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I don't think you really need that much of a justification to claim that centralized power is a danger to democracy. Democracy is to place power into the hands
by contravariant 6y ago
I don't think you really need that much of a justification to claim that centralized power is a danger to democracy.
Democracy is to place power into the hands of each individual, every form of centralized power necessarily pulls this power away from people and into the hands of a limited number of individuals. Democracy isn't so much threatened but actually harmed by the mere existence of centralized power.
- cies 6y ago> Democracy isn't so much threatened but actually harmed by the mere existence of centralized power. What's the essential difference?
- contravariant 6y agoDemocracy is already damaged by the lack of democratic control even if a centralized power chooses not to harm it any further (the fact that they even have this choice is evidence of the damage).
- orange_tee 6y agoActually this is not so clear. One can make arguments either way. For example in feudal Europe and later on, Europe was divided into very small states ruled by tyrants. The power was highly local but this did not result in more freedom for the people. Freedom actually corresponds well with the rise of nation states that centralized power. Even today it is not so clear. It is not hard to find local administrations that are extremely corrupt.
- contravariant 6y agoI reckon it's more about what power is taken away than into how many tyrants that power is concentrated. If you have more tyrants then technically the power is less concentrated but it's mostly the tyrants that have any additional power. It would get interesting if you could come up with an example where taking power away from the people resulted in more freedom but that sounds like a contradiction.