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Calling opinions you don’t like propaganda isn’t an argument. I have no idea if democracy leads to less war but given the number of countries the UK and US have

Calling opinions you don’t like propaganda isn’t an argument. I have no idea if democracy leads to less war but given the number of countries the UK and US have invaded I kind of doubt it. England has had parliamentary supremacy since the Dutch invasion/Glorious Revolution and the US didn’t grow from 13 colonies to continent spanning without war.

zozbot234 5y ago
> I have no idea if democracy leads to less war The simple answer is yes, it does. "Democratic peace" is one of the most solid empirical results in International Relations. (Of course, "democratic" here has to be understood as including broadly liberal/freedom-promoting norms. Electoral politics on its own is beside the point.)
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Completely confounded by the US hegemony since WW2. In that period democracy and US client state are almost synonyms. Why would client states go to war against instructions from the imperial capital?
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    "Client state" is a confused notion - it misinterprets mutually beneficial cooperative attitudes as forced dependence. One of the best ways of disproving this notion is to look at what happens when the "hegemon" foolishly tries to enforce an "America First, our way or the highway" approach. To no one's surprise, the former "client states" suddenly start looking for alternative arrangements and banding together to counter the supposed "hegemon".
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      It sounds like you think there have been times the US has pushed real hard on some issue and a coalition of other countries have come together to tell it to go to hell. Given that NATO countries are so dependent on the US for expeditionary capability that when Sarkozy wanted to bomb Libya back into open air slave markets he had to get Hillary Clinton to ask Obama to do it this seems pretty weak. For an example from when there were Western powers that still aspired to an independent foreign policy one could look to the Suez Crisis. The UK and France pursue their interests and the US tells them to stop so they do.
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        The NATO countries are quite happy to be dependent on the U.S. because military capability is hella expensive. NATO can't even get their own military spending target to be taken seriously, and that's an order of magnitude lower than what the U.S. spends. If by "hegemony" you mean "the U.S. pays for everyone else's defense, and gets some amount of reciprocation (most likely worth a lot less than 20% of GDP, so hardly a fair trade!) in the form of favorable foreign policy from the countries it's paying for" then the U.S. is obviously a hegemon and no one among its "clients" is seeking to change that in the slightest.
        barry-cotter 5y ago
        Do you have any examples of a group of US client states coming together to tell it no on any issue the US pushed hard on?
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  Ancient Greeks would disagree. And there's that whole slavery bit, and genocide (did we forget about the Indians already?). And the selective morality of when to choose to go into a conflict. And the whole quasi-imperialist overseas territories bit that democracies enjoy. It's cultural values that prevent war, not politics. Democracy is a machine for warfare if the people (or its leaders) like war.
- nybble41 5y ago
  > (Of course, "democratic" here has to be understood as including broadly liberal/freedom-promoting norms. Electoral politics on its own is beside the point.) In other words, "democracy leads to less war" so long as by "democracy" you actually mean the polar opposite of actual democracy, which is electoral politics. It's orthogonal to, and frequently opposed to, those "liberal/freedom-promoting norms" which you correctly observe are actually responsible for peace. If you want peace you can't just introduce "democracy" in the form of elections and voting—you have to change the culture to respect natural rights and value freedom even when doing so in a particular situation may be contrary to popular sentiment. In a society which endorses "liberal/freedom-promoting norms" the influence of democracy is minimal as power resides with free individuals making decisions for themselves and not the collective, and it makes little difference whether the few remaining issues—which naturally exclude anything which might infringe on individuals' natural rights—are decided by direct vote, elected representatives, or self-appointed leader(s).
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > few remaining issues The issues which are subject to political decision making are anything but "few" or "unimportant". Even in the most freedom-loving society, you're going to need some mechanism to discipline policy makers when they make bad decisions. Electoral politics is one convenient way of doing that - it's anything but perfect, but by and large it's what we're all familiar with.
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > Even in the most freedom-loving society, you're going to need some mechanism to discipline policy makers when they make bad decisions. The point was that there wouldn't be very much in the way of "policy" in a society grounded in a culture of liberty and freedom. A "government" which is bound to respect everyone's natural rights at all times is really nothing more than a corporation or co-op (either for-profit or non-profit). It can't levy taxes or impose regulations on non-members, or force anyone to become or remain a member against their will. Whatever "policies" it might decide on, it can't compel anyone else to follow them. The way to "discipline policy makers" in such a system is simply to cancel your membership, and perhaps switch to a competing organization—and this option is available to you regardless of how the organization makes its decisions. To be clear, I'm not opposed to employing democracy in this way, just as co-ops may have elected leaders or shareholders may vote on proposals offered by a board of directors. There are times to seek consensus and work through issues as a group, just as there are times for clear, unified leadership. But if someone wants to sign up with an organization with an "autocratic" leader who doesn't care about anyone else's opinion, that's fine too—provided they don't force their system on anyone who doesn't choose to follow them.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

zozbot234 5y ago

> I have no idea if democracy leads to less war The simple answer is yes, it does. "Democratic peace" is one of the most solid empirical results in International Relations. (Of course, "democratic" here has to be understood as including broadly liberal/freedom-promoting norms. Electoral politics on its own is beside the point.)

barry-cotter 5y ago
Completely confounded by the US hegemony since WW2. In that period democracy and US client state are almost synonyms. Why would client states go to war against instructions from the imperial capital?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  "Client state" is a confused notion - it misinterprets mutually beneficial cooperative attitudes as forced dependence. One of the best ways of disproving this notion is to look at what happens when the "hegemon" foolishly tries to enforce an "America First, our way or the highway" approach. To no one's surprise, the former "client states" suddenly start looking for alternative arrangements and banding together to counter the supposed "hegemon".
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    It sounds like you think there have been times the US has pushed real hard on some issue and a coalition of other countries have come together to tell it to go to hell. Given that NATO countries are so dependent on the US for expeditionary capability that when Sarkozy wanted to bomb Libya back into open air slave markets he had to get Hillary Clinton to ask Obama to do it this seems pretty weak. For an example from when there were Western powers that still aspired to an independent foreign policy one could look to the Suez Crisis. The UK and France pursue their interests and the US tells them to stop so they do.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      The NATO countries are quite happy to be dependent on the U.S. because military capability is hella expensive. NATO can't even get their own military spending target to be taken seriously, and that's an order of magnitude lower than what the U.S. spends. If by "hegemony" you mean "the U.S. pays for everyone else's defense, and gets some amount of reciprocation (most likely worth a lot less than 20% of GDP, so hardly a fair trade!) in the form of favorable foreign policy from the countries it's paying for" then the U.S. is obviously a hegemon and no one among its "clients" is seeking to change that in the slightest.
      - barry-cotter 5y ago
        Do you have any examples of a group of US client states coming together to tell it no on any issue the US pushed hard on?
throwaway984393 5y ago
Ancient Greeks would disagree. And there's that whole slavery bit, and genocide (did we forget about the Indians already?). And the selective morality of when to choose to go into a conflict. And the whole quasi-imperialist overseas territories bit that democracies enjoy. It's cultural values that prevent war, not politics. Democracy is a machine for warfare if the people (or its leaders) like war.
nybble41 5y ago
> (Of course, "democratic" here has to be understood as including broadly liberal/freedom-promoting norms. Electoral politics on its own is beside the point.) In other words, "democracy leads to less war" so long as by "democracy" you actually mean the polar opposite of actual democracy, which is electoral politics. It's orthogonal to, and frequently opposed to, those "liberal/freedom-promoting norms" which you correctly observe are actually responsible for peace. If you want peace you can't just introduce "democracy" in the form of elections and voting—you have to change the culture to respect natural rights and value freedom even when doing so in a particular situation may be contrary to popular sentiment. In a society which endorses "liberal/freedom-promoting norms" the influence of democracy is minimal as power resides with free individuals making decisions for themselves and not the collective, and it makes little difference whether the few remaining issues—which naturally exclude anything which might infringe on individuals' natural rights—are decided by direct vote, elected representatives, or self-appointed leader(s).
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > few remaining issues The issues which are subject to political decision making are anything but "few" or "unimportant". Even in the most freedom-loving society, you're going to need some mechanism to discipline policy makers when they make bad decisions. Electoral politics is one convenient way of doing that - it's anything but perfect, but by and large it's what we're all familiar with.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > Even in the most freedom-loving society, you're going to need some mechanism to discipline policy makers when they make bad decisions. The point was that there wouldn't be very much in the way of "policy" in a society grounded in a culture of liberty and freedom. A "government" which is bound to respect everyone's natural rights at all times is really nothing more than a corporation or co-op (either for-profit or non-profit). It can't levy taxes or impose regulations on non-members, or force anyone to become or remain a member against their will. Whatever "policies" it might decide on, it can't compel anyone else to follow them. The way to "discipline policy makers" in such a system is simply to cancel your membership, and perhaps switch to a competing organization—and this option is available to you regardless of how the organization makes its decisions. To be clear, I'm not opposed to employing democracy in this way, just as co-ops may have elected leaders or shareholders may vote on proposals offered by a board of directors. There are times to seek consensus and work through issues as a group, just as there are times for clear, unified leadership. But if someone wants to sign up with an organization with an "autocratic" leader who doesn't care about anyone else's opinion, that's fine too—provided they don't force their system on anyone who doesn't choose to follow them.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]