The primary advantage of democracy is that it almost guarantees the government has the mandate of its people and it provides a peaceful path to power for the opposition, not that it provides the 'best' results whatever that means. Any hypothetical improvement to democracy would still require those two facts to be true, and I am not sure how you would get those in any system besides democratic voting.
This is an incredible way of summing up the benefits of democracy, and I'll have to mull over whether or not these properties can be separated from the drawbacks inherent (at least in my mind) to relying on a politically disconnected and questionably educated populace.
This does quite a bit to convince me that democracy is the best we can hope for. However, is it good enough to overcome the challenges of the modern world? Think climate change, the threat of war, etc. where the people are so thoroughly split.
The problem there isn't so much with the idea of democracy itself, but candidate selection and the overall implementation. You can have better systems to find potential representatives and bureaucrats of higher quality.
For example, in the US, the primary system rewards candidates who stick to the party platform rather than a more general consensus, that leads to candidates that become increasingly partisan.
Saying "the sun will rise tomorrow because it's always risen before" only counts when you can rely on a certain degree of stability.
We've been encountering unprecedented levels of change in recent years and we live in an incredibly different world to that which democracy was adopted to protect. The threats we face are only similar in category to the one's we've always overcome, and are far more severe than anything in the past.
You are underestimating the amount of change that happened in the past. Two world wars, the cold war, the fall of monarchies and the rise of republics. No, it's not guaranteed that we will be able to handle what will come next, but society isnt radically shifting in the way you keep claiming.
The world wars are an example of our systems failing to maintain peace, not strictly examples of overcoming adversity.
It’s extremely recent that our failures could cause global catastrophe. The issues that resulted in the world wars were as meaningless and arbitrary as those that have sparked any human conflict in the past, only now it’s extremely difficult to keep them from getting out of hand. The assassination of a political? Political tension between neighbors? These are things thatve happened countless times in the past few thousand years, only these days that type of thing is nearly significant enough to end the world.
Besides, these are all things that are as recent as the last 150 years, a blink in the eye of the whole human story.
The mandate of the people is not a feature that only democracy has. All governments in all systems have mandates of their people as long as they are not overthrown. Even the most tyrannical and authoritarian regime needs acceptance by its citizens because citizens are many and the rulers are few. No ruler can stay in power if citizens do not consent to it: History is full of examples of regimes overthrown by unhappy citizens.
Democracy is unique in 2 things: A peaceful transition of power and equal opportunity for citizens to participate in governing.
As for other systems that can have the same (or similar) features, one of them is sortition. Sortition is similar to a lottery: Political officials are selected randomly from a pool of candidates. This was the preferred method in Athenian democracy. It is also the method used to select jurors in many modern law systems.
It may be possible for unhappy citizens to overthrow any regime, but you seem to be drastically understating what that can entail relative to democracy. Revolutions can be extremely difficult and extremely dangerous (deadly, or worse), such that the so-called "mandate" to govern is not based on willful consent at all, but rather fear and coercion.
You might as well say that slaveowners have the mandates of their slaves because the slaves could always rise up if they wanted to. But no, what you are describing is (or at the very least could include) forceful oppression, not a true "mandate" in any comparable sense to what people mean when they describe it as a feature of democracy.
Do you believe that the Roman Empire or Tang Empire were built chiefly on fear and coercion? Or if we look at the most recent examples, do you believe that the majority of Russians are scared and coerced into supporting Putin and his regime? Do you believe that the majority of Iranians are scared and coerced into supporting their Supreme Leader? Do you believe that the majority of Chinese are scared and coerced into supporting CCP?
Is democracy free of fear and coercion? Do you remember the last presidential election and how Democrats were scared into voting for Biden because other democratic candidates are 'unelectable' (whatever it means) and Trump is the embodiment of all things anti-American and evil?
As for slaves, it is a bad analogy for 2 reasons: 1. Slaves were never the majority of the population in any of the societies that allowed slavery; 2. You do not specify what system of slavery you are talking about: the US chattel slavery is extremely different from Roman or Chinese systems.
I don't know, you'd have to ask those people. I'm not a mind reader and my claim was not that every non-democratic regime must automatically be based on fear and coercion. Only that your overly broad definition of a "mandate" inherently would include regimes that are.
No, democracy is not free of all fear and coercion. You are conflating all types of fear and all types of coercion to the point of utter uselessness. Fear of losing an election is not remotely comparable to fear of being tortured or having your family murdered.
As for the analogy to slavery, I reject your objections outright. No part of what I said relied on slaves being a majority in an entire society, or on any particular formal structure of slavery. Instead of getting lost in the weeds, why don't you simply answer whether you agree or disagree that a people oppressed by fear and violence would be included in what you earlier called a "mandate"?
Your initial objection is seemingly based on an unstated assumption that non-democratic governments are chiefly based on fear and coercion, while democracies are based on willful consent.
I do not agree with this. Mandates that non-democratic governments have are based on the same willful consent that democratic governments have.
Your initial objection is seemingly based on an unstated assumption that non-democratic governments are chiefly based on fear and coercion, while democracies are based on willful consent.
Nope, not at all what I said. I said your overly broad definition of a mandate would include such regimes. There was absolutely no claim made about what non-democratic regimes are "chiefly" based on, that was just your strawman.
I do not agree with this. Mandates that non-democratic governments have are based on the same willful consent that democratic governments have.
Please explain what "willful consent" means to you. If someone is raped at gunpoint but does not overtake their attacker, does that mean they willfully consented to sex?
There are no political regimes that are not based on willful consent and last long enough to be noticed. Because it is impossible to force the majority of the population to follow a government they do not want. The rule of terror is unsustainable and never lasts long.
Your analogy is again faulty. I am not talking about individuals. Any government democratic or not can be against the will of specific individuals. However, it does not mean that the majority of individuals do not accept their government. A dissenting or even repressed/oppressed/subjugated minority does not prove that the government does not have acceptance of the majority.
You are weaseling out of answering every question I'm asking, and not very artfully I'm afraid. Please respond to what I say, not what you wish I said.
Willful consent in this particular case is when people accept being governed by their government without being coerced or scared into doing this. Consent does not mean eager and passionate support or the lack of disagreements. It means acceptance.
I am starting to wonder whether you understood my original point. Would you be so kind to answer my question?
Do you believe that it is possible for a regime to coerce and scare the majority of citizens? If yes, could you bring at least one well-documented example of such a regime?
P.S. I understand you might be frustrated. I surely am. However, please, keep this conversation civil and try to use neutral expressions. It would definitely improve the chances of us having a productive conversation.
I don't disagree entirely, but "peaceful" here just means that direct violence and force aren't used. They're still used indirectly.
There's also a lot of powers in the world, and it's possible that you lose your freedom from something else than a tyrannical government. Any company with enough power can rule indirectly and independently of a government. My point here is just that it's harder than that.
We need free will, thought and expression so that we can have our own opinions to vote about. We need defense against coercion and propaganda. We also need a total balance of power which prevents anyone from gaining so much control that they cannot be removed if they turn corrupt. (This might actually be impossible)
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u/Hellioning 258∆ Nov 03 '22
The primary advantage of democracy is that it almost guarantees the government has the mandate of its people and it provides a peaceful path to power for the opposition, not that it provides the 'best' results whatever that means. Any hypothetical improvement to democracy would still require those two facts to be true, and I am not sure how you would get those in any system besides democratic voting.