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The essential characteristics of democracy are that the three powers (executive, law giving, judicial) are separated and that at least the law giving power is i

by cjfd 7y ago

The essential characteristics of democracy are that the three powers (executive, law giving, judicial) are separated and that at least the law giving power is in the hands of the people, perhaps by representation and perhaps directly. If these conditions are not being met bad things can easily happen. E.g., if the executive branch is also writing laws it is way too easy to get laws that are handy for the executives but not very fair to the public. In democracies these separations tend not to be perfect but at least an attempt is made to put sufficient separation in place. E.g., if one appoints judges for life the incentive of the judicial power to appease the executive branch becomes much smaller. The EU is both undermining the separation of powers in its member states and also is in itself weak as a democracy. The council of ministers is the executive branch in the member countries but in Europe they write law. As such this would not be that bad if the parliament could change this law. It looks like they can but after parliament is done the law goes back to the council of ministers that has the option to undo what parliament has done. After that it returns to parliament again but now parliament has to reach a 2/3 majority to do something about it. 2/3 is quite hard to get so this procedure severely limits the power of the parliament.

krageon 7y ago
Now that I understand what you see as the problem I don't really see what the alternative is. From your wording I'm going to assume you think the US is a strong democracy, but from the perspective of a lot of other (well-off) places in the world it's not a very good place to live. Regardless of how strong the democracy is by your definition. If it doesn't yield a better life for it's citizens, what is the merit of the system you are espousing?
- cjfd 7y ago
  Both the US and most other western countries have a reasonably good separation of powers. Also, the US and other western countries both are clearly the most attractive places to live in the world. And democracy is a large part in this. However, in both cases there are worrisome trends. It is as if they got it organized reasonably well and then stopped improving and started backsliding. There are many things that the western democracies could do better. To name one, the huge and ever-expanding regulatory state is severely harming democracy in both Europe and the US. This tends to be seen as a talking-point of what is called the 'right' (but, indeed, mostly a talking-point, as opposed to an action point) and as such does not need more elaboration but it could be a talking-point (but often is not) for what is called the 'left' as well by noticing that much lobbying is involved in creating regulation and that the outcome is therefore not going to be in the citizens interest. Regulation is where the executive branch is sitting in the chair of the legislative branch and because of this the citizens have little influence. To name another point, western countries have been far too friendly with countries that have a very bad human rights situation. I think that taxes on import should be proportional to the amount of human rights violations and other failures in democracy that a country has. That way every improvement that a country makes regarding to human rights immediately leads to a financial gain. The US being so very friendly to Saudi Arabia is just terrible. I think this is a thing that if you keep it up for a few decades it would enormously improve the lives of people all over the world. Note that this is also something that takes away discretionary and rather arbitrary power from the executive branch by basing the policy in a very simple and objective law instead. I think one could gain votes by campaigning for this. And this is what law should be. Simple rules that feel like they are discovered rather than invented as opposed to rules so convoluted that only the executive branch has the means to write them. You talk about the difference between the US and other western countries. Many things could be said about this but one thing that seems to be on most peoples mind in regard to this is that the US has less social security and some European countries have quite a bit more. Well, I think that is mostly an orthogonal issue to the point of democracy. The respective peoples of respective countries can choose for themselves the amount of social security that they consider to be correct. Let me say that from a democratic point of view it is much more acceptable to 'bail out' citizens that get into trouble than to 'bail out' banks that get into trouble. The latter being a prime example of where lobbying has led to a situation that is in the interest of the sector being regulated and not at all in the interest of the citizens.

by cjfd 7y ago

krageon 7y ago

Now that I understand what you see as the problem I don't really see what the alternative is. From your wording I'm going to assume you think the US is a strong democracy, but from the perspective of a lot of other (well-off) places in the world it's not a very good place to live. Regardless of how strong the democracy is by your definition. If it doesn't yield a better life for it's citizens, what is the merit of the system you are espousing?

cjfd 7y ago
Both the US and most other western countries have a reasonably good separation of powers. Also, the US and other western countries both are clearly the most attractive places to live in the world. And democracy is a large part in this. However, in both cases there are worrisome trends. It is as if they got it organized reasonably well and then stopped improving and started backsliding. There are many things that the western democracies could do better. To name one, the huge and ever-expanding regulatory state is severely harming democracy in both Europe and the US. This tends to be seen as a talking-point of what is called the 'right' (but, indeed, mostly a talking-point, as opposed to an action point) and as such does not need more elaboration but it could be a talking-point (but often is not) for what is called the 'left' as well by noticing that much lobbying is involved in creating regulation and that the outcome is therefore not going to be in the citizens interest. Regulation is where the executive branch is sitting in the chair of the legislative branch and because of this the citizens have little influence. To name another point, western countries have been far too friendly with countries that have a very bad human rights situation. I think that taxes on import should be proportional to the amount of human rights violations and other failures in democracy that a country has. That way every improvement that a country makes regarding to human rights immediately leads to a financial gain. The US being so very friendly to Saudi Arabia is just terrible. I think this is a thing that if you keep it up for a few decades it would enormously improve the lives of people all over the world. Note that this is also something that takes away discretionary and rather arbitrary power from the executive branch by basing the policy in a very simple and objective law instead. I think one could gain votes by campaigning for this. And this is what law should be. Simple rules that feel like they are discovered rather than invented as opposed to rules so convoluted that only the executive branch has the means to write them. You talk about the difference between the US and other western countries. Many things could be said about this but one thing that seems to be on most peoples mind in regard to this is that the US has less social security and some European countries have quite a bit more. Well, I think that is mostly an orthogonal issue to the point of democracy. The respective peoples of respective countries can choose for themselves the amount of social security that they consider to be correct. Let me say that from a democratic point of view it is much more acceptable to 'bail out' citizens that get into trouble than to 'bail out' banks that get into trouble. The latter being a prime example of where lobbying has led to a situation that is in the interest of the sector being regulated and not at all in the interest of the citizens.