an inherent problem in democracy

Discussion in 'Political Science' started by kazenatsu, Oct 10, 2019.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Suppose there are two main political Parties that alternate back and forth in power.
    Let's suppose one of them wants the levels of something at 2000 and the other wants the levels of that thing at 4000. (It could be budget deficit spending, immigration, etc)

    Well, when one Party gets into power, they're going to try to amplify the increase/decrease even beyond the level they think is optimal, to try to compensate for the years when the other party was in power. So instead of having a period of 2000, followed by a period of 4000, there's more likely going to be a period of 1000 followed by a period of 5000.

    This is phenomena is going to increase the instability of government policy.
    With the two side effectively waging a "war" on each other, trying to go to further extremes when they get into power, to attempt to undo the policies of the other.
     
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  2. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's right. Nowodays democracy is in crisis everywhere in the world anyway.

    I think that another problem of democracy is that it favor manipulative narcissic in power, furthermore, it favor the division of society in two opposed clan that would hate each other. Furthermore it encourage leaders to not care about long term issues and favor only short term things, and policies need to be conceived on a long term.
    I can't say there is something better, but more I observe the situation in democratic countries, the more I'm doubtfull about the ability of democracy to survive on a long term.

    We could add more critics to that, but I'm afraid our democracies will know the same fate than Athenian democracy and Roman republic for the same reasons.
     
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  3. An Taibhse

    An Taibhse Well-Known Member

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    Two parties oscillating back an forth in power is not a democracy, but an oscillating oligarchy.
    Question: what is the minimum number of entities required to form a democracy?
    Can two people form a democracy? Think marriage (though not the only form of a binary union) as a starting point. Can they constitute a democracy?
     
  4. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Federalist #10.
     
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  5. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    How many Americans, no matter the issue, can vote for what they truly believe is in the best interest of the USA? This requires an electorate who is not partisan and who is open-minded to all options. My answer is 3!

    It's interesting that at Microsoft for example that everything they do is in the best interest of the company. When they have problems the employees are required to do whatever is in the best interest of the company and solve those problems. Yet in our local and federal governments, there is a complete breakdown in collectively doing what's in the best interest of the nation. This has been replaced with closed-minded, greedy, self-serving, partisan, and what's in it for me mentality!

    IMO ,as long as the US electorate performs at this level, it's no wonder why things are so horrible today...
     
  6. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    No? That's not really what happens because they know when they get booted out of office, they will need those protections in place. The PRI in the 1990's strengthened the courts as a means of preserving political power in the transition to democracy as a means of securing political power. Yes they took political power for themselves through the courts, but a means of a balancing act, not a see saw.
     
  7. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Illogical.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
  8. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Irrelevant...
     
  9. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Logic is always relevant.
     
  10. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    The process of logic IS NOT 'relevant' unless you can attribute it to a science to determine arguments and critical thinking in order to obtain a reasonable/correct outcome. Further, in today's questionable atmosphere, I'd say one man's logic is another man's lack of relevance. Within a scientific process, with involved others consensus of the scientific process, logic has 'one' meaning, while Joe-Blow discussing religion, for example, has another meaning to logic. Sadly, it seems tens of millions of people, will refuse true logic, when the outcome challenges their personal positions...
     
  11. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    Logic is NOT subjective, by its very definition. "Logic" does not mean "point of view." You might consider taking the time to learn more about it. Your post is an excellent example of how a lack of mutually understood standards makes rational discourse impossible.
     
  12. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps you should reread my comments in which you won't find any statements about how I personally feel about logic. When over half of Americans have little use for science, for logic, for best problem solving, etc. it is arrogant to believe 'everyone' is going to follow logical processes. Any 'lack of rational discourse' is an outcome of the limitations of humans...
     
  13. Meta777

    Meta777 Moderator Staff Member

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    Have you ever considered Ranked Voting?...

    -Meta
     
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  14. unkotare

    unkotare Well-Known Member

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    You really don't seem to understand the terms in question.
     
  15. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes.

    However for assemblies I prefer random polling, I love randomness, there is something you can't controle about that and I think it's for the best.
     
  16. bomberfox

    bomberfox Active Member

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    Also consider why the divisions are hampering the ability for the government to operate today vs in the past. What we call democracy is mainly bought and paid for with our proportions being determined by whoever won such and such election in the past gaining the ability to draw the maps.
     
  17. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Because 'most' voters and politicians are incapable of voting for what's in the best interest of the USA and the world. Where being a politician should be about service to the nation, it is now about winning or losing, long term employment, and power...
     
  18. bomberfox

    bomberfox Active Member

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    How can we know this when the voters are constantly being disempowered?
     
  19. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    Open your eyes and look around and see how things are going for us today? It's ironic that you talk about voter disempowerment when in fact voters have the most power in the USA. As I said, politicians and VOTERS, have become incapable of doing what's in the best interest of the USA...
     
  20. LiveUninhibited

    LiveUninhibited Well-Known Member

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    I think that's more a consequence of district-based, winner-take-all elections. Some venomous partisanship has also been steadily injected into our system by special-interest fueled mass media (Fox News, e.g.) so we're left where we are today.

    There's also some weaknesses in our constitution, or the interpretation of it at least, and specifically I am referring to political contributions being functionally the same as bribes.

    Fixing some of these issues would improve our system, but ultimately democracy is like asking the average person to make the most complicated of decisions indirectly, while it would be better to find a way to get smart people to make the decisions without becoming corrupt. Democracies strength is in limiting corruption by turn-over and giving stability by making people feel like they can do something about what angers them. I really think a better system is possible, but both our culture and the powerful in our society make that unlikely to happen soon.
     
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  21. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Even greater than the problem of oscillation, I think, is that of continually changing directions. What I mean is that, in our modern world, there are crucial objectives that require SUSTAINED, concerted effort. But first, to use your example, if we're talking about one party being overly tight with money, and the other being a bit too free-spending, they would theoretically average each other out, over the long run, producing a result closer to the ideal. Consider rainfall. Many places have both a wet & a dry season, which turns out oftentimes to be optimal; either season continuing indefinitely would be ruinous. So, when it comes to goals that are accomplished at the discretion of whoever's in charge, there could even be some comfort in knowing that things will eventually swing back in the other direction (though, personally, I don't subscribe to the theory that things have changed all that drastically, generally speaking, depending on which party has been in power).

    But, when it comes to long-term projects, our system has been, for many decades, notoriously inadequate: witness our out-dated, overly-worn, & insufficient infrastructure. Though this type of undertaking pays huge dividends to the future, it doesn't yield the short-term results that politicians want to be able to tout at the next election; so nearly everyone agrees that we have too many unsafe bridges, for example, but little is done about it. The most obvious issue where this preference for relatively minor course corrections over pursuing more distant objectives comes into play is that of addressing global warming. When one administration takes modest steps to try & ameliorate the worst-case scenarios of the climate crisis & the next one just pulls the plug, undercutting the potential benefits of what's been done, that's simply dysfunctional foolishness. I'd hope that not many on this site still believe that global warming is a hoax, but can't be sure & so won't make my argument rely upon it.

    There are many areas that call for a dedicated effort in order to achieve success, which are left neglected. There is 5G, the next stage in the information age, & all the attendant issues of security & privacy that go with it, when we haven't yet come up w/ effective safeguards against the malware & viruses of even amateur hackers of the current technology, not to mention the attacks of state actors which HAVE practiced discipline in achieving long-term goals. We are deficient in any plans to secure our energy future, in which batteries, requiring rare-earth elements, are likely to play a prominent role; meanwhile, the greatest untapped repository of these elements, on the floor of the Pacific ocean, is being divvied-up by the nations of the world in an organized body which we've not seen fit to participate in. Need I mention preparedness for viral epidemics? Oh, and we live on a planet that, despite all those who die because it can't sustain them, becomes increasingly populated by leaps & bounds; even if U.S. population growth has slowed, it is the pinnacle of short-sightedness, with all the migrations & displacements of populations going on as we speak, as well as all the destabilizing conflicts arising from an insufficiency of resources, to imagine we needn't be concerned because it won't affect us. I could go on, but these are issues better suited to their own threads.

    My point is that it should be clear that our process is excruciatingly slow at major change, even when it's already supported by an overwhelming majority of the population ( hard not to think of SOME form of gun control here, like universal backround checks, eliminating the gunshow loophole, or maybe restricting assault rifles to ownership by firing ranges; of course, once upon a time they were banned, under George Bush #41, but then the pendulum swung). So the real danger of this, "war, " you describe between the so-called right & left in which each undoes the other's efforts isn't, as I see it, our being pushed too far in one direction or the other but, rather, on any of a number of current or potential future metaphorical rapids on which our nation finds itself, approaching a towering falls that is plain to see, with one party guiding us starboard for its little while running the ship, until the next captain decides it's better to angle to port, and so on, crossing and re-crossing the center of that river leading us toward calamity, but never making it to shore.
     
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  22. gabmux

    gabmux Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thank you! A truly outstanding and admirable post.
    I wanted to bold more of it, but I am limited by technology.
    It would be great to see a new topic started on your ideas.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2020
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  23. gabmux

    gabmux Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes. That may well be a major downfall of this form of government that was not addressed at its foundation
     
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  24. gabmux

    gabmux Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thank you for your thoughts. I have not heard these ideas anywhere before.
    They are very interesting to me.
    Do you know if those ideas of yours have ever been addressed by other governments?
    And do you know if any methods have been tried/succeeded/failed to cure this problem?
     
  25. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Donor

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    Are you a Californian? Yes, ranked voting is a very good idea; but will it ever be taken up nationally, I don't know. No matter how beneficial a concept may seem to some, there will always be others who conceive of things in an utterly different fashion. Eliminating corruption by taking big money donations & corporate lobbyist perks out of the equation has seemed a pragmatic approach to many, for a fairly long time now; but fully publicly-financed elections may never be a reality, & when Ross Perot pledged to take the lobbying-graft out of politics, well we know how that ended.

    Besides the fact that individuals see the world in different ways, others in this thread have cited the ability of those in power to sway the view of the populace (or the ease w/ which peoples' opinions can be controlled) as another warping influence on our (& presumably any) democracy. With regard to this, it's interesting to note that in the exit-polls of the '92 Presidential Race, besides the usual questions about how people voted, voters were asked a seemingly odd, additional question along the lines of, " if you could have your preference, which candidate would you want to win?" While one might assume that the answer would be the same as the person that they voted for, in fact 60% of respondents said they WANTED Perot to win; but 2/3rds of them voted for one of the major party candidates instead so as not to, "waste," their vote since, as they'd been assiduously counselled by the members of both Parties, "a 3rd Party CAN'T win!" I wonder how many of those who were persuaded by this argument to not vote for the person they really wanted, afterwards realized that, if they had all not changed their votes, Perot WOULD have won, despite what Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George Bush, et al had assured them, since 60% is a majority, in fact a landslide victory in even a 2-person Presidential contest, & an assured electoral college victory in a 3-person race. Presented w/ this information-- to bookend this post with an example of the disparate perspectives argument w/ which it began-- someone's big takeaway is bound to be, "Poor Dan Quayle, always relegated to the, 'and others' or, 'et ceteras.' "
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2020

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