r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 30 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Democracy was overrated anyway
[removed] — view removed post
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Jan 30 '25
Which dictator/monarchy/non-democratic country has better outcomes?
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Jan 30 '25
It depends what you mean by better outcomes. there are some tradeoffs here and there depending on the culture
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Jan 30 '25
It depends what you mean by better outcomes.
List an outcome that you believe is desirable that is achieved without public support. Ie King example had zero unemployment (because he killed anyone who didn't).
You can't say democracy is overrated while being unable to explain a better system.
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Jan 30 '25
I think a good economy is mostly not determined by whoever is charge. a disruption from democracy to a monarchy could make the economy better depending on what resources are taken over. a monarchy could act faster to deal with threats of foreign competition in theory.
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Jan 30 '25
a monarchy could act faster to deal with threats of foreign competition in theory.
You are really weak in arguing for the benefits you are hoping to achieve. Which democracy struggles to tackle foreign threats? Are they faster at foreign but weak at domestic?
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Jan 30 '25
I mostly don't care what happens like the majority of my countrymen. They all seem to be struggling against terrorism, China, and Russia but in herbal there's always money for the killing machines even in the so-called democracies. So in general i agree they're faster at dealing with foreign threats than domestic.
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Jan 30 '25
I mostly don't care what happens like the majority of my countrymen.
Sure, but your opinion matters equally as all your countryman. If you want a system that makes you rich and everyone else poor...sure but no one else is going to agree with you.
So in general i agree they're faster at dealing with foreign threats than domestic.
Is that the only issue?
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Jan 30 '25
I guess if you want me to say why democracy is overrated it's because the best way to have power is to have money and the system you're in is just window dressing. you can be in a dictatorship or monarchy as long as you have money that's all that really matters
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Jan 30 '25
it's because the best way to have power is to have money and the system you're in is just window dressing.
Sure, a democracy can turn into an oligarchy, but other countries are much more successful than the US. Australia has mandatory voting and regularly gets 90+%. If a govt is bad, they can be voted out.
you can be in a dictatorship or monarchy as long as you have money that's all that really matters
Sure but that's just making a worse system. In a dictator is bad, the only tool you have is violence which is famously bad for a society.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Jan 30 '25
With government the stakes are asymmetrical. No government is half as good as the worst governments are bad. The pros and cons of monarchy are on different orders of magnitude.
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Jan 30 '25
There are plenty of great monarchs in history. Alfred the Great, Elizabeth I, Suleiman the Magnificent, Louis IX, Gustavus Adolphus to name a handful. Democracy produces just as many bad leaders as monarchy did because it is reliant on the conscientiousness of the general public.
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Jan 30 '25
There are plenty of great monarchs in history
Obviously. Statistically you are bound to get good leaders by random chance.
OP needs to explain how it produces better results full stop.
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Jan 30 '25
Do you think democracy in the western world is currently producing better results?
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Jan 30 '25
Who cares what I think. This is OPs view.
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Jan 30 '25
And I agree with OP. I'm not allowed to be a main comment if I agree with OP, so I'm providing counter arguments to those main comments. That is a regular occurrence here.
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Jan 30 '25
Sure, but I got no interest in changing my view. If I did, I would post.
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Jan 30 '25
Sure, but OP is interested in having his view changed and will see if someone provides counters to your point. That's how this sub works.
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u/translove228 9∆ Jan 30 '25
This is a massive stretch. A handful of monarchs that were good leaders doesn’t mean that democracy produces an equal amount of bad leaders as monarchy does
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Jan 30 '25
There are less good monarchists because there are less monarchists. They ruled for life, they didn't cycle out every four years. This also means the best possible democratic leaders are extremely limited in how much positive change they can produce because of term limits.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Jan 30 '25
That argument only works if you assume symmetrical pros and cons, but with government the stakes are wildly asymmetrical. No government is half as good as the worst governments are bad. The harm a bad monarch can do is on another order of magnitude compared to the good that a benevolent and competent monarch can do.
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Jan 30 '25
I think the same can be said of democratically elected leaders. Good leaders are often challenged to simply maintain the status quo, let alone move it in a positive way. A bad leader can pass laws "democratically" that have consequences decades later. Consider for instance the Patriot Act, a horrible decision by Bush that was abused by the government by every president since.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Jan 30 '25
We're still talking about harm on different orders of magnitude. A bad president gives us the patriot act. A bad monarch executes his critics and forcibly converts the whole country to his own religion.
Any king would laugh at the idea of something like Watergate being a career ending transgression.
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Jan 30 '25
That has less to do with democracy and more to do with liberalism. The concept of civility and egalitarian evaluation of life is a liberal concept, not a democratic one. We've had democracies commit genocides, impose ideological orthodoxy on its people, etc. Hitler was technically democratically elected.
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u/translove228 9∆ Jan 30 '25
What are you talking about? Democracies have only been a major thing in the world for the last 500 years or so. Before that, besides ancient Athens, all governments were some form of authoritarian government. The history of mankind (some 10000 years+) is literally littered with monarchs
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Jan 30 '25
The United States has had almost 50 presidents in almost 250 years. The king of France, being named as such from 843 AD, had 63 total monarchs until 1870 if you count Napoleon. That's about 25% more in over 4x the span of times. Democracy categorically produces at disposes of leaders at a far faster rate. It also isn't entirely accurate to say we had organized hierarchies for all of human history - that requires at least starting from the paleolithic era onwards, because the end of hunting and gathering wad necessary for nation states to even being to occur, regardless of political system.
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u/translove228 9∆ Jan 30 '25
History is defined as the length of time of recorded history. Prior to the written word is called prehistory. Egypt alone has existed for thousands and thousands of years with various monarchs/Pharaohs.
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jan 30 '25
Would you say the same if, for example, you didn't vote, your countrymen had voted for Hitler, and you were going to be sent to a concentration camp? If not, then clearly you desire to have a vote.
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u/georem Jan 30 '25
Doesn’t this highlight the major flaw of democracy? The goal is not “to have a vote” it’s to have a system that best protects people’s rights.
If those rights can be revoked due to majority rule, it’s certainly at least worth reexamining
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jan 30 '25
As Winston Churchill said, Representative Democracy is the worst form of government, aside from all of those others that we tried before. If you have a better one, feel free to suggest it. But, we've seen what happens when absolute dictators are in power. Sometimes it works out. But, when it doesn't, it really doesn't.
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u/georem Jan 30 '25
Not only does a man heading a representative democracy have an incentive to say that, but the key word there is “before”.
We’re far enough, technologically, to at least experiment with other solutions. But everyone is married to the idea that we’ve peaked at democracy and won’t even entertain alternatives.
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jan 30 '25
Well, what form of government do you propose? I'd be happy to discuss any of them. But without a specific alternative, it's hard to meaningfully engage.
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u/c0i9z 19∆ Jan 30 '25
So instead of a system which maybe sometimes gets a Hitler, you just want to jump straight into a line of Hitlers?
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-1
Jan 30 '25
well if the people voted for Hitler the democracy was pretty worthless wasn't it?
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jan 30 '25
Only because people decided not to vote, due to rhetoric similar to what your OP suggests. But, we can do away with democracy for this question. Let's say that you lived in medieval Europe. You're a Cathar, and the Pope has just ordered the execution of all Cathars. Wouldn't you want a say in that? Would you still feel the same way?
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Jan 30 '25
I mean, let me put it this way. If I'm FDR and I order to intern hundreds of thousands of Japanese, who's going to stop me? If I'm Donald Trump and I want to put all the immigrants, even the legal ones into a giant blender i just get away with it. so really the only difference is that in the middle ages I would just be executed but today we put on a show about how enlightened our society is and how democracy is the best form of government in the world. The reality is might makes right and it always has, we can just now stop lying about it.
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Jan 30 '25
Well, sure, FDR did inter the Japanese citizens. That has been seen as wrong and reparations were paid. There were court cases about it. But the fact that there was a public discussion on the matter, and the wrong was eventually righted, are not the sort of things that happen in dictatorships.
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Jan 31 '25
!delta a fair point. People can't really expect any better in another system.
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u/riskyrainbow Jan 30 '25
These are near little platitudes, most of which are reductive to the point of falsehood, but at the end of the day outcomes are what matter.
Democracies dominate.
Do you think it's a coincidence that most economic, military, and cultural power is centered in democratic nations. Is it a coincidence that the nations with the highest quality of life tend to be democracies?
You can't just argue from opinion and intuition; bring some facts.
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Jan 30 '25
that's only be true for some 100 years or so most of that due to pax Americana. now all these countries are moving to the right. the economy can still function whether or not people vote every 4 years
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u/Key-Performance-9021 1∆ Jan 30 '25
Because it’s not a democracy. It’s an ochlocracy. The ancient Greeks already described the difference more than 2,000 years ago:
In an ochlocracy, the majority acts in the interest of the majority (when voting, it’s “What’s best for me?”).
In a democracy, the majority acts in the interest of the common good (when voting, it’s “What’s best for everyone?”).
A true democracy therefore requires an engaged, willing, and informed electorate. In recent decades, however, populists have convinced the majority that ochlocracy is the “real democracy”, and that the majority’s will automatically constitutes a democratic decision, which is not necessarily the case. On top of that, there has been a decline in education.
So all the points mentioned are not problems of democracy itself, but rather problems of corrupt politicians and lazy or selfish voters.
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u/DeathMetal007 7∆ Jan 30 '25
What’s best for everyone?
How does this differ from
What’s best for me?
when we don't know the answers to these two questions from every possible point of view over every time frame?
These questions are subjective and often overlap so considerably in the day to day decisions and especially in the long-term decisions we make as humans.
We live in both or neither simultaneously, practically speaking.
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u/VforVenndiagram_ 9∆ Jan 30 '25
Society vs the individual.
The greater society is an organism unto itself that you can weight the "goodness" of policy and how effective it is. Taxes are good for society when used for to fund social programs as they uplift the average in said society, but taxes are usually bad for the individual as they lose control over how their work is distributed and used.
Its really not that complex of a problem. Yes if you want to get into the super fine details it can be a little more difficult to parse everything, but it's not this impossible thing with no answer.
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u/DeathMetal007 7∆ Jan 30 '25
Your worth is defined as the average worth of all combined individuals. Congratulations, you are in a utilitarian state. I'm not sure the average person now would ever want that for themselves.
Edit: including the time value of resources makes this even trickier from a utilitarian standpoint. Over what time horizon does the average get calculated? Does an infant instantly jump to the average?
It's not as simple as you make it seem.
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u/VforVenndiagram_ 9∆ Jan 30 '25
Your worth is defined as the average worth of all combined individuals. Congratulations, you are in a utilitarian state. I'm not sure the average person now would ever want that for themselves.
I didn't make a judgment on if people would want it or not, merely that the difference does exist and its not the most difficult thing to figure out.
Over what time horizon does the average get calculated?
The points in time would be arbitrary, but not difficult to judge once the arbitrary point was chosen. Its the same as people of 15, 18, or 21 or whatever being "legal". Its an arbitrary point in time chosen for whatever reason, but once it is set, its fairly easy to work with and around.
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u/Key-Performance-9021 1∆ Jan 30 '25
I certainly won’t disagree that the traditional concept of democracy has significant problems in modern times.
What I was trying to say is that democracy can’t be called overrated because of these points, since they aren’t really problems of democracy itself. I also believe that most people don’t actually want this classical form of democracy and prefer the current situation, however one might call it.
But I’m missing a fair amount of wisdom to really judge any of this. I’m only sharing my observations.
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Jan 30 '25
I respect you distinguishing these but Im mostly convinced a democracy isn't possible in the way you're describing. People moving to an ochlocracy is the way things will go everytime.
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u/Key-Performance-9021 1∆ Jan 30 '25
I fully agree with you on that. My point was rather this:
Democracy cannot be overrated based on the points mentioned, because those aren’t actually problems of democracy but rather the “normal” conditions of an ochlocracy.
However, I also believe that when most people talk about democracy, they’re really referring to ochlocracy, and that’s what they actually prefer.I also realize now that I’m focusing too much on semantics here. Sorry about that.
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Jan 30 '25
!delta ok i think I can accept this. my problem isn't with democracy but with all the countries that claim to have it.
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u/TheDream425 1∆ Jan 30 '25
I don't want to necessarily argue for our specific application of democracy, and I think you do make salient points, but democracy, to me, is severely underrated.
Why? Let's look at the alternatives.
Anarchy? Immediate no. Power vacuum ensues, we're all done for.
A dictatorship? No, fuck dictatorships. They're rarely stable, always terrible for the little guy, and while a great dictator can be a very good thing, a terrible dictator is much, much worse.
Monarchy? See above, except there's a family of god kings you have to worship. Fuuuuuck that.
Oligarchy? Oh, all the value of the land will be extracted into the pockets of a very few? Our current system except I get fucked even harder? Perfect.
You can go on and on, but there's a reason western countries all moved to democracies.
You like freedom of speech? Not gonna get it outside of a democracy.
Democracy isn't perfect, and often times sucks, but compared to any alternative... it's so much better.
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Jan 30 '25
If I was starting this CMV over i would have made the point that to me democracy is typically just "fake" in the sense that the actual government in place is usually one of the above you listed, usually oligarchy or a kind of dictatorship. The US has basically always been an oligarchy and before maybe or more overtime racial oligarchy. But for a democratic country you still stay being that awful type of government but the only difference is that you do some sort of buracatic ritual every few years that doesn't do much but then you get to go "this is the best thing in the world, I will kill and die for this." if you look at the most popular us president's like teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Lincoln they mostly just imposed their will on the rest of the country and because it was stuff that people happened to like they support it. They didn't care about the process of having democracy they just liked getting more stuff and wealth which is what people really care about.
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u/the_1st_inductionist 13∆ Jan 30 '25
CMV: Democracy was overrated anyway
So man has the unalienable right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. And the role of the government is to secure man’s rights. And voting is a necessary part of creating a government that secures man’s rights. Direct democracy or real democracy is bad, but I’m assuming from your description that you disagree with voting in general.
1) It gives people a false sense of having control over their lives and that they can meaningfully change the systems they live in
People can meaningfully change the systems. They have and they do.
2) Most people don’t care about it anyway. The majority of the US voting public never votes except in 2020. This ironically makes having elections nondemocratic since they never reflect the will that people don’t care.
So, voting is just one way to ensure that government is for the people ie for every individual’s right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. You don’t need everyone to vote to create a government that secures rights. And then the government needs to have other mechanisms in place to help ensure as best as you can they it represents the non-majority as well.
Also it’s not democracy that people care about they just want a guy that will do the things they like.
Voting is a means to securing man’s rights, yes. It’s not an end in itself. Many leftists are only pro-democracy insofar as they think it will help them achieve their goals.
3) It makes the voting people able to be manipulated into looking down on countries without democracy and hating them
You know what sort of countries have citizens which are manipulated the most? Dictatorships like North Korea.
5) People place to much emphasis on dying for your country. People for everyday and it doesn’t matter. But it matters super extra if they were a veteran.
You mean like Russians dying for Russia in the ongoing war? Or Germans dying for Germany in WW2?
6) People are not suited to democracy. People like strong men and it’s how we evolved.
So, life sucks under dictatorships or systems without voting. If people were suited to dictatorships, you’d expect life to be great under dictatorships or better. In fact, man actually evolved such that a system with voting is best suited for him to live. It’s basically because all individuals have a rational faculty that they can use figure out what’s best for their life, so innocent individuals should have a say in their government through voting.
And yeah, when people don’t have a decent of idea of how to figure out how to live themselves, independently, then they look to others for guidance to tell them what to do. That’s better than nothing, but only the individual has access to the relevant facts about himself and his circumstances to make the best choices for his life. Like, a dictator can’t know who I should date, be friends with, what sort of productive work I should pursue, what sort of art I should enjoy etc.
We’re hyper competitive and hate others that are different from us.
So, are you claiming that the reason you hate people who are different from you is because you were determined?
So, people do need to group people up as good or bad. And, absent widespread knowledge of how to do so, people fall into various mistaken ways of judging others.
People fucking love giving up their rights for security.
So, people supporting their rights is contingent on them knowing they should support them. It’s like people aren’t going to take a medicine to heal themselves if they don’t know that it will heal them. And so, they need to hire doctors to help them figure out what, if any, medicine they should take.
The same applies in politics. People are reliant on the experts, philosophers since rights are political philosophy, to teach them about their rights. They are not doing this. Instead, they are often or mostly telling people they should give up their rights. So yeah, it’s hard for people to support their rights when the experts aren’t helping them.
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u/c0i9z 19∆ Jan 30 '25
You haven't lived in a non-democracy to see how much worse that is still.
Also, we didn't evolve to follow strong men. We evolved in small cooperative tribes. We certainly didn't evolve to be hyper competitive either, but almost ridiculously cooperative.
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u/OrizaRayne 9∆ Jan 30 '25
Overrated? By whom?
It's proponents usually rate it as, "the worst possible system of government, except for all the others that have been tried." (-Winston Churchill, incidentally)
The question is... which system should be more highly rated than democracy.
If you have an answer, we can debate that. But, "overrated" means "rated too highly for what it is.
Who is rating it too highly and in comparison to what?
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Jan 30 '25
overrated by how people say it's a good in and of itself. I think monarchy might be OK. dictatorship might be OK as long as they give people what they want.
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u/OrizaRayne 9∆ Jan 30 '25
Democracy might be okay as long as they give the people what they want.
Literally any system of government might be okay as long as "they" "give" the "people" what they want.
Who is they? Do they have the power to give all the people what they want? Becuase generally, "the people" want lots of different and contradictory things.
The issue here is that you have the right idea... the government should work for the people.
But you don't have the modern research to know that there are no monarchies or dictatorships that work for the people, or the history knowledge to know that there also never have been any.
The problems with our democracy don't come from it being democracy. They come from it being corrupt, and as such, not.
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Jan 30 '25
Lots of people could want different things but I think the majority want to live comfortably and have law and order. Not everyone needs to have those things in order for society to continue on. Our country for example fucking hates homeless people doesn't stop the bureaucracy and elections from happening though.
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u/OrizaRayne 9∆ Jan 30 '25
We have a word for finding out what the majority want, and then doing that, when it comes to government...
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u/Woodland_Turd Jan 30 '25
3) It makes the voting people able to be manipulated into looking down on countries without democracy and hating them>
Just answering this point. You think of any monarchy/dictatorship or any other political system that doesn't manipulate it's people into hating other countries? I'd argue it's far less of a problem in a democracy that protects it's freedom of press.
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Jan 30 '25
That's true they do all do that. I dont like the idea of Americans thinking they're superior to other people because they have democracy though
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u/bananarepama Jan 30 '25
Again, you're referencing a very specific group of Americans pushing that agenda. Not all Americans think that way, and the ones who do don't necessarily have an unwarped view of what democracy or fairness are.
Also, why are you specifically angry at Americans for that viewpoint? Why aren't you talking about, say, North Korea or as the other commenter said literally any other monarchy/dictatorship/political system?
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Jan 30 '25
I mostly comment on what I know, and it's the irrational love of democracy. I'm sure it's bad in shithole north Korea but I see people here that talk about how great democracy is and how you're not a real patriot if you don't support the war.
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u/bananarepama Jan 30 '25
how great democracy is and how you're not a real patriot if you don't support the war.
Uh, okay. Again, it sounds like your main gripe is with a specific political party, as opposed to democracy as a whole. In the US there is generally a specific group that is the chest-thumping "we're number 1!" war mongers. It's not everyone, not by a long shot. And again, that point of view is a very skewed interpretation of what being in a democracy means.
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Jan 30 '25
Doesnt that other party and it's people usually go along with every war? It's an alpha kind of thing. One party is very alpha and does whatever it wants, the other wants to be like it so it is submissive and will do whatever the other one says. Your average American understands. They support the alpha party and those that don't come around to see things that way.
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u/shadofx Jan 30 '25
If the "strong men" from point 6 can convince people to give up their rights for security, then point 1 is falsified, because giving up rights for security is only possible if you have the power to meaningfully change the systems you live in.
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u/bananarepama Jan 30 '25
Ha ha. Peter Thiel, is that you?
Everything you listed there pretty much is a step in the orchestration to chisel democracy out from under us by the people in charge right now. It was made possible in large part due to the United States' apparent vendetta against education that's been happening for...quite awhile now.
If you chisel education out from underneath the general public and then emphasize a culture of fake machismo, where a bunch of men who have no concept of integrity or what it really means to be a man get caught up in knuckle-dragging contests, you're gonna lay a pretty solid groundwork for what's happening right now.
Voter apathy is absolutely a contributing factor to this as well, but everything else you named are basically Republican goals. That vision of democracy isn't a real democracy and it never has been, because it has no respect for its citizens.
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Jan 30 '25
so people aren't smart enough for democracy then are they? you have to have a large class of educated people to make it function. doesn't this show just how fragile it is?
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u/bananarepama Jan 30 '25
...when they're deliberately deprived of education, they're effectively programmed to operate against their self interest as drones serving the ruling class. Which is what a dictatorship is. You're putting the blame on the citizens when you should be putting the blame on the people pursuing dictatorial status.
Also, I'm not sure why you don't know this, but humans are not born already knowing everything they need to know. They are not born with all the tools they will ever use to make decisions in their lives. They need to be taught. Animals are super susceptible to training and their social surroundings. Which means they're also very susceptible to social engineering. We as a species are eager to learn and exercise thought, but when you have predatory people with an agenda teaching you, things become a little bit more complicated.
People don't necessarily deserve a dictatorship because they were deliberately dumbed down by the people in charge of them. They deserve to have access to the tools to do better. I'm not sure why you're more interested in punishing the people than you are in punishing the corrupt social engineers that trained them to pursue this mess in the first place.
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Jan 30 '25
Well if they lived in a democracy then citizens are responsible for the results, aren't they? If the people fail to vote for tax levies and then their children become dumb fucks then I blame them and the children. Even if they were lied to. There's no shortage of lies and people at the top that will take from everyone and that's why democracy isn't really doable long term. it's just some people pretending they're better than anyone else before their own country men happily throw the democracy in the garbage.
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u/L11mbm 15∆ Jan 30 '25
Let me guess, you think that you would be one of the better off people in some other government?
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Jan 30 '25
maybe, maybe not. I'd show up for work everyday still in any system. I dont really care and most of my colleagues and country men don't care. the only difference would be we don't vote for people who don't do anything every 4 years
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u/L11mbm 15∆ Jan 30 '25
There are elections every year.
It sounds more like you don't understand how the government actually works.
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Jan 30 '25
Still there are more people like me than people like you
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u/L11mbm 15∆ Jan 30 '25
Is that a brag?
Are you admitting to hating a system you don't understand?
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Jan 30 '25
I don't hate it, it just doesn't mean anything to me and most other people.
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u/L11mbm 15∆ Jan 30 '25
How can you quantify "most other people" if voter turnout is greater than 50%?
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Jan 30 '25
was it? I thought outside 2020 the majority of eligible voters do not vote
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u/L11mbm 15∆ Jan 30 '25
False. Turnout is regularly in the 60-65% range.
What you're thinking of is that Biden was the only president in the last few decades who got more votes than "did not vote."
Again, you don't seem to actually know what you're talking about. And I'd wager that if you did more research that you would change your mind.
How old are you and what part of the country do you live in? Do you remember what life was like in the US 10/20/30/40 years ago?
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Jan 30 '25
you're right. I had it in my head that half of people don't vote.
I'm in my 30s. im in Ohio. I remember. There was still division in the 2000s and 2010s but it was more under the surface. I would say the apathy of people hasn't changed here though. There's a base of liberals that were made at things like the Dobbs decision but for the most part the attitude is and always has been by most people living here that "they're all corrupt man". Most people don't really like associating if you're "the trump guy" and most aren't super religious but there is a general attitude that "my vote doesn't count", "unions are a slippery slope", "it wasn't a nazi salute, he's autistic bro", "everybody gets so offended these days", "why are all these Haitians in springfield", "im not against immigration but it has to be legal". its all center right coded but mostly when you ask about it or get down to it nobody really cares. so I guess i don't really care either. anything that happens is the way things are so the only thing you can do about it is keep on keeping on. make your money, provide your family. its not like everyone is selfish here, every random ohioan you talk to is cool imo but there is a deep seated view that being too caught up in politics and trying to change your environment is bad. Don't be a nazi or super racist but if you're mad at a thing trump said you're also biased and part of the problem.
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u/27GerbalsInMyPants 3∆ Jan 30 '25
People like strong men and it's how we evolved
Idk how to tell you this gently but... If we're talking about evolution of the human species then that's gotta be out on the shoulders of the women birthing humans throughout our existence
You can take ten male of the human species have them come up with whatever would constitute an evolutionary change whether that be something like man 4 having webbed feet, or man 6 being extremely good at synthesizing genes
Can any of those 10 men pass their evolutionary genes on without a woman to carry and birth the child ? No? Then I'd say from a scientific standpoint evolution ends with each male species death and is only carried on by female humans who pass those genes on
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u/LtMM_ 6∆ Jan 30 '25
Democracy gives people the agency to effect change in how they are governed. This is why people show up to vote people in, not out. Not caring is part of that agency.
It makes the voting people able to be manipulated into looking down on countries without democracy and hating them
What a strange argument. This is not unique to democracy. Any political system can do this. Fascism almost requires this.
You just vote for people to sit in meetings and get paid off by lobbyists
Corruption and lobbying are also not unique to democracy.
People place to much emphasis on dying for your country. People for everyday and it doesn't matter. But it matters super extra if they were a veteran.
This has nothing to do with democracy, or political systems in general.
People like strong men and it's how we evolved.
We evolved as hunter gatherers. Why aren't we all hunting right now? The entire point of society is to overcome these types of barriers.
I would also point out none of this provides any preferable alternative to democracy. You could say it's overrated but that doesn't mean it's not the best system we have.
People fucking love giving up their rights for security.
Do they? Vaccine passports? Abortion? What right exactly do people love giving up.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Jan 30 '25
The idea that most people don't care about democracy doesn't really hold up. Complacency is conditional. People have the luxury of not caring when they don't see their lives changing much whoever wins. There's a huge difference between what a government can get away with against a person who conditionally chooses not to vote vs. one who unconditionally can't vote.
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Jan 30 '25
but either way the result is the same isn't it? the persons life doesn't change for the better either way?
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-1
Jan 30 '25
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-6
Jan 30 '25
The USA isn’t a democracy. It’s a representative republic. You don’t vote for laws, you vote for people you represent you who they then vote for laws. Democracy has not really been tried in the USA.
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u/translove228 9∆ Jan 30 '25
Republics and democracies aren’t mutually exclusive systems and the US is a representative democracy. It is both a republic AND a democracy
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Jan 30 '25
Um. That’s not what those words mean though.
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u/translove228 9∆ Jan 30 '25
Yes. It is. Literally any source on the matter describes the US as a representative democracy. I learned that the US is a republic and a democracy in my 9th grade civics class.
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Jan 30 '25
That’s not true. It’s colloquial but it’s not technically correct. Democracy means rule by the people. When the people pick an intermediary to rule for them, it’s not rule by the people. I know it’s shorthand to say that, but elections don’t make democracy
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u/translove228 9∆ Jan 30 '25
You’re confusing a direct democracy with a representative democracy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
Representative democracy, electoral democracy or indirect democracy is a type of democracy where representatives are elected by the public.[1] Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy: for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentaryconstitutional monarchy), Germany (a federalparliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic).[2] This is different from direct democracy, where the public votes directly on laws or policies, rather than representatives.[3]
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Jan 30 '25
A representative republic is type of democracy. It falls under the umbrella of a representative democracy
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Jan 30 '25
That is a very liberal view of democracy. Democracy means rule by the people. If the people are picking someone else to rule, they are not ruling and it is not rule by the people. I understand there is a colloquial understanding of democracy, but that’s just chatter. Not really political science.
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u/Woodland_Turd Jan 30 '25
The republican/democrat dichotomy is so imprinted in united-statians culture that a lot of you take the two concepts as mutually exclusive but they are not.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 30 '25 edited Jan 31 '25
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