people, just that one would do so top-down and the other from the bottom up. However, it’s far easier to approach the ideal democracy than it is the ideal dictatorship, especially when you start scaling the problem up to larger & more complex societies. A really good leader can probably run a smallish tribe better than democracy; but a nation of millions is way too complex.
In other words, the best real world democracy is going to be closer to its own ideal than best real world dictatorships are likely to be to their own ideal form.
No, the President would be elected by the randomly-selected Congressmen from among themselves. After a short (one month?) campaign season.
And obviously the non-political non-elected Civil Service would play a big role as advisers and guides to the newly selected Congressmen. Kinda like UK in that respect.
I don’t think it’s clear at all that democracy is given much more than lip service, even by patriotic Americans.
US foreign policy has been staunch in its support of capitalism, rather than democracy. We have overthrown, directly or indirectly, quite a few popular governments that we considered unfriendly to capitalism, and replaced them with dictatorships that allowed our corporations favorable terms. A very famous case was Iran in 1953.
And as we speak, Republicans who supposedly favor small government have appointed czars over cities in Michigan, with the power to completely ignore the wishes, and even the enacted legislation, of the elected mayor and city council.
Any attempt to get career politicians out of the system of a modern state is not only a bad idea but starts from completely false premises and misplaced priorities. We need career politicians like we need career anything-else; government is too important a business and too complicated a business for amateurs.
The problem is the “politician” career attracts absolutely the worst kind of person - those who crave power. The system I suggested would replace career politicians with behind-the-scenes career Civil Service people who would not have the power but would have (hopefully, after the years of employment) the expertise.
I don’t see how anyone who has been conscious for the last ten years can say that. I honestly believe that people picked at random (with common-sense restrictions for age, criminal record, etc.) from the phone book could take a six-month course and do better than the clowns we have in Congress now.
Obviously, the same is not true for the civil service people who do the actual work.
This sentence is making the yellow light on my BS meter light up. The following are real (not just rhetorical) questions:
How many politicians got into politics because they crave power?
How much power does the average politician actually have?
Is craving power necessarily a bad thing in a leader? Might not a benevolent, effective leader crave power so that he can use it for the common good? (Yes, I know, “power corrupts,” but I’m not talking about the effects of having power right now, but of craving it.)
I dunno, your randomly-selected mope might honestly believe there are simple solutions to difficult problems (“National debt? We’ll just print more money and pay it off”) while the professional politician says there are simple solutions to win an election, but knows otherwise.
That’s why there would be hundreds of “randomly selected mopes”, not just one (I’d suggest increasing the # of Congressmen to 2000 or so if the scheme was implemented). It would be a truly representative government.
I must disagree. The average democracy would indeed be better than the average principality. But a wise prince is indeed much more likely than a wise democracy.
We need democracy because no man can be trusted, and it is better to have a hundred weaker men who can be corrupted than one powerful man who can be corrupted.
But of course, it does happens that a good number of times it is to have the power to make powerful groups that do not care about the well being of others to change.
I don’t think so. First, I think you overestimate the likelihood of a “wise prince”. And second, it’s simply beyond human capability for a single person no matter how wise to run a nation with any attention to detail. The bigger the group, the less the single ruler can do, and the more important the institutions of that society become.
Now, postulate some benevolent superhuman ruling AI that can actually rule a society of millions with the same kind of detail that a human can rule a society of a few hundred and that’s a different matter.
Because it’s the fairest system we’ve come up with. And people have an innate desire for things to be fair.
The problem with random samples, BTW, is who is making sure that samples are truly random? The people need to have at least some degree of trust in that person or people. Even if that trust is not based on them actually being good people, and just the fact that they fear being kicked out.