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A procedure which lets a single individual reject a proposition everyone else likes is as far from democracy as possible. Xander77 posted:As far as I understand things - "professional" politicians, who are wealthy, well educated, (to an extent) well informed, or at least capable of quickly getting the necessary information about any subject, are by definition better at making any and all policy decisions than the general public. The problem is that any political "class" will - again, by definition - worry more about its own interests than about the interests of the public at large. Democracy is just a means of "kicking the bums out" should that happen - making sure that every politician has to keep in mind the public interest (or at least the appearance thereof). It's one of the things that baffles me most when it comes to criticism of democracy - the assumption that the average decision maker is more informed and enlightened than the members of the public. Like they were a different species, more capable of logical reasoning than the average voter. This relies on assumption that having a successful society is the matter of letting the most virtuous and reasonable people lead. This comes straight from the era of Enlightenment - that you can just deduce your way to the Plato's Republic and the public is only there to ensure they are not screwed. The problem with this reasoning is that we already kinda proved that it doesn't work. Even if an average politician was better informed and more intelligent than the general public, it has nothing to do with making decisions that are beneficial to the society at large. Moreover, hoping that the public can prevent being screwed over by voting for virtuous politicians is pretty much another version of the notion that the free market will always supply the best solution. It is established that "well, buy your poo poo somewhere else" doesn't work as a method of weeding out dishonest businesses, but somehow people still expect they just need to vote wisely and there will happen to be someone able to solve all their problems. Also, an average politician is not better informed than the rest of society - there are plenty of examples of politicians who made stupid decisions because they were completely out of touch with reality. Consider, for example, Greek ubermenschen accidentally banning video games. Generally, the members of the elite have the means to avoid the consequences of their decisions. They also tend not to mingle with hoi polloi, so they are rarely aware of the problems that concern the commons. Even if there is such thing as too much democracy, it would seem that today we don't have enough.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:15
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computer parts posted:Or maybe the same way that a professor of climate change knows more about ways to reduce ecological impact than a random person? Tell me more how career politicians are comparable to professors. Where is this university that teaches them all they need to rule a country, from rules of warfare to climate science and where they learn how to prioritize the issues that currently are the most important? Helsing posted:And while we're making side notes, I cannot emphasize this enough: Plato's Republic was not a political document. Repeat: Plato's Republic is not a political document. The city described in the Republic is clearly and explicitly a metaphor for the human soul. Plato repeatedly drops very strong and unsubtle hints that the city he is describing would not be a desirable or functional political system. People who cite the Republic as a document advocating elitist government are utterly failing to understand the purpose of the document, which is a meditation on the individual's soul. Thanks for clarifying - I tried to write "the perfect government" in a prettier way, but should have used something else in the hindsight. Gantolandon fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 18:44
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computer parts posted:There is a reason why most of them tend to be lawyers. It doesn't matter if you can write perfect laws if you don't know poo poo about the element you try to regulate.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:51
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computer parts posted:That's why a lot of regulations are "sets up [agency] or allows [existing agency] to make sure [X] is at reasonable levels". You missed the part where you explain how does a politician know what level of X is reasonable and when the situation merits to set up an agency.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:00
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computer parts posted:That's the point, they let the agency determine what's reasonable. Which agency? Two different organizations may have a completely different idea what is the proper level of X, or even what exactly X is. Not to mention that all of them will try to report their findings and proposed solutions in a way that makes them appear useful.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:36
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computer parts posted:Yeah, it's not as though government defined organizations don't have clear niches where things can apply. Yeah, have you ever heard about two government organizations with overlapping competences? Of course not, it's a crazy idea! quote:I am better than you at doing my job simply by virtue of the fact that it's my job, not yours. No more, no less. Politics are the job / career of the politician and... etc, you got my point. There are plenty of people that just bullshit their way through they work Xander77 posted:No. You misunderstood the quote entirely. No, I don't. The fact that someone did employ you doesn't mean you're actually good enough to do your job. quote:You don't need "virtuous" politicians any more than you need "virtuous" plumbers, or firemen. You just need a control mechanism that will allow you to fire politicians that don't do their job correctly - democracy. You don't even have a mechanism to "fire" a politician. His mandate just expires and this is when you can vote for someone else. If plumbers were like politicians, if one of them showed up in your house completely drunk, messed up your pipes and accidentally smashed your sink, you would have no right to throw him out. You would have to wait until he finishes, pay him and then call another plumber. Your analogy doesn't even work. quote:So. For one thing, the notion that politicians won't be making mistakes is obviously a strawman claim. That these mistakes may be paid for in a democratic institution that holds them accountable is a touch more relevant. If you read any of the Holy Writs founding fathers, you'll note that their notions about democracy have far less to do with making sure that the elected representatives pursue the best possible course, and much more to do with stemming the possibilities of abuse of power. Which is exactly what the voting process does when certain elements of the ruling class grow too corrupt - throw them out, not to be replaced with shining examples of genius, but rather with people less blatantly incompetent and greedy. Or maybe they hide their corruption well enough to never be discovered. Or they just use their grasp on the state institutions to be elected anyway despite their corruption. Or the entire pool of possible candidates is corrupt because the consequences (eventually not getting elected again) are nothing compared to the benefits (wealth, power and possibility to get themselves elected again).
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Jul 31, 2014 20:15
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Talmonis posted:If you've ever worked with the public, you should know better then to think the average person is capable of making informed decisions on government. For themselves, and especially for others. Experts on subjects should be the ones to make decisions regarding them, and have various checks and balances (including Democratic voting for representitives) to ensure the system doesn't get as corrupt as ours currently is. Did desegregation and forced integration get passed against the will of the public by enlightened beings in government that sprang from the ether? The history shows that all progressive changes required the public to act first. Monarchies in Europe transformed into democracies after numerous riots and popular uprisings, workers rights got better only because of striking actions and the looming threat of a communist revolution. Even getting rid of the slavery in the US was preceded by a large abolitionist movement. No angelic beings came and dragged the public kicking and screaming into the modern world, the common people actually wanted those changes to be implemented. The problem with letting experts rule is that they are not walking libraries that are guaranteed to give you the optimal answer whenever you ask. Their opinions on various topic frequently differ, so a politician can get his desired outcome just by choosing the right expert. As the most extreme example, consider Trofim Lysenko or Hans F. K. Günther. Even organizations independent from the state try to raise their own experts and get them into a position where they could influence politics. The Catholic Church, for example, draws a lot of nutcase medicine practitioners or scientists trying to discourage people from using contraception or exaggerate the risks of abortion. Tobacco companies funded their own research trying to present smoking as a low risk activity and tried to suppress unfavorable results. Rule by experts seems like a nice idea on paper - but how would you prevent them from getting corrupted by the establishment? How would you prevent the politicians from just choosing the experts with the ideas that appeal to them? How would you even make sure they are asking the right questions (as in rudatron's example with cities and cars)? As for the elected representatives - again, this doesn't work because you have no recourse after being screwed by a politician. Imagine that you order a tablet on Amazon and they send you a piece of a plank. They have your money now and you can't do poo poo about them, because courts don't exist and there is no one to enforce your contract. You go to the press and they chide you for spending your money irresponsibly. After all, a real iPad should have cost a lot more than the price given on the website. Maybe you should compromise, pay $200 more and hope they'll send you something - maybe an early model of Acer? So several months later you choose a shop that doesn't make unrealistic promises and send them money. They never respond. This is pretty much how representative democracy looks like. Gantolandon fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 17:45
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VitalSigns posted:I don't have to think that I'm stupid to believe that if I were chosen by lot as Surgeon General or whatever that I'd gently caress it up horribly because of my total lack of medical knowledge. This is a terrible analogy, because surgery is a specific skillset, which can be applied in a specific situation - either at the request of the patient (i. e. plastic surgery) or because of serious danger to someone's life and health. You don't elect a surgeon who promptly gets to operate on you whenever they want. "What do you mean, you don't want a frontal lobotomy? I am the doctor here and I say this is necessary! If you don't like it, you can replace me later with someone else!".
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Aug 1, 2014 19:49
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Jarmak posted:The fact that you apparently don't know what the surgeon general is is a great example of people not being informed enough to make good decisions. It's easy to forget that not all of people writing on somethingawful.com come from the US or even speak English as their first language. Edit: And no one in the thread actually advised randomly choosing the experts leading government agencies, just career politicians. Gantolandon fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 20:04
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Jarmak posted:Those people should probably refrain from making snide remarks in regard to those words and topics which they don't understand then. I'm not sure how not knowing what exactly is a Surgeon General (a US-specific office) disqualifies me from voicing my opinion in the thread about democracy. Can you also tell me how do you ensure that only the senators who understand the topic get to vote on related laws?
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Aug 1, 2014 20:22
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Jarmak posted:Also senators have an entire staff dedicated to reading and summarizing legislation and the issues around them because being an expert on, or even reading every piece of proposed legislation is impossible in the course of their daily duties. Of course much of their daily duties is necessarily dealing with the circus that is getting elected and reelected, a process that has absolutely nothing to do being an expert on the issues precisely because of the stupidity of the public. This is not an answer for my question. My question was: how do you ensure that only the senators who understand the topic get to vote on related laws? In other words, how do you disqualify incompetent politicians from voting? You can provide the staff for anyone, including the randomly-drawn senator who was a farmer in Arkansas but this still doesn't mean he understands the issue. If you can't ensure a politician is competent enough to vote on the issue, your argument that the public shouldn't get to make important decisions because they aren't competent enough doesn't make sense. Kalman posted:The Surgeon General is a politician with a medical background. (Similarly, SecDef is a politician with - usually - military background, Attorney General is a politician with a legal background, etc.) Which of them could possibly be meant by the OP or the guy who actually proposed drawing decision-makers at random? This issue has already been discussed in this thread. For example, here: rudatron posted:For me, it's an issue of conflation: people conflate governing with the technical details of governing. The truth is that politicians aren't informed decision makers, but that's not what their power is. Their power was in setting objectives and goals, for the bureaucracy blew them to fulfill. That's not as dependent upon expertise as actually solving the problem, moving the people, etc. When you conflate the two, you would of course end up at this kind of system where experts rule everything or whatever: but it's not actually possible to be an expert in the 'right thing to do': ethics is not and has never been a techne.
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Aug 1, 2014 20:57
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computer parts posted:If a politician is significantly more competent than an average person then they're the better option. You still haven't proven they are significantly more competent.
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Aug 1, 2014 21:01
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computer parts posted:By and large they come from wealthier, more stable backgrounds than the public at large. Wealth is correlated to education. Education doesn't imply competence. It doesn't even imply knowledge about the issues that come up during making decisions. Having a degree in law doesn't matter when trying to decide whether to prioritize economic growth or the environment.
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Aug 1, 2014 21:14
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computer parts posted:You seem to be defining competence as "votes the way I want to vote". You seem not to be responding to arguments and instead trying to come up with a witty  .bobtheconqueror posted:It might be worthwhile to consider that, in the case of career politicians, the competence of the individual in terms of deciding on votes doesn't really matter. For a lot of issues, the party organization has a line that the individual is expected to follow. The politician also has an organization beneath him, the people mostly in charge of getting him re-elected, that will advise him on whether he should stand with his party or not. The only real competency a politician needs is to take the right advice to get re-elected, cause his vote is more a representation of his loyalties and ambitions than any actual individual expertise. I don't necessarily disagree - but the entire argument happened because a lot of people in this thread were against more democratic institutions because the public is not competent enough to make major decisions. Whether something close to the perfect direct democracy is actually possible to implement is an another issue. Jarmak posted:Ya man, because if people whose entire profession and supporting infrastructure is based on understanding and voting on these issues can't be experts on the issues the implication is that tWisTy69 who spends 20 minutes a day posting on the CNN comments section must be equally competent. We discussed this "they are experts so of course they know what they are doing" poo poo about 1 page ago, when several people tried to explain why relying on expert knowledge to decide what issue is actually worth pursuing is a terrible idea. Also, good point - it's a stupid idea to actually debate on forums called "Debate & Discussion". Gantolandon fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Aug 1, 2014 |
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Aug 1, 2014 21:25
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computer parts posted:No like literally your definition of competency is "coincidentally, everything I agree with". [citation needed]
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Aug 1, 2014 21:31
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Jarmak posted:Not really, saying experts are dumb because people can lie about being experts to a uninformed public doesn't really score competency points for the uninformed public. It's not "experts are dumb", it's "having experts making important decisions doesn't guarantee those decisions will be beneficial to the society at large". bobtheconqueror posted:Dude, the public isn't competent enough to make major political decisions, and shouldn't be put in charge of doing so when we can put a smaller representative sample of the same people into organizations that make sure they're informed by experts, whether current representative democracies function like that or not. I'm trying to argue that competence is a non-issue in general politics. You can't ensure your elected representative is actually competent, or that their knowledge and skills are actually used for the benefit of their voters, instead of just bullshitting their way through the term. Instead of pretending we get the best of the best at the top, we should concentrate on the issue that actually can be improved - accountability of decision-makers to the public. Sure, you need someone competent in medicine and administration to run the Department of Health. I didn't see anyone in this thread disagreeing with this. But this still doesn't solve another problem - who should make decisions how to prioritize the issues the Department of Health is trying to solve? Who gets to decide if public health is currently more important than defense or economy? Who can prevent the guy running the Department of Health, for example, from deeming racial purity an important part of public health? These are important decisions which can't be made by appointed experts, otherwise you end up with a completely unaccountable group of people running the show.
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Aug 1, 2014 22:14
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computer parts posted:The general public would be more likely to deem racial purity as an important part of public health (especially in Europe). [citation needed]
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Aug 1, 2014 22:20
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computer parts posted:A majority of people did not approve of interracial marriages in the US until 1995 despite being legalized in the 50s. quote:The poll surveyed 4,373 Americans, including 1,010 non-Hispanic blacks. That's slightly more than 0.00001% of the entire population of the US. This is a very small sample. quote:
The issue is a bit more complicated. Far-right nationalist parties in Europe (especially Eastern Europe) frequently remained the only ones who don't support further dismantling of social safety net after social democrats drifted right. They also tend to run on strict anti-corruption platform, which appeals to those disappointed with politics at large. Last but not least, there is the growing disappointment with the EU with its current shape and backslash against further integration, which mentioned parties staunchly oppose. Of course, racism still plays its part. Jarmak posted:Competence and virtuosity are two entirely different concerns, preventing self interested behavior on the part of leaders is an actual theoretical benefit of democratization. Though observation seems to call into question the public having the competency to do even that. Not sure what observation do you mean - in most countries, the public can't do much about a corrupt politician who doesn't ostensibly break the law, except voting for someone else in the next elections.
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Aug 1, 2014 23:02
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bobtheconqueror posted:Well, I mostly agree with you. Individual competence of a politician is mostly a non-issue, although I will say that proposing legislation and actually trying to change things usually comes from individual efforts and ideologies, which then get cultivated or shot down in committees. A literal idiot can vote based on party line or expert advice, but that guy isn't likely to propose useful legislation unless it's pushed to them by experts or lobbies. Actually, in a not completely corrupt system, political competence would involve resisting corrupting elements like corporate lobbies and poo poo, and would be quite important. Unfortunately, in the US, saying no to money for re-election is probably more of a mistake than a competency. No democracy currently have a functional mechanism of encouraging politicians to resist corruption. The US is not unique here, the two-party system only exacerbates the problem of decision-makers being completely unaccountable. quote:Well, mass media has pretty well demonstrated that you can get away with a lot of poo poo if you can control the messaging. This is the biggest problem I can see with direct democracy. Information control would be even more of a big market in gaining political control. Being not from the US, you probably don't get to witness the year and a half of stupid media bullshit that covers our televisions leading up to the Presidential election every four years. The 2012 election had this ridiculous Republican meme about polls being lies and everything being wrong and "Just you wait, despite everybody else reporting that we're losing, FOX News says we're winning, and we trust them more!" It was a really weird way of trying to cultivate support by undermining the other guy's obvious lead in polling. I come from a country where two parties managed to dominate the political landscape, in large part thanks to the information control and media groups taking political stances. It mostly works by telling the population that the second option is terrible and they have to vote for the lesser evil if they don't want those fuckers to win. I'm not really sure if the mass media could be even more problematic in direct democracy - lobbying for actual policies is harder than just scaring the people into accepting their current favorite politician. computer parts posted:Good job, you have no idea how polling works. My bad - found the actual survey method at the end of the page.
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Aug 1, 2014 23:59
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Barlow posted:This is truest statement I've seen in this thread. Politicians, especially on the state level, are often dumb. I recall once being asked by a respected state legislature if science suggested lead paint made people gay, which was apparently a serious concern of his. You just haven't met enough terrible politicians - the guy fearing lead paint turning people gay has nothing on the moron who outright stated that Ebola could solve the problem of illegal immigration to his country or the perfect reactionary who thinks disabled people shouldn't be shown on TV. I'm not sure if they really are less terrible than your average voter. Nintendo Kid posted:It's not a special survey method though, it's basic statistics principles. As long as effort is taken to secure a non-biased sample (i.e. don't go taking your survey for if christianity is good at the church choir), a few thousand people being polled easily accounts for hundreds of millions of people. As I said - my bad.
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Aug 2, 2014 00:30
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Negative Entropy posted:How is it elitist to say that certain people aren't qualified for certain positions? It's more than a question of intellect. Good representatives should have a desire to perform their duties and listen to the needs of their constituents. This will not happen when random people are selected as representatives. You'll end up representatives who hate their job and have no desire to execute the will of the people. Yes, this happens already in our current system, but tu quoque is a childish way of approaching problems. Knowledge of psychology or neuroscience doesn't make you a logical machine resistant to self-delusion. Quite the opposite.
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Aug 2, 2014 01:16
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on the left posted:The winner in direct democracy is the side most able to boil their position down to the simplest and catchiest soundbite. See "death tax" for one of the most successful of all time. This statement is true in every government ever. In representative democracy, you have to deal with the bias of of the elected career politician instead. There are many examples of democratic parliaments acting contrary to the interest of their nation because of their ideology or agenda. Consider, for example, the British response to the Irish Famine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_famine#Government_response posted:The measures undertaken by Peel's successor, Russell, proved comparatively "inadequate" as the crisis deepened. The new Whig administration, influenced by the doctrine of laissez-faire,[71] believed that the market would provide the food needed and refused to intervene against food exports to England, then halted the previous government's food and relief works, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people without any work, money or food.[72] Russell's ministry introduced a new programme of public works, which by the end of December 1846 employed some half million Irish and proved impossible to administer.[73] Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme because of a firm belief in laissez-faire.[74] He thought "the judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson". For his policy, he was commemorated in the song "The Fields of Athenry". The Public Works were "strictly ordered" to be unproductive—that is, they would create no fund to repay their own expenses. Many hundreds of thousands of "feeble and starving men" according to John Mitchel, were kept digging holes, and breaking up roads, which was doing no service.[75] Non-democratic governments had it even worse with stupid decisions made either by their leaders, or by the underlings trying to impress the leader. The ship "Vasa" is one of the more hilarious examples. In the 17th century the Swedes built a huge, impressive flagship at the order of their king. Of course, it has to be the biggest, most powerful and most lavishly decorated ship in the entire fleet. Gustavus Adolphus, leading his army in Poland and wanted his new toy fast, while the ship constructors didn't either try enough to get him to wait a bit, or talk sternly about his expectations. In the result, the ship sunk during its maiden voyage, the first time a stronger gust of wind blew. This is an important example, because similar problems happen all the time in large organizations, including corporations and state agencies. Terrible decisions are being made all the time because of unrealistic expectations of that one guy whose decisions can't be questioned ever. There are struggles between individual persons or entire departments - sometimes because of a grudge, but mostly caused by conflicting goals. In software development, for example, there are problems frequently caused by the sales team, who would agree with the customer on unrealistic deadline or approves sweeping changes when the project is almost finished. It doesn't happen because thy are stupid, but because they only have to care about selling the product. Even the perfect technocracies would have to deal with competition among branches of their government, important decision-makers trying to fit everything into their pet theories and refusing to budge, people who would organize their departments into their own petty fiefdoms or even orders from the top getting distorted during implementation. And yes, quite frequently because the important people heard a simple, catching soundbite and won't get convinced by anyone that it's not a good idea. asdf32 posted:So you're sure you want to rest your argument on rights and fairness? Yup, the Third Reich is definitely a great example of a country where they just went too far with democracy.
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Aug 5, 2014 17:44
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RagnarokAngel posted:He's talking about Neo Nazis voting in modern democratic societies, not the 1930s. How many neo-Nazi governments have you seen since 1945? Hell, even in Germany 1933 popular support wasn't enough to put Hitler into power, he needed von Papen and Hindenburg to appoint him as Chancellor. asdf32 posted:If you're going give an example of too little democracy leading to bad things please be clear on why it's bad and why it's the result of too little democracy. Actually, a democratic state would have serious problems with starving a large chunk of their population. The Irish could do poo poo, because the ones poor enough to starve didn't have enough property to even vote. The people important for the British Parliament were the wealthy landowners who were interested in keeping the price of crops high. Both these examples, however, were meant to disprove the idea that educated specialists make balanced decisions, while democracy leads to more stupid outcomes because of the need to appeal to stupid people. In the first example, the Whigs didn't want to hear anyone who didn't have uttermost respect for lessez-faire solutions. In the second one, the experts made stupid decisions because they feared to tell their king he won't get his bombastic ship right now. Helsing posted:I also think that necessarily any discussion of 'more democracy' needs to touch on workplace democracy, which is something that hasn't really entered the discussion so far. As long as society expects most adult citizens to be working 35+ hours a week I think that giving people a greater say over their economic situations, perhaps through expanded union representation, would be one of the most important democratic reforms we could implement. I don't think it's possible to get workplace democracy before getting more democracy in government first. But yeah, this would be a good idea.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:51
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SirKibbles posted:To those advocating more direct democracy how do you deal with populist bursts (9/11 and the reactions afterwards are a perfect example.) As for the first question - don't. Every society will go bonkers when faced with an event that's shocking enough. The reaction of the American government was sparking two destructive wars, even though one of the targets had completely nothing to do with 9/11. There were also kidnapping foreigners to imprison them indefinitely and torture them and (recently) drone strikes on foreign territory where everyone killed is automatically considered an enemy combatant. I don't think it would be much worse with direct democracy. As for the second - depends of economic conditions, technology and other important factors. A perfect direct democracy where you have to vote in referendum on every single issue would be a hassle, but I can see one where you could empower various single or multi-issue citizen groups with your vote (and withdraw it as you see fit). It would need some fine-tuning to avoid buying votes or situations where an employer forces their employees to give their votes to him, though. asdf32 posted:Nazi is a stand-in for idiot. Literal nazis are rare, racists are not if you'd prefer that. I'm not sure what you want me to do here. I gave you several examples of terrible, damaging decisions caused by decision-makers isolating themselves from the general population and being completely unaccountable to either them or their underlings. Of course direct democracy won't solve the problem perfectly. This doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing. I'm not sure what slavery has anything to do with the issue, given that it existed before the US became a democracy and ended with an anti-slavery party getting elected. Can you give me an opposite example - where the society were led to disaster by populists and was saved by intervention of the elites?
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Aug 5, 2014 23:57
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Nessus posted:This may sound ignorant but when people talk about things like "increasing the accountability of politicians," what does that mean, exactly? Like I see "accountability" used a lot these days and it seems to be one of those generic good things that is never clearly defined, except of course if you're talking about (say) teachers in a school, in which case it is used to put all blame for a complex social outcome on their shoulders. As an immediate fix, this could include the possibility of removal current parliament/president through referendum and treating lying during electoral campaign as fraud. Politicians shouldn't be benevolent mini-kings, but executors of the public will. I would like to see every political party to have a clear program with tasks to be achieved, sorted according to their priority. They should do everything in their power to propose appropriate reforms and, provided they have a majority, make them pass. They also should oppose initiatives that contradict their program. If the situation in the country radically changes and they find their goal impossible to meet, they should clearly state this and explain to their nation why this is the case (and, possibly, be removed in referendum). Failing to do so should result in legal procedure - and, probably, punishing fines and imprisonment.
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Aug 10, 2014 20:18
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