11 ms·

The point of democracy is the implicit threat: if you, as a leader of the country, mess up the lives of the people you govern, you'll get kicked out. Aside from

The point of democracy is the implicit threat: if you, as a leader of the country, mess up the lives of the people you govern, you'll get kicked out. Aside from that, democracy has mostly negative This prevents the situation from getting out of hand before it completely descends into violence. That's it. That's the sum total of what democracy gets us. Analyzing critical ideas is not now, and wasn't ever part of the democratic process. Cicero was complaining about citizen's lack of analyzing critical ideas (except when directly hurting them in the wallet) in 70 BC. You can read about leaders from the French revolution lamenting the same, and even in cases where only limited self government exists, like today in Bahrain, you find most analysts complaining that the large majority of the people who have influence (usually local landowners) do not think critically at all. What has happened is simple: the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. So they were voted out. Now you can argue that they were right, that it wasn't their fault that this happened, and I might even agree with you. But as the government, I do understand, this is not good enough.

walterstucco 10y ago
in Italy we say "you're cutting off your dick to do your wife wrong"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- throwanem 10y ago
  I like it. I bet that's where the American "cut off your nose to spite your face" comes from, too - in a country that says "tidbit" instead of "titbit" and "bunny" instead of "coney", I don't think it's too hard to suspect the same Bowdleresque hand here.
  - kristianc 10y ago
    > I bet that's where the American "cut off your nose to spite your face" comes from, too Not to nitpick, but that term dates back to 12th century England.
  - 1123581321 10y ago
    Tid isn't a bowdlerization of tit; it's just a different pronunciation from a few hundred years ago.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      I remember reading a piece that cited sources for both of the variants I quoted existing in modern American English as the result of deliberate bowdlerization. Once I'm back at my desk, I'll see if I can find it again.
kristianc 10y ago
It's interesting - as Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and Mill (On Liberty) argued precisely that it was civil society and discourse that help us protect against a tyranny of the majority. And that generally what separates 'democratizing' nations from 'democracies' is that one simply has democratic institutions such as voting, and the other has a culture of democratic decision making, civil discourse etc etc to go with it. Iraq may have elections and be able to kick out its leaders but it sure isn't a democracy in the same way Britain and the United States are. Now its not a 'the people are stupid' argument that I'm making - there have been people throughout history who have contended that we take a too simplistic view of affairs. Fine, blah, I'm sure they do, and I'm happy to accept there are people who don't reason critically on both sides and there's no reason to think one side has a monopoly on those. What I'm saying is that we can't fairly determine the information that is being seeded to all parties. It's the equivalent of someone turning up to lots of Tocqueville's town hall meetings and distributing pamphlets biased to one side to people who look like they're from a certain socioeconomic background as they walk in. There is something that happened in Britain in the last five years that merits explanation. A population which according to Eurobarometer 2010 data, only five years ago was 45% Pro-EU and 33% anti voted 52% to 48% to Leave when the government of the day, international instutitions, and all major political parties were arguing that we should stay. This, in Britain, a country not generally known for upending its whole political system on a whim. Now you can pin the explanation for that on whatever you want (and I happen to think your austerity theory has something in it), but it's reasonable to think in a democracy that we should be able to have a discussion (or at least know about) the factors that swayed people.
- Retric 10y ago
  The problem is the direct voter communication bandwidth is at best a few bits per election. People need to condense thousands of very important choices into one overall choice per election. Which often boils down to are you doing a terrible job or not. Granted elected officials often listen to side channels, but they care about what will influence the election not what most people actually want aka 'the will of the people'.
  - DanBC 10y ago
inopinatus 10y ago
I've long felt that the primary value of democracy isn't so much to select good leaders (since counterexamples abound) but to provide a mechanism to remove the really egregious ones.
bonzini 10y ago
> commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, Britain has always had a large number of concessions with respect to their EU membership. They have a large rebate compared to other countries with a similar economy and effectively don't have many more obligations than Norway does, plus they sit in the European Parliament.
- blibble 10y ago
  the rebate is only present as the way the contributions are calculated would lead to Britain paying many times per captia then other large rich nations due to the structure of its economy, and adding a rebate is politically easier than adjusting the contribution formula other countries then have a rebate on the rebate... norway chooses to stay out, so is not a fair comparison
  - bonzini 10y ago
    Norway chooses to stay out but still has pretty much the same obligations as Britain, and doesn't have the possibility to discuss those obligations. Really, the EEA model makes absolutely no sense for the UK. If you have to go that way, it would have been much better to stay in the EU. I'm curious what "basic concessions" the parent poster had in mind, beyond those that the UK could already enjoy. Certainly the end of free movement of people (which both Norway and Switzerland have to obey) doesn't count as a basic concession.
    - rjsw 10y ago
      Restricting freedom of movement was fine when it was done by most existing EU members to the Visegrad countries at the time of their accession.
      - bonzini 10y ago
        Do the countries that entered the EU in 2004 and 2007 have any interest in doing such a step backwards? Also, in some cases the Eastern countries also put restrictions on workers from the West.
grey-area 10y ago
What has happened is simple: the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. So they were voted out. This is factually incorrect. The EU had nothing to do with the crash of 2008 which prompted pro-cyclical austerity, the EU has given the UK opt-outs on many important policies, the concessions demanded (limits on freedom of movement) are not linked to economic benefits for the U.K., and the EU had nothing to do with conservative policies of austerity. What has happened is not simple, and there is no one clear cause of the vote to leave.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
vacri 10y ago
> couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. How did the EU impose austerity on the UK?
- Someone 10y ago
  I guess (s)he means https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact: "The fiscal discipline is ensured by the SGP by requiring each Member State, to implement a fiscal policy aiming for the country to stay within the limits on government deficit (3% of GDP) and debt (60% of GDP); and in case of having a debt level above 60% it should each year decline with a satisfactory pace towards a level below"
  - kristianc 10y ago
    I assumed that the [they] related to the previous government, although the EU did pass measures which essentially outlawed Keynesian economic solutions. The Stability and Growth Pact would be hard to enforce in the UK, not least because Germany didn't even follow it itself.
  - DougBTX 10y ago
    Though the UK is not bound by those rules anyway, so still not a great example: "The only EU member state being exempted to comply with this MTO procedure is the UK, as it per a protocol to the EU treaty is exempted from complying with the SGP. In other words, while all other member states are obliged nationally to select at MTO respecting their calculated Minimum MTO, the calculated Minimum MTO for the UK is only presented for advice, with no obligation for it to set a compliant national MTO in structural terms."
pjc50 10y ago
> the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. Are you thinking of Greece here? The "imposed austerity" was purely the choice of the Conservative government in the UK, and the "concessions" demanded seemed to be an end to freedom of movement, which was always a non-starter and wouldn't make the lives of Brits better in any discernable way. What has happened is simple: there has long been a war inside the Conservative party between the pro-EU side and the anti-EU side. Cameron hoped that calling a referendum and deploying "project Fear" which had won the Scottish indyref would settle the question. Unfortunetely he'd misunderstood the Scottish result and Project Fear was hugely counter-productive. This is why UKIP have ceased to exist in the council elections: they're now in control of the Conservative party. (I mean, if I wanted to make a case against the EU, I'd do it on the basis of how Greece was treated - but even Greece didn't choose to leave, as they recognised that it would make them even worse off economically. UK anti-Europeanism seems to be built around a mixture of desire to deport foreigners, "bendy bananas" lies promulgated by Boris, and hatred of the metric system)
- rjsw 10y ago
  I didn't read the grandparent post as suggesting that the EU had imposed austerity, just that it was one of the things that people were unhappy about and that they used the referendum as an outlet for their anger.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  "(I mean, if I wanted to make a case against the EU, I'd do it on the basis of how Greece was treated - but even Greece didn't choose to leave, as they recognised that it would make them even worse off economically." Greece had literally no choice. The ECB threatened to deliberately nuke Greece's economy if they left. Since the process of leaving would have required about 5 years of careful extrication to be done painlessly and the ECB and switching off emergency lending can be done in hours (they gave Greece a little taster of that), Greece was in no position to do really do anything except kowtow to ECB demands, which they did. Meanwhile Varoufakis's contingency plans to wrest control back of the tax agency from the troika and issue an alternate currency as a first step to potentially leaving attracted Orwellian charges of high treason. If the EU/ECB wanted to make it possible for Greece to leave without nuking their economy, they could have, which probably would have been more conducive to being paid back in the long (long) run. They went for their pound of flesh instead. All of which makes me wonder what they have planned for the rest of Europe.

walterstucco 10y ago

in Italy we say "you're cutting off your dick to do your wife wrong"

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
throwanem 10y ago
I like it. I bet that's where the American "cut off your nose to spite your face" comes from, too - in a country that says "tidbit" instead of "titbit" and "bunny" instead of "coney", I don't think it's too hard to suspect the same Bowdleresque hand here.
- kristianc 10y ago
  > I bet that's where the American "cut off your nose to spite your face" comes from, too Not to nitpick, but that term dates back to 12th century England.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  Tid isn't a bowdlerization of tit; it's just a different pronunciation from a few hundred years ago.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    I remember reading a piece that cited sources for both of the variants I quoted existing in modern American English as the result of deliberate bowdlerization. Once I'm back at my desk, I'll see if I can find it again.

kristianc 10y ago

It's interesting - as Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and Mill (On Liberty) argued precisely that it was civil society and discourse that help us protect against a tyranny of the majority. And that generally what separates 'democratizing' nations from 'democracies' is that one simply has democratic institutions such as voting, and the other has a culture of democratic decision making, civil discourse etc etc to go with it. Iraq may have elections and be able to kick out its leaders but it sure isn't a democracy in the same way Britain and the United States are. Now its not a 'the people are stupid' argument that I'm making - there have been people throughout history who have contended that we take a too simplistic view of affairs. Fine, blah, I'm sure they do, and I'm happy to accept there are people who don't reason critically on both sides and there's no reason to think one side has a monopoly on those. What I'm saying is that we can't fairly determine the information that is being seeded to all parties. It's the equivalent of someone turning up to lots of Tocqueville's town hall meetings and distributing pamphlets biased to one side to people who look like they're from a certain socioeconomic background as they walk in. There is something that happened in Britain in the last five years that merits explanation. A population which according to Eurobarometer 2010 data, only five years ago was 45% Pro-EU and 33% anti voted 52% to 48% to Leave when the government of the day, international instutitions, and all major political parties were arguing that we should stay. This, in Britain, a country not generally known for upending its whole political system on a whim. Now you can pin the explanation for that on whatever you want (and I happen to think your austerity theory has something in it), but it's reasonable to think in a democracy that we should be able to have a discussion (or at least know about) the factors that swayed people.

Retric 10y ago
The problem is the direct voter communication bandwidth is at best a few bits per election. People need to condense thousands of very important choices into one overall choice per election. Which often boils down to are you doing a terrible job or not. Granted elected officials often listen to side channels, but they care about what will influence the election not what most people actually want aka 'the will of the people'.
- DanBC 10y ago

inopinatus 10y ago

I've long felt that the primary value of democracy isn't so much to select good leaders (since counterexamples abound) but to provide a mechanism to remove the really egregious ones.

bonzini 10y ago

> commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, Britain has always had a large number of concessions with respect to their EU membership. They have a large rebate compared to other countries with a similar economy and effectively don't have many more obligations than Norway does, plus they sit in the European Parliament.

blibble 10y ago
the rebate is only present as the way the contributions are calculated would lead to Britain paying many times per captia then other large rich nations due to the structure of its economy, and adding a rebate is politically easier than adjusting the contribution formula other countries then have a rebate on the rebate... norway chooses to stay out, so is not a fair comparison
- bonzini 10y ago
  Norway chooses to stay out but still has pretty much the same obligations as Britain, and doesn't have the possibility to discuss those obligations. Really, the EEA model makes absolutely no sense for the UK. If you have to go that way, it would have been much better to stay in the EU. I'm curious what "basic concessions" the parent poster had in mind, beyond those that the UK could already enjoy. Certainly the end of free movement of people (which both Norway and Switzerland have to obey) doesn't count as a basic concession.
  - rjsw 10y ago
    Restricting freedom of movement was fine when it was done by most existing EU members to the Visegrad countries at the time of their accession.
    - bonzini 10y ago
      Do the countries that entered the EU in 2004 and 2007 have any interest in doing such a step backwards? Also, in some cases the Eastern countries also put restrictions on workers from the West.

grey-area 10y ago

What has happened is simple: the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. So they were voted out. This is factually incorrect. The EU had nothing to do with the crash of 2008 which prompted pro-cyclical austerity, the EU has given the UK opt-outs on many important policies, the concessions demanded (limits on freedom of movement) are not linked to economic benefits for the U.K., and the EU had nothing to do with conservative policies of austerity. What has happened is not simple, and there is no one clear cause of the vote to leave.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

vacri 10y ago

> couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. How did the EU impose austerity on the UK?

Someone 10y ago
I guess (s)he means https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact: "The fiscal discipline is ensured by the SGP by requiring each Member State, to implement a fiscal policy aiming for the country to stay within the limits on government deficit (3% of GDP) and debt (60% of GDP); and in case of having a debt level above 60% it should each year decline with a satisfactory pace towards a level below"
- kristianc 10y ago
  I assumed that the [they] related to the previous government, although the EU did pass measures which essentially outlawed Keynesian economic solutions. The Stability and Growth Pact would be hard to enforce in the UK, not least because Germany didn't even follow it itself.
- DougBTX 10y ago
  Though the UK is not bound by those rules anyway, so still not a great example: "The only EU member state being exempted to comply with this MTO procedure is the UK, as it per a protocol to the EU treaty is exempted from complying with the SGP. In other words, while all other member states are obliged nationally to select at MTO respecting their calculated Minimum MTO, the calculated Minimum MTO for the UK is only presented for advice, with no obligation for it to set a compliant national MTO in structural terms."

pjc50 10y ago

> the previous government was pro-Europe, couldn't get Europe to commit to basic concessions that would make British lives easier, and the imposed austerity made a lot of people's lives worse in a very concrete and visible way. Are you thinking of Greece here? The "imposed austerity" was purely the choice of the Conservative government in the UK, and the "concessions" demanded seemed to be an end to freedom of movement, which was always a non-starter and wouldn't make the lives of Brits better in any discernable way. What has happened is simple: there has long been a war inside the Conservative party between the pro-EU side and the anti-EU side. Cameron hoped that calling a referendum and deploying "project Fear" which had won the Scottish indyref would settle the question. Unfortunetely he'd misunderstood the Scottish result and Project Fear was hugely counter-productive. This is why UKIP have ceased to exist in the council elections: they're now in control of the Conservative party. (I mean, if I wanted to make a case against the EU, I'd do it on the basis of how Greece was treated - but even Greece didn't choose to leave, as they recognised that it would make them even worse off economically. UK anti-Europeanism seems to be built around a mixture of desire to deport foreigners, "bendy bananas" lies promulgated by Boris, and hatred of the metric system)

rjsw 10y ago
I didn't read the grandparent post as suggesting that the EU had imposed austerity, just that it was one of the things that people were unhappy about and that they used the referendum as an outlet for their anger.
crdoconnor 10y ago
"(I mean, if I wanted to make a case against the EU, I'd do it on the basis of how Greece was treated - but even Greece didn't choose to leave, as they recognised that it would make them even worse off economically." Greece had literally no choice. The ECB threatened to deliberately nuke Greece's economy if they left. Since the process of leaving would have required about 5 years of careful extrication to be done painlessly and the ECB and switching off emergency lending can be done in hours (they gave Greece a little taster of that), Greece was in no position to do really do anything except kowtow to ECB demands, which they did. Meanwhile Varoufakis's contingency plans to wrest control back of the tax agency from the troika and issue an alternate currency as a first step to potentially leaving attracted Orwellian charges of high treason. If the EU/ECB wanted to make it possible for Greece to leave without nuking their economy, they could have, which probably would have been more conducive to being paid back in the long (long) run. They went for their pound of flesh instead. All of which makes me wonder what they have planned for the rest of Europe.