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> Or will democracy require something akin to "martial law" to quickly decide and act on urgent matters? After the pandemic hit the West - Europe started locki
by tomp 6y ago
> Or will democracy require something akin to "martial law" to quickly decide and act on urgent matters?
After the pandemic hit the West - Europe started locking down mid-March, Trump banned EU flights on 12th - Germany (a democracy of 80 million people) passed a financial aid package on 23rd of March; US (a democracy of 300 million people) followed on the 25th.
So it's quite clear that democracies can react quickly, provided there's broad consensus of what the problem is and how to solve it; of course, things slow down when there's no consensus and conflicting views, but arguably that's a feature, not a bug.
- jacquesm 6y agoIf anything I think the pandemic shows that the 'free West' sucks at responding to such threats. We've done miserably compared to Singapore, China and Vietnam.
- petra 6y agoThat's true even if you leave the US out ?
- missedthecue 6y agoUS has a lower death rate than the UK, Italy, Belgium, Czechia, Hungary, and several other European states.
- kybernetikos 6y agoIt's mixed. There are a (admittedly small) number of countries in the 'free West' that have had 0 or even negative excess mortality so far. It's also difficult to compare because autocracies are less likely to release data that makes them look bad (they're too busy building a 'strong collective identity').
- tomp 6y agoPersonally I'm incredibly happy to have spent the pandemic in Europe rather than totalitarian regimes. And even though I spent my time between Italy, UK and Slovenia, three of the worst-hit countries. But obviously different people have different preferences. I'm also young, fit, healthy programmer, so all-in-all very lucky.
- jacquesm 6y agoI'm a bit older, was pretty fit & healthy and also a programmer. That didn't matter much to the virus though and I can recommend skipping this one.