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I am not convinced that democracy protects weaker members of society (let two wolves and one sheep elect what the dinner will be...). Rule of Law does. Democr

by chopin 11y ago

I am not convinced that democracy protects weaker members of society (let two wolves and one sheep elect what the dinner will be...). Rule of Law does. Democracy gives you a say in politics. Rule of Law gives you a safe life (at least from governmental actions). I concede that both may be not unrelated. But this is not necessarily the case.

deleted 11y ago
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js8 11y ago
> let two wolves and one sheep elect what the dinner will be First of all, one important rule of democracy is that you cannot vote about stripping someone's right in democracy (or alternatively, the democratic decisions have to be reversible), otherwise you will get Russell-style paradoxes. The existence (or not) of democracy itself cannot be decided democratically; this is often neglected but nevertheless important rule. Second, your example is unrealistic. There are far less wolves then sheep in the real world (literally!). In the real world, this is not really a big concern, because you wouldn't want to live in society where are more wolves than sheep anyway.. Almost every social technology (including evolved human cooperation) is predicated on this being false. Of course, there are other things that are important for society and orthogonal to democracy - as you mention, for example, rule of law. But I disagree with rule of law you're safe from government actions - the state is typically the actor who enforces the law. So I very much disagree with the sentence "Rule of Law gives you a safe life (at least from governmental actions)." I would like to see an example of society where this is true due to it not being democratic; since democracy effectively gives you control over government actions.
- MikeNomad 11y ago
  I think this might meet all thr criteria you are looking for... The United States is not a Democracy, it is a Representative Republic. It happens to use _some_ bits from the democracy toolbox. As to any back-and-forth regarding people's rights being voted away and courts of law re-establishing them, there is the issue of slavery, and most recently, gay marriage.
  - js8 11y ago
    > The United States is not a Democracy This is very obviously false. It may have been established with not that intent, but today (especially after progressive movement) it's one of the most advanced democracies in the world. Of course there is still a long way to go. For example, there is paper from Cato Institute that showed (on different U.S. states) more democracy leads to better management of state budget. > people's rights being voted away This is misrepresentation - people's right are not being voted away; what happens in these cases is that social progress is not as fast as some liberals would want. (In other words, there is a huge difference between regress and slow progress.) Democracies are conservative, as most normal people are (and this is arguably good engineering practice). And slavery was actually supported by the representation (you're actually contradicting yourself here a bit, if you want to blame democracy for slavery, then you shouldn't say that U.S. wasn't democracy).

by chopin 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

js8 11y ago

> let two wolves and one sheep elect what the dinner will be First of all, one important rule of democracy is that you cannot vote about stripping someone's right in democracy (or alternatively, the democratic decisions have to be reversible), otherwise you will get Russell-style paradoxes. The existence (or not) of democracy itself cannot be decided democratically; this is often neglected but nevertheless important rule. Second, your example is unrealistic. There are far less wolves then sheep in the real world (literally!). In the real world, this is not really a big concern, because you wouldn't want to live in society where are more wolves than sheep anyway.. Almost every social technology (including evolved human cooperation) is predicated on this being false. Of course, there are other things that are important for society and orthogonal to democracy - as you mention, for example, rule of law. But I disagree with rule of law you're safe from government actions - the state is typically the actor who enforces the law. So I very much disagree with the sentence "Rule of Law gives you a safe life (at least from governmental actions)." I would like to see an example of society where this is true due to it not being democratic; since democracy effectively gives you control over government actions.

MikeNomad 11y ago
I think this might meet all thr criteria you are looking for... The United States is not a Democracy, it is a Representative Republic. It happens to use _some_ bits from the democracy toolbox. As to any back-and-forth regarding people's rights being voted away and courts of law re-establishing them, there is the issue of slavery, and most recently, gay marriage.
- js8 11y ago
  > The United States is not a Democracy This is very obviously false. It may have been established with not that intent, but today (especially after progressive movement) it's one of the most advanced democracies in the world. Of course there is still a long way to go. For example, there is paper from Cato Institute that showed (on different U.S. states) more democracy leads to better management of state budget. > people's rights being voted away This is misrepresentation - people's right are not being voted away; what happens in these cases is that social progress is not as fast as some liberals would want. (In other words, there is a huge difference between regress and slow progress.) Democracies are conservative, as most normal people are (and this is arguably good engineering practice). And slavery was actually supported by the representation (you're actually contradicting yourself here a bit, if you want to blame democracy for slavery, then you shouldn't say that U.S. wasn't democracy).