zlacker

I think we have seen for ourselves how dangerous democracies can be when mixed with fears.

Alas, people will continue to argues that democracy is the best form of government despite its various flaws.

>>kiba+(OP)
I will defer to Winston Churchill: "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."

>>Alex63+Z
"Divine-right Monarchy is the worst form of government, except for all other forms which have been tried" - some guy committing the same error as Winston Churchill a few hundred years earlier.

>>Alex63+Z
Which means we should stop trying to come up with a better one right?

>>kiba+(OP)
as opposed to what? Every time I try to come up with an answer for that question I get stuck at 'dictatorship headed by the fairest and wisest person I know.' It's probably just a coincidence, but that person usually turns out to be me :)

What's your alternative good?

>>sophac+02
No. If you have a new alternative, let's hear about it. Churchill wasn't saying there can't be a better system - he was saying that in his view democracy was the best of the alternatives tried to this point.

>>kiba+(OP)
A democracy is only as good as the citizens involved in it. Some regions have stronger cultures, valuing education and liberty, than others.

>>anigbr+R2
In The Republic, Plato argues that the best form of rule is philosopher-kings; your answer seems to be the same. I tend to agree, but of course the logistics of finding such a ruler are difficult and subject to corruption.

>>kiba+(OP)
Raw democracy is dangerous.

Democracy with limited and enumerated state powers is actually kinda okay.

For example, we could start interpreting the commerce clause the way any reasonable and sane person would. That would go a long way toward fixing this sort of problem, by making us less of a pure democracy.

>>anigbr+R2
I have an answer, but it will be rejected by most hackers as just a crazy idea sprouted by a crazy ideologue loonies like me.

>>kiba+e5
So what is your answer, then?

>>anigbr+R2
This has been one of my background questions for some time, but the best answer I have been able to come up with is that we replace it with a system where nobody is in charge of making new laws or regulation, but is in charge of enforcing them. Since bad laws are created at a faster rate than good laws, the result should be a net positive.

>>Dove+H4
But the State governments are just as corrupt or more corrupt than the Federal government. Remember Rod Blagojevich?

>>anigbr+R2
Personally, I think random selection would produce a better result than the system we currently have. Select the legislature by lottery. Pick N (where N is some fixed integer designated by law for a each political office) candidates for each office by a random lottery, selected from a pool of everyone who has ever served jury duty. Re-roll for anyone who declines to serve or is currently incarcerated, in a coma, etc. (Obviously, the particulars of the exclusion rules have to be made very explicit so that nobody can exert undue influence by arbitrarily disqualifying people they don't like.) Give each candidate a fixed amount of government funding for their campaign. Nobody is allowed to solicit campaign contributions of any kind or permitted to spend their own money, so everyone is on an even playing field. The quantity of funding depends solely on the particular office that the person is running for. You don't get to choose what office to run for; there is a lottery for each individual office. If you are selected as a candidate for an office by the lottery, you are ineligible for other lotteries for that election year. The candidates run their campaigns. The voters pick the winner for each office by condorcet voting.

>>kiba+(OP)
I used to believe, fervently and automatically, that democracy was the best system. Can you blame me? No-one in my society opposes democracy. No-one sane anyway.

In the last couple of years, I've encountered well-reasoned opposing views for the first time.

Let's back up, and consider how to get an effective x, where x is a cup of coffee or a laptop or anything else. One way might be to get everyone to vote on what kind of x they like, and then give that to everyone. This is of course a terrible system, and not Starbucks nor Apple have that kind of system.

Much better to have competition. I'd be terrible at making coffee or a laptop, and it's best that I'm not trusted to make those things, or to choose who would be good at making them. Nor ought I to be trusted with running a country or choosing who to run it.

So, I think an ideal world might be a world of many smaller governments, each competing for consumers/citizens. Apply the creativity and efficiency of startups to the governing industry. I want a world of Singapores and Hong Kongs and Liechtensteins, where I can pick my government provider approximately the same way I pick my ISP or my employer.

Of course there are problems. So solve them! What better decrepit, corrupt, monopolizing old industry to fix than the governing industry? A Peter Thiel-funded startup is trying (http://seasteading.org).

See also Arnold Kling on competitive government vs. democracy: http://smartdemocracy.com/papers/kling_competitive_governmen...

And also see the reading list at the Let A Thousand Nations Bloom blog: http://athousandnations.com/recommended/

>>Brando+u4
He also advocates slavery. And proposes a system in which all women are grouped into a pool of common wives, on the basis that when no one knows which child was fathered by whom, every man will have fatherly feelings for every child and every child will respect every man as they would respect their father. And argues that theatrical performances should be illegal. As well as many other things.

>>pfedor+Ab
Do you believe that discredits his argument for philosopher-kings? Ideas rule, it doesn't matter who had them or what other ideas they had.

>>Brando+u4
I much prefer Zeno's Republic, where everyone is equal but strives to be wise.

Really, I think that there is no such thing as a perfect government, only a perfect citizenry, because the power of a government is always derived from the people within it. A philosopher king would not be able to maintain power unless either A) he was omnipotent or B) the people allowed him to remain in power.

>>blahbl+C7
What would stop special interests from buying a new candidate every cycle? They help the candidate get elected, the candidate crafts legislation to the special interests' benefit, then the special interest hires them as a lobbyist when their term is over.

>>Brando+pc
Um, the problem with your statement is that.. if you recall from reading The Republic, Plato's Socrates's definition of justice is a defined society with a lot of moving parts. If you discredit some moving parts then you dismantle the entire argument.

>>anigbr+R2
I suppose with kings and stuff, one advantage could be that they are prepared for their jobs from childhood onwards. If only there was a way to keep them in check if they run wild.

>>blahbl+C7
My Dad used to propose the jury duty system of democratic representation - you don't get elected, you get randomly drawn - not as a candidate, but as a member of parliament. Shorter terms, but a larger parliament. Interesting to think about, but somewhat impractical, I guess.

>>Alex63+i3
Well he would say that, being the leader in a democratic system and all.

>>michae+g9
The only problem is that you ignore the nature of men and his history. Nation states are a relatively new thing. People used to live in city states, principataes, and that sort of thing, but then you get Persia for example who wants more and more territory and to rule everyone, then you get Rome, Alexander of Macedonia, Islamists in 600s, etc.

I think we all want to be one world with no border without any government whatsoever. It is unfortunate however that a government is needed.

Personally, I favour Aristocracy combined with some form of accountability to the people. Thus a combination of Aristocracy and democracy.

>>igravi+oi
When he said that he had just been voted out of office, and therefore perhaps not as enthusiastic about this whole "democracy" thing as he usually was.

>>bff+bd
or C) he was tyrannical or D) the army supported him or E) the people didn't care or F) he subdued the people with drugs or G) ...

False dichotomies are the sceptre of the philosopher king‽

>>Ardit2+ej
What desirable qualities do aristocrats have that makes them suited to govern?

>>bff+jd
This already happens under the current system. It's not a new problem specific to the Jury Duty Model of Representative Democracy. The solution is to have strong ethics rules to prevent it from happening. You prohibit ex-legislators from working as lobbyists for a lengthy period of time after their term of service. You make a rule, similar to the rules in place regarding reserve military service or FMLA, that guarantees that the person's old job is still there for them after they finish their term of service in the legislature. You treat a promising a job or material wealth to a candidate or sitting legislator in exchange for their vote as a crime and prosecute lobbyists for doing it.

In one way, the system I've proposed has an inherent protection against this problem that our current system doesn't have. Specifically, because all candidates are chosen by random lottery, an incumbent cannot run for a second term except in the exceedingly rare circumstance that they are chosen twice in a row by the lottery. Therefore, the incumbent has no incentive to try to please any third party that helped them get elected in order to retain their support for a re-election campaign.

>>cromul+Jh
I assume you mean it's impractical in terms of all the changes that would be required to get from the current U.S. system of government to a jury duty republic system because of the significant changes to the Constitution that would be required and the near impossibility of passing constitutional amendments, particularly given the extreme opposition that the entrenched ruling class would have towards such a system (because the primary goal of such a system is to uproot an entrenched ruling class and replace it with something more egalitarian).

However, suppose for a moment that you're the revolutionary leader of a small nation in Latin America and, after a long struggle, you have risen victorious over the oppressive old regime of your country and there is overwhelming public support for you to become dictator. But, being aware of the inherent long term problems of dictatorships, you don't want to be a dictator. So, you declare, "We will implement a constitutional republic like the Americans. But, to ensure our government always has the best interests of our people at heart and we are never again dominated by an elite ruling class, we will choose our representatives in the legislature by a lottery like the American PowerBall." What, then, would be impractical about implementing a jury duty system of democratic representation?

>>blahbl+su
Problems that I see revolve around the formalities of office. Learning your way around legislation, the formats, styles, trade-offs, and compromises that must be made all require time.

Beyond that, you run into the problem of lobbyists. Not the evil type that is a stand-in for the word "corruption", but instead the legitimate "education" type lobbyists. You lose much of the institutional knowledge that prevents candy coated views of the world from taking hold. Honestly, how many of the randomly selected people are going to understand the trade-offs of each and every policy, be it economic, societal, political, industrial, trade, environmental, etc. Having experienced people who have been around a few cycles provides a base level of knowledge.

>>Symmet+Tj
I really didn't think this would be a particularly controversial quotation. The full quotation (according to wikiquote) is: 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.

As Symmetry points out, it is from a speech (to the House of Commons) in 1947, after Churchill's first tenure as Prime Minister.

>>Alex63+KI
The quote is frequently used by fanatics (those who look at democracy with a religious fervor), as a conversation ender -- particularly when used after criticism of some democratic process. It almost always implies "we cannot discuss the shortcomings of this system because it is the best". It also often has an implication of "this is the final word on democracy, it is defined as the best, therefore whatever you come up with cannot be as good". This second association is why I replied as I did in my original comment -- it is the same as "love it or leave it".

tl;dr: the quote itself isn't bad, it just has been coopted by those with a certain fanatic mindest.

>>anigbr+R2
A stable mixed republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_government), with separate institutions organized on democratic, aristocratic, and monarchial principles, organized into a common state, has tended to be more stable than a state based on one of those bases alone. The Roman republic and early modern England are good examples of this.

I think democracy is necessary - but not sufficient - to maintain stability in the state and moderation in the laws. The cultural problem we face today is that the popular perception of democracy has shifted from seeing it as a mechanism by which the public can protect itself against the abuse of power to seeing it as a legitimizing factor for the assertion of power; institutions are criticized for being "undemocratic" on the latter basis, targeted for reform, and the end result is that our laws become increasingly unbalanced and excessive.