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I always find any discussions which do not adequately desrcibe the terms cuious. Thers a reason why academic articles usually stress on the 'term of art' to mak

I always find any discussions which do not adequately desrcibe the terms cuious. Thers a reason why academic articles usually stress on the 'term of art' to make exact what is being addressed and the scope. Going forward as far as 'Democracy' i personally think not many countries can claim to have been/are one. If we are definig it as a system where the majority make decisions while minority rights are protected. For one the US has only ever been aspirational to those ideals since its founding and objectively with Citizens united eventhat pretence has dissolved [1] and moving to out and out a collection of oligarchs that pay lip service to any democratic institutions/norms. To bring it back to the article after WW2 , Japan has been basically run by one party backed by the US , which still holds veto over key military/financial decisions. Certainly if it was a democracy this situation could be changed by the vote (eg bases on okinawa) , that it persists shows the hollow nature of the derciptor. What articles like this show is the kabuki theatre is incresingly being rejected by the deimos worldwide who are seeing through the tricks in realtime - hence the plethora of cencorship laws going live obstenively to tackle lewd images/terror etc. [1]https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-democracy-but-an-oligarchy-study-concludes/2761397680051/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/04/16/The-US-is-not-a-d...

culi 9mo ago
Not even in its founding. Federalist #10 spells out exactly the fears that Madison had about democracy. You give people full political power and they'll use it to redistribute wealth/land. So you need to give people somewhere to funnel their energies without rocking the boat too hard. Originally we weren't supposed to vote for Senators and the presidency was mostly conceived as a ceremonial role and the Electoral College was there just in case the establishment was ever too threatened by "democracy"
martin-t 9mo ago
A true democracy would be people voting on laws directly and having the _option_ to appoint an assistant to vote for them. That's right - politicians would not be "leaders" but assistants who could be removed or replaced at any time. --- A political party and a person's political opinion are both points in a high-dimensional vector space. The greatest issue with representative democracy is that voting is the act of describing one point (your political opinion) by picking another point from a small predefined set (political parties) which is acceptably close to yours. That's nuts and it should be obviously nuts to anyone who understands a tiny bit of vector math. Thank god they don't teach it until university or we'd have riots every day until it was fixed.
verisimi 9mo ago
Yes, nowhere has a 'democracy', this is a sales or branding term. What we have is 'representative democracy' where people choose someone to represent them. So, hundreds, thousands or even millions choose one person to represent them for 4-5 years. That person decides those people's best interests on what to do for the thousands of decisions that come up. The representative however does not need to do any of the things they said they would. They can not be held accountable for saying one thing but doing the other (ie lying), except at the end of their term, when they can be voted out. (Giving another the chance to do the same.) They only have to catch the people's aspirations, not deliver on them. And even on those 'decisions' that the representative does get a chance to opine and vote on, the representative is hamstrung - bills contain so much that no one would agree with. Even if there were well-meaning representatives, they are unable to do anything with bills written by lobbyists in the pay of the companies that the bill is meant to 'restrain' - representatives cannot agree only with the good and leave the bad.
- rzerowan 9mo ago
  The closest i feel is with the swiss canton system where each region kind of runs its own affairs and the major ones get put to a referendum - so immigration stuff might be on the local regional level , while things that would impact everyone gets a referendum. Of course theres the issue with voter apathy/fatigue.Hopefully a system where excluding emergency situations elections should select for implementors of already decided laws(via referendum) to reduce the stakes and possibility of corrupting influence once in power(since there would be limited to shaping not introducing new laws). Unfortunately i doubt most of the current systems are reformable short of a revolution, so well proceed to stumlealong until the wheels fall off.

culi 9mo ago

Not even in its founding. Federalist #10 spells out exactly the fears that Madison had about democracy. You give people full political power and they'll use it to redistribute wealth/land. So you need to give people somewhere to funnel their energies without rocking the boat too hard. Originally we weren't supposed to vote for Senators and the presidency was mostly conceived as a ceremonial role and the Electoral College was there just in case the establishment was ever too threatened by "democracy"

martin-t 9mo ago

A true democracy would be people voting on laws directly and having the _option_ to appoint an assistant to vote for them. That's right - politicians would not be "leaders" but assistants who could be removed or replaced at any time. --- A political party and a person's political opinion are both points in a high-dimensional vector space. The greatest issue with representative democracy is that voting is the act of describing one point (your political opinion) by picking another point from a small predefined set (political parties) which is acceptably close to yours. That's nuts and it should be obviously nuts to anyone who understands a tiny bit of vector math. Thank god they don't teach it until university or we'd have riots every day until it was fixed.

verisimi 9mo ago

Yes, nowhere has a 'democracy', this is a sales or branding term. What we have is 'representative democracy' where people choose someone to represent them. So, hundreds, thousands or even millions choose one person to represent them for 4-5 years. That person decides those people's best interests on what to do for the thousands of decisions that come up. The representative however does not need to do any of the things they said they would. They can not be held accountable for saying one thing but doing the other (ie lying), except at the end of their term, when they can be voted out. (Giving another the chance to do the same.) They only have to catch the people's aspirations, not deliver on them. And even on those 'decisions' that the representative does get a chance to opine and vote on, the representative is hamstrung - bills contain so much that no one would agree with. Even if there were well-meaning representatives, they are unable to do anything with bills written by lobbyists in the pay of the companies that the bill is meant to 'restrain' - representatives cannot agree only with the good and leave the bad.

rzerowan 9mo ago
The closest i feel is with the swiss canton system where each region kind of runs its own affairs and the major ones get put to a referendum - so immigration stuff might be on the local regional level , while things that would impact everyone gets a referendum. Of course theres the issue with voter apathy/fatigue.Hopefully a system where excluding emergency situations elections should select for implementors of already decided laws(via referendum) to reduce the stakes and possibility of corrupting influence once in power(since there would be limited to shaping not introducing new laws). Unfortunately i doubt most of the current systems are reformable short of a revolution, so well proceed to stumlealong until the wheels fall off.