4 ms·

Must democracy "deliver the goods" to beat autocracy?

28 points by tornadofart 1y ago

maldonad0 1y ago
Democracy, or "Democracy"? Did the people have any choice in the Patriot Act and many others? On the actions following the 2007 crisis and the extraordinary bailout? Do EU citizens have any choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control? Democracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show. The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on.
- kingstnap 1y ago
  In small groups, you can often manage consensus rather than majority rule. If you had a small group that actually frequently had 50%+1 rulings, I feel like you would fracture real fast.
  - maldonad0 1y ago
    In small groups, democracy is synonomous with consensus.
- nosignono 1y ago
  > The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on. This is demonstrably untrue, there are plenty of cases of stable democratic systems. They just tend to exist outside of capitalism (or stand in opposition to traditional capitalist practice). It often relies on syndicalism or federation to stay distributed. Maybe that's compatible with your "small groups" statement, where many small groups coordinate together to form big groups to get things done.
- johnecheck 1y ago
  I'd word that last idea differently. All democracies are vulnerable to corruption to a degree determined by factors like information quality and personal relationships/accountability. Small groups with great relationships and communication often work well democratically. While larger democracies generally have fallen to increasing concentrations of wealth and power, I don't think we should conclude this is inevitable. We can do a lot better than this.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    I think concluding that concentrations of wealth and power is inevitable is exactly what the evidence suggests. Has there ever been a society where this did not eventually happen?
    - johnecheck 1y ago
      Historically, we've seen countless examples of societies becoming more and more unequal. Essentially all of them, true. But note a key piece: those societies weren't always getting more unequal. You can find many examples of societies pulling back from the brink after a period of consolidation. Perhaps the goal isn't for wealth inequality to never increase. What if instead of perpetual increase or a sharp decrease, society achieved a sin-wave like equilibrium centered around some desirable level of wealth/power inequality? It doesn't work if the level you desire is zero. Sorry, Marxists.
- QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
  Trumps election was full democracy: no one truly powerful in 2015 wanted that. You are way underestimating the malignant stupidity of voters.
- credit_guy 1y ago
  "Democracy" is just our short word for "checks and balances and the rule of law", which is quite a mouthful. > and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show. Autocrats all over the world rejoice when they hear this type of arguments. If nothing is perfect, then every system is as good as theirs. I'm sure that's not what you are trying to say, but unfortunately, that's the logical conclusion of what you are saying.
  - maldonad0 1y ago
    Ha! I meant it. Every system has its pros and cons. I find quite a lot of modern democracies to be extraordinarily dishonest and shortsighted, pretending to be ruled by the people while the same oligarchy has in fact been ruling since time immemorial, and I hate it when I am lied to my face. As another commenter said, democracies pride themselves in being transparent and true to themselves, things that are needed to be able to choose your collective destiny wisely, which is in turn the core a working democracy. At least the Sultan of Oman is honest about him ruling and not me! We pretend to live in democracies while we live in oligarchies, because if we admited democracy has been corrupted, the house of cards would fall, since we have been building our worldview and values on the position that they are more just than others because it's the will of the people. Finally, I'll add that liberalism is not unique to democracy, but able to fit into other governing systems. I think there are better systems than democracy, one of them being mixed systems. Monarchism at the head of the country, democracy at the city level, and a parliament composed half and half of democratically elected local municipality representants and experts.
    - credit_guy 1y ago
      > I think there are better systems than democracy, one of them being mixed systems. It looks to me you have some idyllic notion of democracy. If you use my definition (which is generally accepted) of "checks and balances and the rule of law", then a "mixed system" as you suggested definitely qualifies. But you have to realize that in all systems there will be people who lie. If you "hate when you are lied to your face", then I have some terrible news for you: you will not find any system where people don't lie to your face. Except, possibly, in the Sultanate of Oman.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > Do EU citizens have any choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control? I mean, yes. On its first run, a few years back, it was essentially torn apart by the parliament. Now the commission is trying again. The EU doesn't work that differently to any other parliamentary democracy; there's an executive cabinet (in this case appointed by member states) and a legislative body (elected by the people of member states). For various practical reasons, the commission and legislature are more inclined to public conflict in the EU than in most systems; in many parliamentary democracies the executive will be reluctant to bring a bill that the parliament will reject, and its viability will be tested behind closed doors before it's brought; if the proposers don't think they have the numbers they'll never actually propose it. So you do see this sort of conflict a lot more with the EU. But it's the same basic system.
arduanika 1y ago
Generally a nice short post of unmitigated moral clarity, but then it's jarring to see this equivocation about "the arguably autocratic China". "Arguably". Are we being asked to call a spade a spade here, or what? If so, why these weasel words? When emulating those "who went to Spain to fight Franco in the 1920s [sic]", is the idea that we should denounce fascism, but only in ways that won't offend the Party?
- maldonad0 1y ago
  The author is conflating democracy with liberalism.
  - nosignono 1y ago
    Many such cases. The Democrats, (in)famously, conflate the two. Ask Democrats about direct democracy and you'll get a whooolllle lot of hemming and hawing.
  - tornadofart 1y ago
    Author here. Enlighten me.
    - maldonad0 1y ago
      Democracy is a form of power organization. Liberalism is system of ethics.
      - tornadofart 1y ago
        So far that was also my notion. Where did I conflate them?
- tornadofart 1y ago
  Author here. Not a native english speaker. Will remove "arguably". And please, offend the party.
  - 1y ago
nosignono 1y ago
A whole of stuff here feels... emotionally loaded in a way that's designed to be manipulative rather than heartfelt. Saying "A gun craves to be shot" is a clear example -- guns don't crave anything. I'm a pro-gun leftist, so maybe I'm just sensitive to this specific example. Another example, much of the article uses "China" to suggest a broad, villainous other. Like so much American media, this reads like, "What are we, China?" or alternatively, "Surely we are better than China..." Which assumes a level of backwater, out of date, poorly run culture in China. As a concrete example, the author says something to the effect of, "China claims to have quickly built a hospital, which I very much doubt." And explains nothing further -- why do you doubt that? What evidence do you have? Or are you just relying on your audience to credulously agree that because it came out of China, it's bad or a lie? Additionally, the article appeals to the idea that we are all self interested by our fundamental nature. That we're all programmed to survive at all costs, and the means of that survival is individual self interest. Plenty of folks (myself included) believe that our survival instinct is one of social cohesion -- we survive because we band together into social groups. So I agree with the conclusion -- we should be fighting fascists, and we should be doing it with strong policy and aggressively pushing fascists out of shared spaces (a bar that permits one nazi to be there is a nazi bar), I just think this article doesn't make the case for that very effectively.
- tornadofart 1y ago
  Author here. I do not think at all that individual self-interest is our only motor. I'm saying we underestimate the extent to which it motivates us. I should probably clarify that. My view of China is informed by my months-long stay there during the pandemic (among other stays but that was the most ... uh... impressive one). It is my only direct experience with autocracy and I assure you it was scary as heck. Make of that what you will. And I'm European.
  - watwut 1y ago
    China has super rich class and is able to build very fast. It has also very poor parts where they cant do all that much. China has quite developed competitive science and industry. It is very competitive internally - sometimes more free market then America (which tends to create winner takes all systems with less actual competition).
johnecheck 1y ago
Democracy thrives on information, reason, and participation. A democracy that concludes it should "[f]abricate and / or blow out of proportion any issue that comes [it's] way to blame the fascists" is dying. A society where the winners of elections are the most egregious liars is broken. Its days are numbered. I'd rather we pull a random general's name out of a hat and make them Supreme Leader than watch some pathological liar take power when such a decaying democracy falls apart. The truth is our greatest ally. We need to harness it as a weapon, not abandon it in a pathetic attempt to insult our enemies and preserve the status quo.
- jfengel 1y ago
  If this democracy is dying, it doesn't speak particularly well of the virtues of democracy. We had truth. It's still there, readily accessible. We got here despite that.
  - estearum 1y ago
    It’s probably something more like truth x prevalence If you have a massive ecosystem dedicated to churning out un-truths and it can crowd out truth, then the truthiness hardly matters… in the near term at least. In the long run, truth-seeking systems work better because it’s hard to operate effectively without it. Which I suspect we’ll re-learn in a few short months.
    - johnecheck 1y ago
      What gives me hope is how the sentiment has turned against that massive ecosystem. Everyone knows it's terrible and damaging our society. The time is ripe for a new information ecosystem to emerge. Authority structures and truth heuristics are key considerations. It's a damn shame that the only sizable social network that brands itself on veracity is Truth Social.
  - johnecheck 1y ago
    Agreed. Right now, the truth is losing the information war. But abandoning it in favor of a contest of lies? Against fascists? Really? I don't think so. I value credibility, and I'm not alone. You care about what's true, right? Almost everyone does. It's just really damn hard to figure it out. If we actually want to fix things, our job is to make that easier.
CompoundEyes 1y ago
I’ve been thinking about democracy and LLMs lately. What will be the ripple effect on society now that more than 500 million people are actively using LLMs instead of their previous sources for information? Does training on massive amounts of knowledge inevitably push a model toward a particular viewpoint or is it a system prompt? https://www.trackingai.org/political-test https://www.trackingai.org/political-test
maxglute 1y ago
>The outside world can't tell the difference anyway Why not, plurality of the outside world has PRC as their biggest trading partner, seeing increasingly higher tier goods. Some even visit and see delivered goods with their own eyes. It's convenient for democracies to pretend the knowable isn't knownable, that non democratic systems can deliver some things better. That failed democracies are actually autocratic failures are when slide into authoritarianism is democratic system failing. And really if one peers back throughout history, many democracies were built off the imperialism/extractive base from when countries were not democracies / periods when country was more authoritarian. Sometimes that base is substantial enough to snowball durable advantages from, sometimes the runway runs out and populist start questioning the system that squandered the lead. Or dismiss concerns because autocrats are faking their orgasms.
WhaleClub 1y ago
>Autocracy is bad >also we need to do fascism against the fascists I hate leftists like this the most. >The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. Brand them the enemy of the people, in the name of societal order, zero tolerance. Don't waste your time on creating stupid values that you can rally people around.
throwawayyy54 1y ago
This article makes the case way better https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/ https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-... The tl;dr is that Western societies sort of developed liberalism as a reaction to the vast destruction of the early modern wars of religion, and it persisted because liberal democraties tend to be more productive and better at war than their autocratic counterparts, and way better than their fascist counterparts.
dpc_01234 1y ago
> The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. "Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label" level of discourse.
- tornadofart 1y ago
  Corrected to "fascists and other autocrats"
- tornadofart 1y ago
  And yes. Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label. I happen to like democracy and value viewpoints from conservative to leftist. I don't like fascism.

28 points by tornadofart 1y ago

Democracy, or "Democracy"? Did the people have any choice in the Patriot Act and many others? On the actions following the 2007 crisis and the extraordinary bailout? Do EU citizens have any choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control? Democracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show. The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on.

kingstnap 1y ago
In small groups, you can often manage consensus rather than majority rule. If you had a small group that actually frequently had 50%+1 rulings, I feel like you would fracture real fast.
- maldonad0 1y ago
  In small groups, democracy is synonomous with consensus.
nosignono 1y ago
> The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on. This is demonstrably untrue, there are plenty of cases of stable democratic systems. They just tend to exist outside of capitalism (or stand in opposition to traditional capitalist practice). It often relies on syndicalism or federation to stay distributed. Maybe that's compatible with your "small groups" statement, where many small groups coordinate together to form big groups to get things done.
johnecheck 1y ago
I'd word that last idea differently. All democracies are vulnerable to corruption to a degree determined by factors like information quality and personal relationships/accountability. Small groups with great relationships and communication often work well democratically. While larger democracies generally have fallen to increasing concentrations of wealth and power, I don't think we should conclude this is inevitable. We can do a lot better than this.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  I think concluding that concentrations of wealth and power is inevitable is exactly what the evidence suggests. Has there ever been a society where this did not eventually happen?
  - johnecheck 1y ago
    Historically, we've seen countless examples of societies becoming more and more unequal. Essentially all of them, true. But note a key piece: those societies weren't always getting more unequal. You can find many examples of societies pulling back from the brink after a period of consolidation. Perhaps the goal isn't for wealth inequality to never increase. What if instead of perpetual increase or a sharp decrease, society achieved a sin-wave like equilibrium centered around some desirable level of wealth/power inequality? It doesn't work if the level you desire is zero. Sorry, Marxists.
QuadmasterXLII 1y ago
Trumps election was full democracy: no one truly powerful in 2015 wanted that. You are way underestimating the malignant stupidity of voters.
credit_guy 1y ago
"Democracy" is just our short word for "checks and balances and the rule of law", which is quite a mouthful. > and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show. Autocrats all over the world rejoice when they hear this type of arguments. If nothing is perfect, then every system is as good as theirs. I'm sure that's not what you are trying to say, but unfortunately, that's the logical conclusion of what you are saying.
- maldonad0 1y ago
  Ha! I meant it. Every system has its pros and cons. I find quite a lot of modern democracies to be extraordinarily dishonest and shortsighted, pretending to be ruled by the people while the same oligarchy has in fact been ruling since time immemorial, and I hate it when I am lied to my face. As another commenter said, democracies pride themselves in being transparent and true to themselves, things that are needed to be able to choose your collective destiny wisely, which is in turn the core a working democracy. At least the Sultan of Oman is honest about him ruling and not me! We pretend to live in democracies while we live in oligarchies, because if we admited democracy has been corrupted, the house of cards would fall, since we have been building our worldview and values on the position that they are more just than others because it's the will of the people. Finally, I'll add that liberalism is not unique to democracy, but able to fit into other governing systems. I think there are better systems than democracy, one of them being mixed systems. Monarchism at the head of the country, democracy at the city level, and a parliament composed half and half of democratically elected local municipality representants and experts.
  - credit_guy 1y ago
    > I think there are better systems than democracy, one of them being mixed systems. It looks to me you have some idyllic notion of democracy. If you use my definition (which is generally accepted) of "checks and balances and the rule of law", then a "mixed system" as you suggested definitely qualifies. But you have to realize that in all systems there will be people who lie. If you "hate when you are lied to your face", then I have some terrible news for you: you will not find any system where people don't lie to your face. Except, possibly, in the Sultanate of Oman.
rsynnott 1y ago
> Do EU citizens have any choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control? I mean, yes. On its first run, a few years back, it was essentially torn apart by the parliament. Now the commission is trying again. The EU doesn't work that differently to any other parliamentary democracy; there's an executive cabinet (in this case appointed by member states) and a legislative body (elected by the people of member states). For various practical reasons, the commission and legislature are more inclined to public conflict in the EU than in most systems; in many parliamentary democracies the executive will be reluctant to bring a bill that the parliament will reject, and its viability will be tested behind closed doors before it's brought; if the proposers don't think they have the numbers they'll never actually propose it. So you do see this sort of conflict a lot more with the EU. But it's the same basic system.

arduanika 1y ago

Generally a nice short post of unmitigated moral clarity, but then it's jarring to see this equivocation about "the arguably autocratic China". "Arguably". Are we being asked to call a spade a spade here, or what? If so, why these weasel words? When emulating those "who went to Spain to fight Franco in the 1920s [sic]", is the idea that we should denounce fascism, but only in ways that won't offend the Party?

maldonad0 1y ago
The author is conflating democracy with liberalism.
- nosignono 1y ago
  Many such cases. The Democrats, (in)famously, conflate the two. Ask Democrats about direct democracy and you'll get a whooolllle lot of hemming and hawing.
- tornadofart 1y ago
  Author here. Enlighten me.
  - maldonad0 1y ago
    Democracy is a form of power organization. Liberalism is system of ethics.
    - tornadofart 1y ago
      So far that was also my notion. Where did I conflate them?
tornadofart 1y ago
Author here. Not a native english speaker. Will remove "arguably". And please, offend the party.
- 1y ago

nosignono 1y ago

A whole of stuff here feels... emotionally loaded in a way that's designed to be manipulative rather than heartfelt. Saying "A gun craves to be shot" is a clear example -- guns don't crave anything. I'm a pro-gun leftist, so maybe I'm just sensitive to this specific example. Another example, much of the article uses "China" to suggest a broad, villainous other. Like so much American media, this reads like, "What are we, China?" or alternatively, "Surely we are better than China..." Which assumes a level of backwater, out of date, poorly run culture in China. As a concrete example, the author says something to the effect of, "China claims to have quickly built a hospital, which I very much doubt." And explains nothing further -- why do you doubt that? What evidence do you have? Or are you just relying on your audience to credulously agree that because it came out of China, it's bad or a lie? Additionally, the article appeals to the idea that we are all self interested by our fundamental nature. That we're all programmed to survive at all costs, and the means of that survival is individual self interest. Plenty of folks (myself included) believe that our survival instinct is one of social cohesion -- we survive because we band together into social groups. So I agree with the conclusion -- we should be fighting fascists, and we should be doing it with strong policy and aggressively pushing fascists out of shared spaces (a bar that permits one nazi to be there is a nazi bar), I just think this article doesn't make the case for that very effectively.

tornadofart 1y ago
Author here. I do not think at all that individual self-interest is our only motor. I'm saying we underestimate the extent to which it motivates us. I should probably clarify that. My view of China is informed by my months-long stay there during the pandemic (among other stays but that was the most ... uh... impressive one). It is my only direct experience with autocracy and I assure you it was scary as heck. Make of that what you will. And I'm European.
- watwut 1y ago
  China has super rich class and is able to build very fast. It has also very poor parts where they cant do all that much. China has quite developed competitive science and industry. It is very competitive internally - sometimes more free market then America (which tends to create winner takes all systems with less actual competition).

johnecheck 1y ago

Democracy thrives on information, reason, and participation. A democracy that concludes it should "[f]abricate and / or blow out of proportion any issue that comes [it's] way to blame the fascists" is dying. A society where the winners of elections are the most egregious liars is broken. Its days are numbered. I'd rather we pull a random general's name out of a hat and make them Supreme Leader than watch some pathological liar take power when such a decaying democracy falls apart. The truth is our greatest ally. We need to harness it as a weapon, not abandon it in a pathetic attempt to insult our enemies and preserve the status quo.

jfengel 1y ago
If this democracy is dying, it doesn't speak particularly well of the virtues of democracy. We had truth. It's still there, readily accessible. We got here despite that.
- estearum 1y ago
  It’s probably something more like truth x prevalence If you have a massive ecosystem dedicated to churning out un-truths and it can crowd out truth, then the truthiness hardly matters… in the near term at least. In the long run, truth-seeking systems work better because it’s hard to operate effectively without it. Which I suspect we’ll re-learn in a few short months.
  - johnecheck 1y ago
    What gives me hope is how the sentiment has turned against that massive ecosystem. Everyone knows it's terrible and damaging our society. The time is ripe for a new information ecosystem to emerge. Authority structures and truth heuristics are key considerations. It's a damn shame that the only sizable social network that brands itself on veracity is Truth Social.
- johnecheck 1y ago
  Agreed. Right now, the truth is losing the information war. But abandoning it in favor of a contest of lies? Against fascists? Really? I don't think so. I value credibility, and I'm not alone. You care about what's true, right? Almost everyone does. It's just really damn hard to figure it out. If we actually want to fix things, our job is to make that easier.

CompoundEyes 1y ago

I’ve been thinking about democracy and LLMs lately. What will be the ripple effect on society now that more than 500 million people are actively using LLMs instead of their previous sources for information? Does training on massive amounts of knowledge inevitably push a model toward a particular viewpoint or is it a system prompt? https://www.trackingai.org/political-test https://www.trackingai.org/political-test

maxglute 1y ago

>The outside world can't tell the difference anyway Why not, plurality of the outside world has PRC as their biggest trading partner, seeing increasingly higher tier goods. Some even visit and see delivered goods with their own eyes. It's convenient for democracies to pretend the knowable isn't knownable, that non democratic systems can deliver some things better. That failed democracies are actually autocratic failures are when slide into authoritarianism is democratic system failing. And really if one peers back throughout history, many democracies were built off the imperialism/extractive base from when countries were not democracies / periods when country was more authoritarian. Sometimes that base is substantial enough to snowball durable advantages from, sometimes the runway runs out and populist start questioning the system that squandered the lead. Or dismiss concerns because autocrats are faking their orgasms.

WhaleClub 1y ago

>Autocracy is bad >also we need to do fascism against the fascists I hate leftists like this the most. >The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. Brand them the enemy of the people, in the name of societal order, zero tolerance. Don't waste your time on creating stupid values that you can rally people around.

throwawayyy54 1y ago

This article makes the case way better https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/ https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-... The tl;dr is that Western societies sort of developed liberalism as a reaction to the vast destruction of the early modern wars of religion, and it persisted because liberal democraties tend to be more productive and better at war than their autocratic counterparts, and way better than their fascist counterparts.

dpc_01234 1y ago

> The playbook of a democratic leadership should be to crack down on fascists and others as hard as possible. "Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label" level of discourse.

tornadofart 1y ago
Corrected to "fascists and other autocrats"
tornadofart 1y ago
And yes. Everything I like is good-label, everything I don't is bad-label. I happen to like democracy and value viewpoints from conservative to leftist. I don't like fascism.