I would be an amazing benevolent dictator. You, not so much.
From now on, the official language of the SDMB is Swedish.
Regards,
Shodan
Democracy has numerous disadvantages:
- You cannot prioritize longterm gain (i.e., big action on climate change) if it means a short-term loss that will you get your party voted out of office
- It is only as good as its majority vote (if the majority wants slavery, then you get slavery)
- A great deal of voters do not understand issues well (this problem is exacerbated in nations or states that like to do referendums, for instance - the option that *looks best at immediate glance on the ballot *typically wins, even if it is not in fact the best)
- Along with 3# mentioned above, any proposal that is counterintuitive will lose, even if good (i.e., treat prison inmates better, and they will re-integrate better into society after release, which runs counter to a societal desire to punish inmates harshly)
- The democratic process (my party vs. your party) tends to generate two halves that hate each other, Team Blue versus Team Red
None of this is to say that dictatorship doesn’t have equal or even more flaws, of course. But the OP posits “abolishing democracy if it produces the right results.” So that presumes/assumes a good dictator at the helm, with good successors coming after him.
Wait… You want me to vote as to whether democracy should be preserved in a particular set of circumstances?
I’m not sure that’s a thing.
Name one country that’s ever voted to end democracy. For example, Germany voted for Hitler. Did he campaign on ending democracy or was that something that he did because he was, you know, a loonie? Probably the latter.
Can you explain exactly how Trump is a “failure of democracy”? The President was elected by the Electoral College just as the Founding Fathers intended. They establish a republic not a democracy. Trump did not win the popular vote, but that is not how the Presidential elections are decided in the US. One can not change the election rules after the fact. If the popular vote was the way to decide the Presidency, candidates would only campaign in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other high population centers. it would be a completely different kind of contest.
If you would like to see the Electoral College abolished, get your Congress man and/or women to amend the Constitution.
Our Constitution created a limited representative republic. A republic is different from a democracy. In a democracy, the majority can directly make laws, while in a republic, elected representatives make laws. Basically, in a pure democracy, the majority has unlimited power, whereas in a republic, a written constitution limits the majority and provides safeguards for the individual and minorities.
I definitely disagree with this. The majority of people are certainly capable of making huge mistakes. Look at our country’s history and the way the majority has treated black people and Native Americans.
Democracy’s strength is that it usually corrects itself in the long run.
Instead we have a system where candidates focus their efforts on Iowa and New Hampshire. Both of which have smaller populations than any of the cities you mentioned but have much more of a say in selecting our President. How is that a better system?
And the French people could have asked the King to abolish the monarchy and the aristocracy. But I doubt the King would have agreed to do so.
When you have a political system that gives power to a minority, it’s very hard to convince that minority that they should use their power to change the system.
Yeah, I interpreted the OP as meaning “produces the right results in the short term”, since what you describe is demonstrably not going to happen in reality.
If we managed to set up one of Wesley Clark’s super intelligent AIs that are well informed and constrained to place the well being of citizens first that would be different - basically that’s equivalent to having a theocracy run by a literal benevolent god. If that were available I’d abandon democracy in a heartbeat, presuming that (as described) we’re guaranteed no Skynet situation will occur.
It kind of depends on what you think the goal of democracy is.
I’m of the opinion that the real goal of democracy is to put the government into the hands of good leaders who, since they do not have dynastic permanence, are motivated to at least pay attention to the will of the people, and who if they turn out to be terrible can be removed by the approach of “waiting a while and voting them out” rather than “civil war”.
(And yeah, I honestly think that the founding fathers felt that those men they were allowing to vote would be selecting educated statesmen to lead them. Stupid founding fathers didn’t realize that TV would turn it into a popularity contest and social media would turn it into a slandering contest.)
Suffice to say, Trump fails very hard on the “good leader” front, which is a pretty fundamental failure. And he seems to be trying to flout the “don’t need a civil war to get rid of him” part too.
The majority of people make huge political errors in judgment mostly because they are not accustomed to being consulted, and therefore don’t spend much time mulling these matters over.
In an ideal world, I would like everyone’s input. I would like every political decision to be in all of our collective hands. It may not be feasible for a variety of logistical reasons, but no, I do not oppose democracy out of fear of what Joe Unwashed Average Person would opt to do in his ignorance and foolishness. I’ll take the maximum amount of possible democracy.
Only if I get to be Supreme Dictator for life. No one else is trustworthy enough for the gig.
Again with more of this general " Trump fails very hard on the “good leader” front" stuff. Specific examples PLEASE.
China has been stealing our technology and jobs for the last 30 years. Trump says, “Enough” and imposes sanctions and brings them to the negotiating table. That’s leadership.
WW 2 ended 75 years ago and the US taxpayer is still burdened with the defense of Europe. Trump only asks Germany and the rest of Europe to pay their far share and people go crazy and accuse him of wanting to destroy NATO. That’s leadership.
Closing the southern Border to illegal immigration. As Obama said on the Senate floor on April 3, 2006, “because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked.” Trump agrees with Obama on illegal immigration. That’s leadership.
Not in this thread.
Democracy isn’t binary. The original constitution provided for much less democracy than we have now.
More democracy makes more sense under certain conditions–an educated populace, an absence of desperate poverty, etc.
That said, a major downside to abolishing democracy for the “right results” is the definition of those results. I might benefit from an autocratic solution to a problem I have today, only to find that that same autocratic structure gives me bigger problems tomorrow.
The problem with Democracy is people make crappy decisions, I’d say we strive to fix the part were people make crappy decisions first before we go back to the good old days(*) of autocracies.
- They sucked, actually.
The problem with the god like “benevolent” AI under control is that sooner or later (I’d be sooner) you’ll be forced to submit your own free will to the dictates of Godgle, for the greater good of course.
Those two examples involve things which are US-specific and which would be US-specific regardless of what y’all called your government.
And as amazing as it may seem, occasionally there are politicians who do try to do a decent job, not merely to get reelected. Sadly, that the US has so many elected positions compared with other countries (I’m not sure if y’all are the country that elects people to more types of jobs, but if you’re not it’s got to be close), and that your parties actually require their elected officers to work as part of their electoral machine even when not working on their own re-election, makes the “work to the election” mindset even stronger than in other locations.
The Spanish king did. So did the other Spanish king. It did not turn well either time.
The concept of democracy is fine, but there are other forms of democracy that are probably better. For instance, large scale nation-states were probably a mistake.
It wouldn’t be “sooner”, it’d be “immediate”, because that’s how all government works - they make these things called “laws”, which then restrict your free will to strap your neighbor down an eat his kidneys (or to run red lights, or practice medicine without a permit, etc, etc, etc).
The magic word here is, of course, “benevolent” - if you have “benevolent” leaders it doesn’t matter if they’re kings, presidents, dictators, or AIs, because they’re not going to do things that are bad for either society or for individuals (unless what’s good logically has to bend to the good of something else). Arguably the whole point of government structure from the perspective of the governed is to get and keep benevolent people in charge. (Well, benevolent to them personally anyway.) If you somehow have a benevolent and capable AI, then why not elect him for ‘life’?
Actually the politicians aren’t the biggest problem. Crappy President? Gone in four, or at worst, eight years. Its the “Permanent” bureaucracy who implement the policies established by the elected officials. “Their” party loses election, no problem. Their party will get back in sooner or later. These individuals are around for 20, 30 years or more and become very adapt at ignoring policies that they disagree with. They just lay low and wait out an administration that is seeking changes to the status quo. They all know that outside of the very top officials in each department, they can’t be firedand they can do pretty much anything they like.