6 ms·

Hand-waving things away with your absolutist statement is what truly seems naive. IMO there is far more nuance than you suggest. Democracy seems to work well f

by bllguo 6y ago

Hand-waving things away with your absolutist statement is what truly seems naive. IMO there is far more nuance than you suggest. Democracy seems to work well for some types of problems but not others. What happens to democracies when faced with threats that manifest over very short timescales? They aren't nimble enough to respond in time. This is most evident in larger democracies; look at US/India responses to COVID. Countries like Taiwan are democratic and still succeeded, but they are small and they utilized methods that would be characterized as authoritarian here in the US. What about problems where the consequences of decisions have a large time-lag? There is no incentive for democratic policymakers to address them. Global warming is the obvious example. I question whether democracies can handle these kinds of issues. More worryingly, I think that as humanity's capabilities continue to increase, these kinds of problems are going to be more and more frequent.

threeseed 6y ago
Countries like Australia, South Korea and New Zealand have had exemplary COVID-19 responses. It has nothing to do with whether you are a democracy or not and everything to do with the competence of the government. And the people of the US will have an opportunity to vote in a few months on whether the response was adequate or not. I don't see the people of China having a similar opportunity for example.
- nradov 6y ago
  Did you consider it an exemplary response when Australian police arrested a pregnant woman for attempting to protest lockdown measures? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824
  - threeseed 6y ago
    I live in Melbourne and her arrest is widely supported. Our city is in a severe lockdown and at a tipping point between New Zealand style suppression and US style chaos. Just because she is a white, pregnant woman does not mean that she has the right to break the law and compromise the safety of the community.
    - stagehn 6y ago
      What does her being white have to do with anything and why would you even bring up her race?
      - rbg246 6y ago
        Because the reaction to her arrest is a good example of white lady in distress. Whether you agree or disagree with her arrest and release like two hours after this sort of stuff happens all the time with police but it's a big deal if it's a white lady. Just for the record im not sure I agree with her arrest but you know... Bigger things to worry about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
        stagehn 6y ago
        Is "wide support" of her arrest (as framed by the person I was replying to) an example of white lady in distress? That seems like the exact opposite of white lady in distress. Or is the single person who thought the arrest was unjust (further up) an example of white lady in distress? None of this fits the white lady in distress definition. It just seems like a way to smuggle in anti-white racism for no particular reason. Nothing about this situation has to do with race in any way whatsoever.
        rbg246 6y ago
        The fact that he was replying to a comment that used it as an example of Australia's 'authoritarian' response to covid and the fact that it received widespread news coverage and we all got to see her distress Vs the other guy who got arrested and received zero coverage for the same crime seems to suggest that this it is relevant and on the balance of probabilities a good example of white lady in distress.
        stagehn 6y ago
        He didn't use the 'authoritarian' framing (he sarcastically questioned whether it was 'exemplary'), that's something you're presumptively attributing. There was not 'zero' coverage of the guy's arrest, to the contrary there was wide coverage as a Google search easily reveals. There's also two factors you're not considering, (1) the guy ran a conspiracy theory group which reduces sympathy for him, (2) the woman's arrest came first so it was more novel and thus more engaging from a clicks perspective. It's absurd that race is being brought into this as a relevant explanatory dimension. Pernicious and divisive to say the least, leaving aside the fact that there's no evidence that race is in any way relevant to either what occurred in this case or the coverage of the case
  - sumedh 6y ago
    Did she break the law?
- bllguo 6y ago
  I mentioned that I believe problems manifest as scale increases. Do you think there is a difference between implementations of democracy in a large country vs a small one? I do. To clarify after some further thought - I think the bureaucratic burden scales much more drastically in a democratic system. In a large democracy all decisionmaking becomes mired in a swamp. Of course all governments will require more and more delegation and bureaucracy as the population grows, but IMO to a lesser degree in an authoritarian system, because there is no need to come to a broad consensus before making choices.
  - leafboi 6y ago
    Good point. Additionally, complexity also scales. A dictatorship relies more on the common sense of the dictator while a democracy relies on a set of written laws that grows with complexity over time. A single party does not need a contract while at least two parties must engage in a contract called a written body of law in order to come to an agreement. This "contract" is edited and amended over time with no limit to how complex it gets. In fact, that complexity balloons to a point where only experts can understand the law (lawyers). It also grows to the point where the law is so complex that it can become internally inconsistent and develop loop holes that do not serve the original intended purpose of the law. This allows for entities to exploit these loop holes. Of course only entities with enough money to afford the "experts" to find the loop holes and exploit them will be able bend the laws to their advantage thereby causing only the rich and elite to become more powerful. The above is the basic theory about the anthropological progression of your typical democracy. Growth in complexity of a body of law to the point where only the elite can afford to hire specialists to take advantage of said law. That is the main danger of democracy. Excess Complexity to the point where only people who can afford specialists to change the law can exploit it to their advantage. Complexity of law also leads to all kinds of other phenomena that niche experts and common people can take advantage of as well. For example constructors that take advantage of property law. The scary thing about the theory above is that there is a TON evidence of this. Almost every modern democracy in the world suffers from ALL of the problems above. Literally find me one that doesn't.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
Covid-19 has harmed fewer people worldwide than the Chinese government has murdered of its own citizen.
hellofunk 6y ago
One thing about a democracy, if poor choices are made and poor leaders are selected, it’s only temporary until the next wave of elections. But in a dictatorship, or even something that masquerades as a democracy but is not, those choices may go unchecked for decades.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > One thing about a democracy, if poor choices are made and poor leaders are selected, it’s only temporary until the next wave of elections. With sufficiently bad choices in a democracy it ceases to be a democracy before the error is corrected. Also, even when that doesn't happen, its possible for a choice to be bad but repeated in a democracy.
  - hellofunk 6y ago
    > With sufficiently bad choices in a democracy it ceases to be a democracy before the error is corrected. I’d like to see a real world example of what you mean. Because while lots of countries have elections, when leaders are allowed to arbitrarily extend their reign past with their laws allow, then I would agree with you. But those are the countries that I consider falling under the category of “masquerading as a democracy“.
    - chillacy 6y ago
      That seems a bit tautological to include the outcome in the definition. By that logic there are democracies today that will sometime in the future become “masquerading” that we can’t know yet.
      - hellofunk 6y ago
        You can't predict the future of any country of course, but you can certainly use its past to inform such a distinction. The moves by China and Russia, for example, to lengthen the reign of their leaders, while in the U.S., no matter what has happened to its leadership for the entirety of its history, no one has ever exceeded the time they were allowed before another election risked that tenure.

by bllguo 6y ago

threeseed 6y ago

Countries like Australia, South Korea and New Zealand have had exemplary COVID-19 responses. It has nothing to do with whether you are a democracy or not and everything to do with the competence of the government. And the people of the US will have an opportunity to vote in a few months on whether the response was adequate or not. I don't see the people of China having a similar opportunity for example.

nradov 6y ago
Did you consider it an exemplary response when Australian police arrested a pregnant woman for attempting to protest lockdown measures? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824
- threeseed 6y ago
  I live in Melbourne and her arrest is widely supported. Our city is in a severe lockdown and at a tipping point between New Zealand style suppression and US style chaos. Just because she is a white, pregnant woman does not mean that she has the right to break the law and compromise the safety of the community.
  - stagehn 6y ago
    What does her being white have to do with anything and why would you even bring up her race?
    - rbg246 6y ago
      Because the reaction to her arrest is a good example of white lady in distress. Whether you agree or disagree with her arrest and release like two hours after this sort of stuff happens all the time with police but it's a big deal if it's a white lady. Just for the record im not sure I agree with her arrest but you know... Bigger things to worry about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome
      - stagehn 6y ago
        Is "wide support" of her arrest (as framed by the person I was replying to) an example of white lady in distress? That seems like the exact opposite of white lady in distress. Or is the single person who thought the arrest was unjust (further up) an example of white lady in distress? None of this fits the white lady in distress definition. It just seems like a way to smuggle in anti-white racism for no particular reason. Nothing about this situation has to do with race in any way whatsoever.
        rbg246 6y ago
        The fact that he was replying to a comment that used it as an example of Australia's 'authoritarian' response to covid and the fact that it received widespread news coverage and we all got to see her distress Vs the other guy who got arrested and received zero coverage for the same crime seems to suggest that this it is relevant and on the balance of probabilities a good example of white lady in distress.
        stagehn 6y ago
        He didn't use the 'authoritarian' framing (he sarcastically questioned whether it was 'exemplary'), that's something you're presumptively attributing. There was not 'zero' coverage of the guy's arrest, to the contrary there was wide coverage as a Google search easily reveals. There's also two factors you're not considering, (1) the guy ran a conspiracy theory group which reduces sympathy for him, (2) the woman's arrest came first so it was more novel and thus more engaging from a clicks perspective. It's absurd that race is being brought into this as a relevant explanatory dimension. Pernicious and divisive to say the least, leaving aside the fact that there's no evidence that race is in any way relevant to either what occurred in this case or the coverage of the case
- sumedh 6y ago
  Did she break the law?
bllguo 6y ago
I mentioned that I believe problems manifest as scale increases. Do you think there is a difference between implementations of democracy in a large country vs a small one? I do. To clarify after some further thought - I think the bureaucratic burden scales much more drastically in a democratic system. In a large democracy all decisionmaking becomes mired in a swamp. Of course all governments will require more and more delegation and bureaucracy as the population grows, but IMO to a lesser degree in an authoritarian system, because there is no need to come to a broad consensus before making choices.
- leafboi 6y ago
  Good point. Additionally, complexity also scales. A dictatorship relies more on the common sense of the dictator while a democracy relies on a set of written laws that grows with complexity over time. A single party does not need a contract while at least two parties must engage in a contract called a written body of law in order to come to an agreement. This "contract" is edited and amended over time with no limit to how complex it gets. In fact, that complexity balloons to a point where only experts can understand the law (lawyers). It also grows to the point where the law is so complex that it can become internally inconsistent and develop loop holes that do not serve the original intended purpose of the law. This allows for entities to exploit these loop holes. Of course only entities with enough money to afford the "experts" to find the loop holes and exploit them will be able bend the laws to their advantage thereby causing only the rich and elite to become more powerful. The above is the basic theory about the anthropological progression of your typical democracy. Growth in complexity of a body of law to the point where only the elite can afford to hire specialists to take advantage of said law. That is the main danger of democracy. Excess Complexity to the point where only people who can afford specialists to change the law can exploit it to their advantage. Complexity of law also leads to all kinds of other phenomena that niche experts and common people can take advantage of as well. For example constructors that take advantage of property law. The scary thing about the theory above is that there is a TON evidence of this. Almost every modern democracy in the world suffers from ALL of the problems above. Literally find me one that doesn't.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Covid-19 has harmed fewer people worldwide than the Chinese government has murdered of its own citizen.

hellofunk 6y ago

One thing about a democracy, if poor choices are made and poor leaders are selected, it’s only temporary until the next wave of elections. But in a dictatorship, or even something that masquerades as a democracy but is not, those choices may go unchecked for decades.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> One thing about a democracy, if poor choices are made and poor leaders are selected, it’s only temporary until the next wave of elections. With sufficiently bad choices in a democracy it ceases to be a democracy before the error is corrected. Also, even when that doesn't happen, its possible for a choice to be bad but repeated in a democracy.
- hellofunk 6y ago
  > With sufficiently bad choices in a democracy it ceases to be a democracy before the error is corrected. I’d like to see a real world example of what you mean. Because while lots of countries have elections, when leaders are allowed to arbitrarily extend their reign past with their laws allow, then I would agree with you. But those are the countries that I consider falling under the category of “masquerading as a democracy“.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    That seems a bit tautological to include the outcome in the definition. By that logic there are democracies today that will sometime in the future become “masquerading” that we can’t know yet.
    - hellofunk 6y ago
      You can't predict the future of any country of course, but you can certainly use its past to inform such a distinction. The moves by China and Russia, for example, to lengthen the reign of their leaders, while in the U.S., no matter what has happened to its leadership for the entirety of its history, no one has ever exceeded the time they were allowed before another election risked that tenure.