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> Is it best to have a king Yes. Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept. It's only really after WWII that democ

> Is it best to have a king Yes. Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept. It's only really after WWII that democracy got promoted to this almost utopian ideal that we know it as today. It's not a all given that it's the "best" way to run a society - as Churchill famously noted, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms". To dial the abstraction a little back, it's a well known mode for software projects to die, when they cease being a labour of love of a small dedicated team with clear purpose and direction and starts trying to be all things to all people through "democracy"/"design by committee". Of course, plenty of projects have survived and flourished too.

riffraff 13y ago
while real "universal suffrage" is a very new thing smaller scale "democracies" in the past arguably worked okaysh[0] and are imo a better simile to how projects work. E.g. the plebe/end users have some saying but mostly stuff is run by the core devs/patricians.
- mseebach 13y ago
  There are basically two interpretations of democracy. One, the more classic, is that the demos is the moral legitimacy of power, as opposed to, say, God ("I am the king because God made it so; if you disagree, you're a heretic, and you will be burned at the stake/hanged/stoned"). While the monarch isn't elected, he can only rule through the consent of the people (which, conveniently, is vaguely defined). David Hume explicitly reserved the right of revolution - for the people to withdraw consent. The more modern strand of democracy, the one I think may prove short lived, is that democracy means that the demos actually rules. With some checks and balances still in place, the prevailing narrative around "democracy" today is that as long as 50% kinda wants something, then there is full moral basis for doing it.
VBprogrammer 13y ago
Just to add the end of that quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
crassus 13y ago
In an interview from Lee Kwan Yew, he suggests that it would be better for democracy if people with children between the ages of 35 and 60 had two votes. One of the common criticisms of democracy is that it promotes short-term thinking because pandering to the people is always popular. Giving extra political power to the portion of the population with the incentive to think long-term might counteract that. It seemed like this model was a hypothetical, and not something he thought politically possible. But he is very skeptical of the one-person one-vote model, which to be fair has crashed and burned in many places it has been tried outside of its region of origin. Yew thinks China converting to a Democracy would set back its economic development by a hundred years.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  Why that specific group? Why not the wealthy? Or the poor? Or women? Or landowners? This sounds like a terrible idea, along the lines of the government subsidizing home ownership the way it does in the US. The only version of this that I've seen that I actually liked was the idea that to declare war a referendum was necessary (can easily and quickly be orchestrated nowadays) and that the people that vote Yes are the first to be drafted. Naturally, only the people eligible to vote are the ones eligible to serve. I think almost everyone can agree that war is bad, while I doubt that we can all agree that choosing to be between 35 and 60 and have kids is the most ideal state of being for the country/economy/the world.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    The problem with the concept is not that it's inherently a bad idea to temper democracy, it's that it will become just another way of gerrymandering: Make it easier/harder to people you agree/disagree with to vote their mind to stack to deck in favour of a given outcome.
    - IgorPartola 13y ago
      The two are one and the same. Every time you introduce a crude new exception to the rule, you create an imbalance and complexity. Simple is better than complex. Organic is better than artificial. Otherwise emergent behavior is always a way to hack the system (e.g.: gerrymander). The beauty of one vote per person is that it's simple. Now, in the US, things get complex when we start talking about swing states, the fact that 3/4 of voters don't give a crap, etc. You can easily have a system where a few thousand Ohio residents decide who becomes president. However, the more complexity you introduce the more loopholes you will create.
IgorPartola 13y ago
"Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried." Here I go quoting Robert A. Heinlein for a second time this month on HN. Democracy is to me the ultimate example of why "good enough today" is world better than "perfect tomorrow".
- mseebach 13y ago
  The problem, IMO, is that we have idealised democracy and forgotten that, indeed, it "is a poor system of government at best". "Good enough today" doesn't mean that you get to go home tomorrow, it is the preference of incrementalism over getting everything perfect in one go. Incrementalism then implies that you continue to look for things that are better, and that your recognise that what you have is only good enough, not perfect. There are plenty of suggestions out there for improving the political system, such as direct democracy and more proportional representation. My main problem with these are that they are argued in terms for being "more democratic", ie. closer to the ideal that we should realise is deeply flawed, not in terms of actually better for society, except in terms for policies favoured by the proponents being perceived as easier to vote through.
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    Agreed. Direct democracy doesn't actually appeal to me. While there is something to the idea of just directly voting up or down on laws of the land, that means that we now have completely clueless people with the up/downvote button making decisions. Think of what 4chan can do with a direct democracy system. The way I see it, the basic problem of government is "how do we get honest and competent people into power?" I think if we start with that foundation, we get just laws, civil liberties, etc. as a result. Democracy solves this by saying that the government will be transparent, and the majority will surely spot the problems. However, as we can see this system is easily gamed, and when you have an apathetic majority of voters things get even worse. At some point one might argue that it becomes worth asking if it's better to have a monarch who fears revolution or an elected body that fears not being re-elected.
mcantelon 13y ago
Platforms win over closed systems. Democracy makes government a platform for economic interests. Democracy doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the population, but it at least pretends to.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > Democracy makes government a platform for economic interests. This seems to suggest that monarchies and other forms of government aren't platforms for economic interests. This isn't true. You have the exact same dynamics play out in monarchies of sufficient size, because economic interests depend on manipulating bureaucracies, not governmental leaders. What we have in America is a system where all the governmental leaders besides SCOTUS justices are bureaucratic officials.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 13y ago
>Yes. Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept So if freedom from slavery. So? Besides, democracy was formally conceptualized 2.4 millenia ago, in ancient Athens. And it was practiced even before in various forms.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Not to detract from your point, but > So if freedom from slavery. So? It's actually not, whether you're talking about individual freeing of slaves (which has basically been a thing since slavery was instituted at all) or nation-scale emancipations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
  - rodelrod 13y ago
    A careful reading of that timeline and its sources shows that all the "emancipations" listed before the 18th century are highly localized and/or short-lived, so I would agree that the widespread concept of freedom from slavery as an inalienable right is fairly modern.

riffraff 13y ago

while real "universal suffrage" is a very new thing smaller scale "democracies" in the past arguably worked okaysh[0] and are imo a better simile to how projects work. E.g. the plebe/end users have some saying but mostly stuff is run by the core devs/patricians.

mseebach 13y ago
There are basically two interpretations of democracy. One, the more classic, is that the demos is the moral legitimacy of power, as opposed to, say, God ("I am the king because God made it so; if you disagree, you're a heretic, and you will be burned at the stake/hanged/stoned"). While the monarch isn't elected, he can only rule through the consent of the people (which, conveniently, is vaguely defined). David Hume explicitly reserved the right of revolution - for the people to withdraw consent. The more modern strand of democracy, the one I think may prove short lived, is that democracy means that the demos actually rules. With some checks and balances still in place, the prevailing narrative around "democracy" today is that as long as 50% kinda wants something, then there is full moral basis for doing it.

VBprogrammer 13y ago

Just to add the end of that quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

crassus 13y ago

In an interview from Lee Kwan Yew, he suggests that it would be better for democracy if people with children between the ages of 35 and 60 had two votes. One of the common criticisms of democracy is that it promotes short-term thinking because pandering to the people is always popular. Giving extra political power to the portion of the population with the incentive to think long-term might counteract that. It seemed like this model was a hypothetical, and not something he thought politically possible. But he is very skeptical of the one-person one-vote model, which to be fair has crashed and burned in many places it has been tried outside of its region of origin. Yew thinks China converting to a Democracy would set back its economic development by a hundred years.

IgorPartola 13y ago
Why that specific group? Why not the wealthy? Or the poor? Or women? Or landowners? This sounds like a terrible idea, along the lines of the government subsidizing home ownership the way it does in the US. The only version of this that I've seen that I actually liked was the idea that to declare war a referendum was necessary (can easily and quickly be orchestrated nowadays) and that the people that vote Yes are the first to be drafted. Naturally, only the people eligible to vote are the ones eligible to serve. I think almost everyone can agree that war is bad, while I doubt that we can all agree that choosing to be between 35 and 60 and have kids is the most ideal state of being for the country/economy/the world.
- mseebach 13y ago
  The problem with the concept is not that it's inherently a bad idea to temper democracy, it's that it will become just another way of gerrymandering: Make it easier/harder to people you agree/disagree with to vote their mind to stack to deck in favour of a given outcome.
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    The two are one and the same. Every time you introduce a crude new exception to the rule, you create an imbalance and complexity. Simple is better than complex. Organic is better than artificial. Otherwise emergent behavior is always a way to hack the system (e.g.: gerrymander). The beauty of one vote per person is that it's simple. Now, in the US, things get complex when we start talking about swing states, the fact that 3/4 of voters don't give a crap, etc. You can easily have a system where a few thousand Ohio residents decide who becomes president. However, the more complexity you introduce the more loopholes you will create.

IgorPartola 13y ago

"Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried." Here I go quoting Robert A. Heinlein for a second time this month on HN. Democracy is to me the ultimate example of why "good enough today" is world better than "perfect tomorrow".

mseebach 13y ago
The problem, IMO, is that we have idealised democracy and forgotten that, indeed, it "is a poor system of government at best". "Good enough today" doesn't mean that you get to go home tomorrow, it is the preference of incrementalism over getting everything perfect in one go. Incrementalism then implies that you continue to look for things that are better, and that your recognise that what you have is only good enough, not perfect. There are plenty of suggestions out there for improving the political system, such as direct democracy and more proportional representation. My main problem with these are that they are argued in terms for being "more democratic", ie. closer to the ideal that we should realise is deeply flawed, not in terms of actually better for society, except in terms for policies favoured by the proponents being perceived as easier to vote through.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  Agreed. Direct democracy doesn't actually appeal to me. While there is something to the idea of just directly voting up or down on laws of the land, that means that we now have completely clueless people with the up/downvote button making decisions. Think of what 4chan can do with a direct democracy system. The way I see it, the basic problem of government is "how do we get honest and competent people into power?" I think if we start with that foundation, we get just laws, civil liberties, etc. as a result. Democracy solves this by saying that the government will be transparent, and the majority will surely spot the problems. However, as we can see this system is easily gamed, and when you have an apathetic majority of voters things get even worse. At some point one might argue that it becomes worth asking if it's better to have a monarch who fears revolution or an elected body that fears not being re-elected.

mcantelon 13y ago

Platforms win over closed systems. Democracy makes government a platform for economic interests. Democracy doesn't necessarily reflect the will of the population, but it at least pretends to.

saraid216 13y ago
> Democracy makes government a platform for economic interests. This seems to suggest that monarchies and other forms of government aren't platforms for economic interests. This isn't true. You have the exact same dynamics play out in monarchies of sufficient size, because economic interests depend on manipulating bureaucracies, not governmental leaders. What we have in America is a system where all the governmental leaders besides SCOTUS justices are bureaucratic officials.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 13y ago

>Yes. Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept So if freedom from slavery. So? Besides, democracy was formally conceptualized 2.4 millenia ago, in ancient Athens. And it was practiced even before in various forms.

saraid216 13y ago
Not to detract from your point, but > So if freedom from slavery. So? It's actually not, whether you're talking about individual freeing of slaves (which has basically been a thing since slavery was instituted at all) or nation-scale emancipations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
- rodelrod 13y ago
  A careful reading of that timeline and its sources shows that all the "emancipations" listed before the 18th century are highly localized and/or short-lived, so I would agree that the widespread concept of freedom from slavery as an inalienable right is fairly modern.