I look at it like chemotherapy – blasting yourself with poison in the hopes of beating the worse poison before the treatment poison and the sickness poison kill you, and even when it works (and it often doesn’t), it can be fucking brutal
But like, it’s still better than just letting the cancer go unhindered
Democracy is similar. Democracy often works very poorly but what better alternative exists?
As Hillary Clinton said, “democracy is the worst form of government… except for all the others”
Crosseyes on
The best case against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.
DaxPLebaron on
Democracy is great until
You’ve had it so long no one remembers what it was like before it existed.
Social media has made us all so miserable to hear from each other that people have started looking for ways to permanently block the annoying voices out.
Autocracy will certainly fix that.
RateOfKnots on
“The Athenians were right: decisions arrived at democratically, and even the powers conveyed upon a government by a democratic vote, may be wrong. It is hard, if not impossible, to construct a constitution that safeguards against mistakes. This is one of the strongest reasons for founding the idea of democracy upon the practical principle of avoiding tyranny rather than upon a divine, or a morally legitimate, right of the people to rule.”
“In “The Open Society and its Enemies” I suggested that an entirely new problem should be recognised as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory. The new problem, as distinct from the old “Who should rule?”, can be formulated as follows: how is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence?”
“This, in contrast to the old question, is a thoroughly practical, almost technical, problem. And the modern so-called democracies are all good examples of practical solutions to this problem, even though they were not consciously designed with this problem in mind.”
Oh it worked all right. People got what they wanted
College_Prestige on
>That betrayal rested on a concept known as “deliverism.” Deliverism refers to the idea that if you deliver good and important policy wins, then people will reward you for them at the polls.
Are those the policy wins people actually look for though? Those chip subsidies are great for the nation as a whole, but does someone from idk Kenosha Wisconsin feel its impacts? The infrastructure bill is much needed, but no one took credit for it, so regular people never saw it. The inflation reduction act had many provisions for climate, but again it was unadvertised, stymied by red tape, and dragged out over the next decade. For those stimulus checks in the American rescue act, not putting Bidens signature was a massive mistake.
Yes, the administration spent (or promised to spend) trillions, but signing those policies was not enough. They had to go to the public and justify spending that political and literal capital, and they did not do that at all. Part of what makes democracy different is that voters conduct performance reviews every 4 years, and usually the guy who puts his head down and silently does the stuff will not get that favorable review.
9 Comments
>Sorts DT by top
I mean obviously not
I look at it like chemotherapy – blasting yourself with poison in the hopes of beating the worse poison before the treatment poison and the sickness poison kill you, and even when it works (and it often doesn’t), it can be fucking brutal
But like, it’s still better than just letting the cancer go unhindered
Democracy is similar. Democracy often works very poorly but what better alternative exists?
As Hillary Clinton said, “democracy is the worst form of government… except for all the others”
The best case against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.
Democracy is great until
You’ve had it so long no one remembers what it was like before it existed.
Social media has made us all so miserable to hear from each other that people have started looking for ways to permanently block the annoying voices out.
Autocracy will certainly fix that.
“The Athenians were right: decisions arrived at democratically, and even the powers conveyed upon a government by a democratic vote, may be wrong. It is hard, if not impossible, to construct a constitution that safeguards against mistakes. This is one of the strongest reasons for founding the idea of democracy upon the practical principle of avoiding tyranny rather than upon a divine, or a morally legitimate, right of the people to rule.”
“In “The Open Society and its Enemies” I suggested that an entirely new problem should be recognised as the fundamental problem of a rational political theory. The new problem, as distinct from the old “Who should rule?”, can be formulated as follows: how is the state to be constituted so that bad rulers can be got rid of without bloodshed, without violence?”
“This, in contrast to the old question, is a thoroughly practical, almost technical, problem. And the modern so-called democracies are all good examples of practical solutions to this problem, even though they were not consciously designed with this problem in mind.”
[https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited](https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2016/01/31/from-the-archives-the-open-society-and-its-enemies-revisited)
Oh it worked all right. People got what they wanted
>That betrayal rested on a concept known as “deliverism.” Deliverism refers to the idea that if you deliver good and important policy wins, then people will reward you for them at the polls.
Are those the policy wins people actually look for though? Those chip subsidies are great for the nation as a whole, but does someone from idk Kenosha Wisconsin feel its impacts? The infrastructure bill is much needed, but no one took credit for it, so regular people never saw it. The inflation reduction act had many provisions for climate, but again it was unadvertised, stymied by red tape, and dragged out over the next decade. For those stimulus checks in the American rescue act, not putting Bidens signature was a massive mistake.
Yes, the administration spent (or promised to spend) trillions, but signing those policies was not enough. They had to go to the public and justify spending that political and literal capital, and they did not do that at all. Part of what makes democracy different is that voters conduct performance reviews every 4 years, and usually the guy who puts his head down and silently does the stuff will not get that favorable review.
Yes.
https://preview.redd.it/3z5g1w9n8o7e1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3f8deee47948dfe4e2c3ffe6726d3086eb2d3cc3