3 ms·
What is legitimacy? A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't th
by Cookingboy 7y ago
What is legitimacy?
A government's job is to serve as many of its people as much as possible for as long as possible, so playing devil's advocate, why isn't the legitimacy of a government judged by how good it's doing its job vs. how it came into power?
Historically speaking there have been plenty of prosperous societies that was ruled by "illegitimate" governments (and I'm not even saying China is one), and plenty of government that was put into power by the people (actually the original, populist CCP government is one example) that ended up being disastrous.
Even if we want to always put democracy on a pedestal, how do we qualify it? Does only direct democracy count? What about representative democracy? How "representative" can it be before it's no longer democratic, i,e electoral college? Do any of those actually matter?
- idoh 7y agoFair point, it is hard to draw an exact line. But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right?
- Cookingboy 7y ago>But once a government starts throwing peaceful protestors into concentration camps I think we can all agree that it has crossed the line, right? Absolutely. But if you are referring to what's happening in HK, debate on evidence of concentration camp aside, lately many of the protestors have been anything but "peaceful".
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y ago> lately many of the protestors have been anything but "peaceful". That does tend to happen when peaceful protests get violently suppressed. It's extremely difficult to not defend yourself against violence.
- Cookingboy 7y agoOh, please tell me how is burning down businesses or smashing public transportation or vandalize government buildings "defend yourself against violence".
- idoh 7y agoThere's no way to really know what's going on, the CCP is acting in secret. Maybe they are disappearing peaceful protestors, maybe they are disappearing violent thugs. Once a government starts to do that (secretly suppressing, however justified), then they have also crossed a line of legitimacy.
- harimau777 7y agoAre there examples of prosperous societies ruled by "illegitimate" governments that didn't have an equivalent of peasants/serfs?
- Cookingboy 7y agoYes, quite a few dynasties in Chinese history for example. At a few points China had higher GDP than the rest of the world combined with much better average standard of living for its people. The early Tang dynasty comes into mind. There were no serf class, but of course there were peasants/farmers of course since someone had to grow food.
- heavyset_go 7y agoPlease, save the "deriving democratic legitimacy from first principles" for a country that doesn't ban elections, have a dictator-for-life like Xi Jinping or put millions of people into concentration camps.
- larnmar 7y agoLegitimacy comes from having been elected. An unelected Government is, as they say, just a group of thugs who just happen to be in control of a capital city. Within that definition there’s certainly some ambiguity as to what counts as a “good enough” election to confer legitimacy. Edge cases would be things like Singapore, Russia or Hitler’s Germany... but Communist China is not close to an edge case.
- Cookingboy 7y ago>Legitimacy comes from having been elected. Says who? Is there an universal law declared by someone at the beginning of time saying that?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]