4 ms·
Democracy is a tool, but doesn't reliably produce freedom or any other good outcome by itself. Individual rights and federalism go a long way to protecting free
by chmod600 6y ago
Democracy is a tool, but doesn't reliably produce freedom or any other good outcome by itself. Individual rights and federalism go a long way to protecting freedom in the long term.
Democracy works best when dealing with details, where there is already basic agreement on where the country should go. In that case, you just want a basically fair process to get a decision made, and you can adapt later.
But when there's a fundamental split in the electorate, democracy just means tyranny of the 55%.
- jfengel 6y agoOr in some cases the ~40%. Democracies often have rules in place to prevent that "tyranny of the 55%", but those rules can be leveraged to let certain minorities dominate. For example, democracy is often tilted towards inaction. That sounds like a good thing, until a majority loses its advantage. Then the rules that they put into place become permanent, and can't be changed even by largish majorities. It's still generally better than the others that have been tried from time to time, but it's far less fair than its high-minded abstractions make it sound.