The Holy Grail of Democracy
 

I was uncertain whether to post this into the Politics forums or the Philosophy forum *smiles* really its political philosophy ....so I chose the latter.

With such a world focus on the war in Iraq and the more general media focus on the "democratisation" ( or lack thereof) of various Arab nation, discussion about democracy itself as a concept seems curiously absent from the media debate.

I have heard much from people who argue whether or not Islam is conducive to democracy. Some claim it is an inherently democratic religion others suggest it is in and of itself a block to democracy.

A very clever man once claimed that Democracy was the worst form of government...except for all the rest.

The western ideal is of a self determined, democratic, free market with enshrined civil liberties and at least lip service given to the idea of social equity.

But is that just a western construct? The natural result of the cultural decisions our nations have made over hundreds of years....Is what we have, the glorious result of human evolution and social development or is it just one way of doing things? Does the fact that we built much of our success on the backs of the unfree marr our freedom ? Do freedom and democracy equate?

Since we seem hell bent on converting as much of the world to parliamentary or congressional democracy as we can...It strikes me as only right that we wonder what it is we are trying to turn the world into.....and what other roads could we have take and could take now.?

Well, we've seen

1) Dictatorship -- strong man, direct rule. Tends to be rather harsh for the average Joe, very unstable when dictator dies. Power struggles often lead to violence.

2) Oligarchy -- rule by a few. Each usually has his own group of followers. Still tends to be harsh for the average Joe. Power struggles lead to more limited violence USUALLY, with a realignment of positions on the committee. However, a split within the committee leads to open warfare.

Most authoritarian regimes are some form of oligarchy, whether secular or religious.

3) Hierarchical government (e.g. feudal monarchy). Power devolves from some supreme authority, down to regional and local authorities. How harsh it is depends on where in the hierarchy you are, and most people are on the bottom. Much more stable than dictatorship or oligarchy. Weaknesses at the upper levels lead to violence at the lower levels.

Any other forms you'd propose as superior?

Re: The Holy Grail of Democracy
 

Originally posted by DanaC What are you referring to here? Slavery? I don't really think America really owes its success or any major part thereof to slavery henious as it was.

I think we are trying to turn the rest of the world into a democracy freindly to the United States. I can't really think of anything else.

The only interesting angle I can come up with that relates to your point is all the bitching I hear about there not being any democracies in the middle east. Well, I think things would get a lot worse if the majority of the middle east were democratic. For example, if Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were suddenly democratic, I think it would be worse for us - a lot worse.

If your post was a long version of "be careful what you wish for" then we agree on much.

We must convert the whole world to democracies for the convenience of big business. They already know how to control a democracy and they're tired of investing a fortune, only to have some commie or dictator seize their assets.;)

After much consideration I've come to a very odd point of view. I do play, to a degree, devil's advocate on this.

In the end the people aren't fit to rule, they're stupid, shortsighted and immature, most are an utter waste of space. The illuminate had the right idea, a group, small, dispatched, intelligent fellows in positions of powers working together to influence, suggest and insinuate. A council of wise men working behind the scenes to maintain economic and political stability invisibly. The knights of templar had the right idea.

I also believe our technological advancement will lead to this happening sooner or later.

The challenge is of course, making sure it's the right people. There are natural factors at work. The top echelons of our society tend often to be self-cleansing (you would be amazed), there are many societies and alliances, particularly in europe that date back centuries but keeping the riffraff out is always difficult.

In the end the people aren't fit to rule, they're stupid, shortsighted and immature, most are an utter waste of space.

:whofart: I couldn't disagree more. I think that the people are most certainly fit to rule, especially on a smaller scale that leads directly up into a hierarchy, and they are in fact way, WAY better at knowing what's going on than some detached "intelligent" group that makes decisions for me because I'm too stupid to know what the best thing to do with my life is.

I find it ironic that your "behind closed doors" council of wise men seems to actually be very similar to what the US has now. Whether or not they have the right ideas, tw's so-called "vulcans" are the top echelons of society where money and education are concerned, and they do seem to be attempting to control economic and political instability without letting the population know what's going on. Last I checked, you weren't too keen on the way the US was being run, were you? The problem isn't keeping the riffraff out, it's keeping the corruption out, which has nothing to do with a small controlling group and everything to do with people running their own lives.

Running their own lives is one thing, running government is another entirely. People without a grip on ecnomics theory or policy, history or social theory voting on issues they simply have a limited at bestunderstanding of, the result is bottom-of-the-barrel politics, pandering to people and short-term governmental thinking. Not exactly pretty and in the long term, disasterous.

By riffraff I implied corrupt individuals. There are many that use their power for good ends. Of course your definition of good is always up for debate but one need only look at a man like George Soros for example, to see what can be done.

*Smiles* To some extent I agree with you Jaguar. There are times I hold my head in frustration as I watch the British tabloid press push the anti-europe or anti-asylum agenda and then next I know theres this huge public outcry and a wave of anti European sentiment or demands for tougher asylum laws. I dont know if tabloid papers play much of a role in the US but theyre a pain in the neck over here ....They do have a major effect on the voting public. There used to be a maxim that whoever the Sun supported was the likely next winner. ....and an anti European sentiment began to grow soon after certain media magnates staked their flags to the Anti campaigns. Its frustrating because it ends up with ordinary workingclass people fighting for the vested interests of the people that sit at the top.

That said.....I do believe that given a truly democratic system and more importantly access to that democratic system in some meaningful way most of us can be trusted most of the time not to be complete dipshits about it.

Re: Re: The Holy Grail of Democracy
 

Please tell me that you're joking.

Re: Re: The Holy Grail of Democracy
 

That's going to come as a big surprise to anyone from a formerly Confederate state, most of which complained that the abolishment of slavery would destroy their economies.

This chart has the 1860 Population of the United States. Note that %12 of the total US population were slaves. Concentrated in the South, they were more than %50 of the population of some states. This means they were largely responsible for the economy of the South, which provided food and raw materials to the North as well as international trade.

During its time, slavery was a vital component of southern prosperity, but even had things turned out other than they did, slavery would have gone away in time. Industrial innovation would have done slavery a staggering blow eventually.

Slavery is something of a cultural commonality. Not universal, but pretty damn close.

Are you saying that slavery (and exploitation) are automatically abolished by mechanization? Look at the illegal and legal immigrants in this country, not to mention prison labor.

Better tools do not always make free men.

I actually was not referring necessarily to slavery. Though obviously that crossed my mind. That was soimething which the democracy of America was built upon. I am thinking more widely of the way the current "democratic" states of the western world are built upon and continue to be built upon the backs of less free people's. For instance......There are approximately half a million children working as child slaves in the production of Cocoa for the sweet treats we westerners so enjoy...

.Now that we feel ourselves above the dirty jobs we employ others to do them for us....at the very loweest rates we can get away with....consequently so many of our luxury goods are made with little nimble fingers that anyone looking at our society from the vantage point of history may form a very different picture of our western "freedom" than we might.

The economic imperatives of capitalism require that there be a large wash of people at the bottom, bearing the weight of the world.

Added to that is the tendency of the western world to accept all manner of inequity for other countries, all with our support as long as it is politically expedient to us ( Saudi Arabia, Kashmir, Palestine)

I havent even touched on that ol'chestnut of cultural imperialism. I imagine many of you Americans hold in mind an image of America as the young and feisty nation that stuck one in the eye of the old British empire. But those days are long long gone. America is the new Rome. For many of us outside America there is no doubt in our minds we are living in an American Hegemony. It doesnt feel so oppressive to us English after all we share a language.....But if I was a banana grower in the carribean or a Palestinian in Gaza, or an Argentinian buisinessman....I may not feel so free of the American cultural whip.

Slavery and repression are automatically abolished by automation because it creates different economic conditions. When slavery existed, 50% of the people were needed to work on farms just to feed everyone. Today less than 2% of people work on farms.

Economists (and a quick look around at the reality) will tell you that both the richer and the poorer nation are improved by trade. The nations that the US was trading with in this way 30-40 years ago, are now amongst the richest nations of the world. Nothing else in centuries of history put them in that position. If they felt oppressed at the time it was good they shut up about it because the rising economic tides floated their boats right out of extreme poverty. If you want people not to starve, get the US to oppress them culturally and with trade. Here's the biggest example in a graphic I created two years ago, and if you don't get it after staring at this for a while, you'll never get it. Which side of the line is the oppression on again?

http://cellar.org/2002/nskorea.gif

A few folks I know think that photo is a fake.

wouldn't it be more trade in general, SKorea trades with a heck of a lot of people asides the US, the other factor is innovation and climates that encourage it.

The photo they are discussing is not my photo.

Jefferson anticipated you:

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

--Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.


Further, yes, the top echelons of society are self-cleansing -- but the traits that process selects for are not those which promote good governance.

Nice to see a fellow Brit here in the Cellar :beer:, but I don't know that the British press are successful in 'pushing' any agenda. Some would argue that they merely reflect public opinion rather than dictate it. Euroscepticism has arisen out of ignorance and misplaced patriotism (not that I am an unquestioning advocator - far from it).

*****

Democracy by its nature is dependent on mass (and therefore proletarian) opinion - you cannot discount the validity of consensus without asking serious questions about the functionality of a democracy on any level - if 'the people' are too mis-informed/ignorant/stupid to make any decisions, why bother with tiresome plebicites in the first place? Lets let inbred patriarchal peers do the talking, eh?

Not in the context in which you present it, but the actual photo is indeed the same.

Re: Re: Re: The Holy Grail of Democracy
 

No, I'm not joking. I was looking at the entire history of the US. My point was that, absent slavery, America would be no worse off today. The South didn't exactly fall off the map after 1865. One could even argue that, in the long run, slavery actually depressed the long-term economic position of the South.

Re: Re: Re: Re: The Holy Grail of Democracy
 

Actually non-diversification of the manufacturing base is what depressed the south, and in some ways ended the civil war. Also not taking advantage of manufacturing innovation played a role as well.

My photo was just a crop of a closeup of the original famous earth at night image.

:joint: Hey Catwoman! Wherebouts in our fine and sunny land do you call home? I's sittin' here in a li'l village in WestYorkshire.

I agree....and I still think that is fuelled by a the press ( tabloid and broadsheet) who have been more interested in perpetuating that ignorance by muddying everybody's waters with stories based on fear of change thna they have in dispelling any of the myths they have created (especially the ones they created during the latter years of the conservative government)
Many of us get our information from the news media for this kind of issue. I havent read the proposed European constitution I relied upon the media outlet I hold in most trust to pick out the details and give it to me in a digested form. If the major media outlets that people have access to become skewed in an anti european direction that surely has an effect on many people?

The idea that people arent really swayed by what the papers say and that really the papers just reflect the views is fair enough, until you have someone quote a newstory back at you which you know to have been made up and then fed to the populace. I recall in particular the story of asylum seekers who had apparently killed and eaten a swan. ....I know that the story was made up because the paper that made it up admitted it had done so ...I also know that it and several other stories (about asylum seekers) were discussed at length in the House of Lords during a discussion about lies in the tabloid press.

That same story of Swan-butchering asylum seekers was then quoted back at me by a relative in a discussion in which my relative dismayed me with his overt anti asylumseeker attitude.

I have seen him go from having a fairly civilised view of asylum seekers to believing we have far too many. In fact I would say the whole country has taken something of a leap to the right on that issue. The press however was already there.

What greater "Holy Grail of Democracy" than The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson? I offer you all a portion of that document, the listings of the grievances against King George of England:

...
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:...

Imagine that you live in a foreign country where the US has decided to intervene in the internal affairs of your nation. Where is the difference between George III of England and George II of the United States?

I stand corrected, UT. The photo on LD is a fake.

From sunny Bournemouth... :cool:

Yes I think I might have to concede this one. I was working under the assumption that the mass of hysterical ignorant fucks we call the public actually had some opinion-forming capability. But you're probably right.

Not that I excuse our 'propagandic press'. Of course, they exert influence (please say you don't read the Daily Mail). But to denationalise this conversation a little and widen the debate, how about a new topic?

Does the media (at large) reflect or dictate public opinion?

Originally posted by Undertoad How'd they do that? Since earth isn't at night all at once, did they take a series of pictures at a pre-determined local time and then stitch them together? Are all localites in a given longitudinal slice assumed to have the same local time? Did they correct for diffraction? If the satellite is over the equator, then the northernmost and southernmost regions will appear dimmer if not adjusted. And who threw a blanket over Africa?

Most public media is indeed shit. There are some better services available but you pay for it though the nose.

I feel I should clarify my earlier posts in this thread a little. What the US has at the moment is the worst possible outcome of the kind of thing I'm talking about, a group of individuals associated purely by wealth engaged in a giant circle jerk (consider who's involved, it's best not to visualize that). Ideally you have a group of wealthy and connected individuals lead by a communally decided agenda, not individual gain. Possible? Not sure.

Goddamn it Jaguar I was eating!

Catwoman, no fear not I am not a Daily Mail reader...more a Guardian / other people's copies of the Mirror type:)

I know the experiment cant really be held up as a resounding success but doesnt the soviet premise sound like a decent stab at democracy? I mean the whole idea of Soviets, take it out of the context of the cold war, and just looking at the concept of local Soviets which then feed to a larger organisation which then feeds to another larger entity in such a way ensuring that tyhe least important floor sweeper is no longer unimportant in politics....That strikes me as deeply democratic...so why wasnt it embraced by the western world?

Because those who do more work and are better at it feel they should be rewarded for that.

Also, I learnt the hard way a long time ago never to read cellar while eating. The only place worse is slashdot.

i know a few folks who think the moon landing was fake.