Is democracy self-destructive?

[repiV]

But then isn't it likely that other power interests - corporate, media, private individuals, workers unions, whatever - will assert influence where government does not? Kind of a damned if you do/don't situation.

Yeah, but those power interests are separate groups that change and evolve, are in competition with each other and which cannot exert unilateral control over the population and which have a somewhat open membership to ordinary people.
These institutions can also only exert soft power on the population - they can encourage, suggest and coerce, but they cannot force.
Government is a closed shop that can dictate orders and acts as a single overpowering force.
The world cannot ever be made fair, as the people making those decisions are as fallible as anyone else and fairness is subjective anyway. The most feasible way to manage freedom is not to manage it. At least the power groups that form are in some way representative of the people by virtue of their being composed of people, and the many disparate groups vying for attention are surely more representative of the people than a government could ever be.

That said, on the subject of 'media brainwashing', it's arguable that as independent methods of quickly and easily broadcasting/accessing information become more commonplace and more powerful, combined with methods of recording - hell, at some point people will be able to use themselves as walking cameras - this can be countered. Will media be better if everyone participates in it? If the principle of the internet is applied?

I think it's somewhat like (and linked) to the idea of sousveillance. Consider: you're never going to be able to stop government or whoever from using security cameras and suchlike against you; you'll never stop them from abusing modern technology to collect every detail of your life.

The answer, then, is surely for everyone to do it back. If every single person had cameras in their eyes, wireless internet in their head, recorders in their ears, then it'd be damn near impossible to stop people from recording anything and everything.

The paradigm of a collaborative media might one day be the most powerful defence against anti-democratic power distortion. I have my doubts, but a man can hope.

I don't like the sound of that world, but I doubt there's much we can do to stop it.

 

[Sulkdodds]

No, there probably isn't. The question is - if it happens, can it be turned to the advantage of ordinary people, rather than to that of a powerful government?

There is a sense in which the corporate world, or the world of competing interests, can represent people very well. Perhaps better than our crappy electoral system.

The problem is that with pressure groups, you often don't get equal representation. Who will a government listen to more - the massive but powerless voting bloc of another party who want to protect their interests (eg Thatcher and the miners in the 80s - of course she doesn't care, they can't do shit because they'd only vote for Labour anyway) or the one man who can offer a large political donation? A large citizen's group wanting lower taxes, or a comparitively small union that controls all the nation's power stations and could black-out Britain if it wanted to?

When you have seperate groups changing and evolving, in competition with each other, you don't necessarily get democracy - rather, you get darwinism.

It is not even honest darwinism, because the top dogs can and will fight to ensure that many other animals don't get a chance.

Sure, these forces cannot fully control a country, but I never said they could. A government is supposed to be composed democratically; you can regulate the process. There is no way to guarantee that the most powerful interest groups or companies are the most loved. And 'soft' power can be just as dangerous as 'hard' power because of its more covert nature - especially when interests are in league with big government, as business has been perfectly happy to co-operate with New Labour. Hello, Bernie Ecclestone! Hello, Rupert Murdoch, first man through Tony Blair's post-election door! Or was Thatcher the first, and Murdoch the second?

I would argue that while the world can't be made completely fair, the "people making those decisions" should be us - but democracy as it is in Britain right now means that simply isn't true. I'd like to argue that the only actions taken towards making a fairer society should be fully supported by a democratic majority who have voted for said policies of their own volution, but that's impossible as it is and still unlikely even if things were better.

I think a government can be more representative than any interest group or multi-corporate gestalt could ever be - but as it is right now this is unlikely to happen.

You're overwhelmingly right about one thing, though: corrupt ministers, powerful beaurocracies and runaway executives can be and are just as anti-democratic as commerce and interest.

Also: when it comes to freedom, a surfeit of management destroys it, sure - but so does a total absence of management. There has to be a balance - we accept the necessary existence of, say, the police and the courts. Where that balance lies; ay, there's the rub.

 

[Sulkdodds]

DUALPOST:

I'm not quoting Shakespeare just because I'm pretentious, by the way. Well, not just because I'm pretentious.

My point is that maintaining a democracy is as twisting and awful a question as all of those Hamlet has to wrestle with. There is a point where we ask ourselves: is it nobler in the mind to bear the slings and arrows of fat shits and their lies, or to take arms against the grinning bastards and their abuses of the public body, and by opposing end them?*

To vote or not to vote? Many people these days just don't bother, because they feel it won't change a thing.

I think the original question the OP posed, the original basis for democracy being "self-destructive", is spurious. It'll A. never happen and B. if it does merely engender a shift of priorities.

*EDIT: This refers less to revolutionary action and more to my dislike, by speaking of it in fairly inflated language, for the totally-lame protest of not voting that'll show 'em.

 

[repiV]

No, there probably isn't. The question is - if it happens, can it be turned to the advantage of ordinary people, rather than to that of a powerful government?

There is a sense in which the corporate world, or the world of competing interests, can represent people very well. Perhaps better than our crappy electoral system.

The problem is that with pressure groups, you often don't get equal representation. Who will a government listen to more - the massive but powerless voting bloc of another party who want to protect their interests (eg Thatcher and the miners in the 80s - of course she doesn't care, they can't do shit because they'd only vote for Labour anyway) or the one man who can offer a large political donation? A large citizen's group wanting lower taxes, or a comparitively small union that controls all the nation's power stations and could black-out Britain if it wanted to?

When you have seperate groups changing and evolving, in competition with each other, you don't necessarily get democracy - rather, you get darwinism.

It is not even honest darwinism, because the top dogs can and will fight to ensure that many other animals don't get a chance.

Sure, these forces cannot fully control a country, but I never said they could. A government is supposed to be composed democratically; you can regulate the process. There is no way to guarantee that the most powerful interest groups or companies are the most loved. And 'soft' power can be just as dangerous as 'hard' power because of its more covert nature - especially when interests are in league with big government, as business has been perfectly happy to co-operate with New Labour. Hello, Bernie Ecclestone! Hello, Rupert Murdoch, first man through Tony Blair's post-election door! Or was Thatcher the first, and Murdoch the second?

I would argue that while the world can't be made completely fair, the "people making those decisions" should be us - but democracy as it is in Britain right now means that simply isn't true. I'd like to argue that the only actions taken towards making a fairer society should be fully supported by a democratic majority who have voted for said policies of their own volution, but that's impossible as it is and still unlikely even if things were better.

I think a government can be more representative than any interest group or multi-corporate gestalt could ever be - but as it is right now this is unlikely to happen.

You're overwhelmingly right about one thing, though: corrupt ministers, powerful beaurocracies and runaway executives can be and are just as anti-democratic as commerce and interest.

Also: when it comes to freedom, a surfeit of management destroys it, sure - but so does a total absence of management. There has to be a balance - we accept the necessary existence of, say, the police and the courts. Where that balance lies; ay, there's the rub.

In that case, perhaps the solution is a completely different type of government with a completely different purpose. What if the only purpose of government was to ensure the absence of politics? To make sure that noone's freedom is unnecessarily infringed?
It could be illegal for businesses to use their power to incite political change or alter public perception of issues unrelated to the business world, and the government's sole purpose would be to ensure freedom in the libertarian sense, nothing else.
The military would be a separate entity altogether, as would the tax collection, and other public services considered essential in the modern world.
Obviously the idea needs some work, but I think it has merit.

 

[Sulkdodds]

That would be extremely interesting.

It would be difficult to enforce, and I can see many roadblocks and problems*, and we don't know how it might work out, but hell, millions of people have died for far more suspect utopias.

* Difficult to reconcile the absence of democracy, surely necessary to preserve such a state, with the commitment to freedom.
Difficult to stop said government from outstepping its bounds.
Difficult to stop influence being exerted.
Debate over what constitutes freedom; in that other thread (which I intend to reply to!_ I contend, as many others would, that the 'freedom' to enter a private school actually creates a net loss of freedom for the majority of people...I'm a libertarian at heart but my political beliefs approach egalitarianism when I percieve systems to strangle more freedom than they allow.
etc

If only we had some sort of ultra-sophisticated 3D world in which to test such theories. The Sims just doesn't cut it.

 

[repiV]

That would be extremely interesting.

It would be difficult to enforce, and I can see many roadblocks and problems*, and we don't know how it might work out, but hell, millions of people have died for far more suspect utopias.

It would be difficult full stop - mainly because it's so different to anything we've ever had before. All forms of government so far have been based on exerting power rather than denying it - the only thing that has come close to breaking that pattern is the USA as envisaged by the founding fathers and that was still a way off from my suggestion. Ultimately, that vision was never realised anyway.

* Difficult to reconcile the absence of democracy, surely necessary to preserve such a state, with the commitment to freedom.

Democracy exists for much the same purpose as my form of government would - to ward off totalitarianism and try and ensure representative governance. The question is one of effectiveness - when the entirety of government is a small civil service with a single mission to accomplish and not a platform for enacting ideology, elections become largely irrelevant. This government would be a completely non-political entity.

Difficult to stop said government from outstepping its bounds.

That's why the military is not under government jurisdiction - the government has no force to support overstepping its bounds, and if it tries, the military can force them back in line anyway.
Of course this arrangement brings whole new problems of its own...perhaps the military itself could be democratic to ensure that it can never act for nefarious purposes as a unified force. Any military action would be requested by the military leaders and then require a referendum to be authorised and a much more flat, distributed chain of command would make sure unjustified military action would not be possible.

Difficult to stop influence being exerted.

Yep. I just come up with the grand schemes, I let other people fill in the gaps.

Debate over what constitutes freedom; in that other thread (which I intend to reply to!_ I contend, as many others would, that the 'freedom' to enter a private school actually creates a net loss of freedom for the majority of people...I'm a libertarian at heart but my political beliefs approach egalitarianism when I percieve systems to strangle more freedom than they allow.
etc

My definition of freedom is that you can do whatever you want so long as you don't infringe on anyone else's right to do so. Although this government would only be responsible for keeping organisations in check - personal disputes would be no matter for the state. Police forces would be strictly local and autonomous, regulated by the community. Kind of like a large neighbourhood watch.

If only we had some sort of ultra-sophisticated 3D world in which to test such theories. The Sims just doesn't cut it.

Indeed.