What is Democracy

[muxec]

May I use cuss words to explain?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Hell, you can use cuss words even if you're not going to explain!

[muxec]

OK. It's the way to divide the man**** equally.

[Whaleboy]

Democracy is designed to appease the people into thinking they have some power when of course they have little more than a citizen of a dictatorship. Nonetheless, it keeps them happy, reducing the risk of revolution. It gives the leaders a fantastic opportunity to extoll the virtues of their nation to the people, ultimately leading to the forwarding of large, patriotic and loyal armies.

We cannot argue that democracy has some benefits. For example, it serves as something of a check on tyrants who would abuse their own people (another people? Thats another matter). It also generally goes hand in hand with liberty, which is of course of real benefit. That isn't a strong link however, liberty can be gained in a dictatorship providing that the corruption does not occur.

Overal, in my opinion, democracy is a good idea with some benefits but I give it a .

[Fake Boris]

Re: What is Democracy

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
What is it that gives the majority in a true democracy the right to impose themselves on the minority.

The idea would be that there was a consensus about this once.

And what are the limits to that imposition? if the majority of people thought that all immigration to the US needs to be stopped, would that make them right? what if they thought that only whites can be admitted into america? is that right? or what if the majority decided that slavery was the way to go? does this justify slavery.

my question i guess is how can we rely and trust in a democracy when there is no inherent limit to what the majority can do.

That's why democracy requires to be backed by a constitution, though I don't think that immigration rights are protected anywhere.

[GePap]

Democracy is simply rule of the mayority-this is what it meant at its inception, as Aristotle compares it to the Autocrat, or the Oligarchs.

The issue today is that we conflate democracy with individual rights. You could have an oligarchy with individual rights as well-voting for your leader is only one possible right to have.

So it is a simple answer-democracy is just the rule of th mayority. What we have today is a system of checks and balances and all sorts of institutions to balance out dmeocratic and oligarchic leanings.

[Japher]

what GePap said

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by GePap
What we have today is a system of checks and balances and all sorts of institutions to balance out dmeocratic and oligarchic leanings.

I hope you don't actually believe that its working

[Whaleboy]

[Spiffor]

What Loinburger said. "Letting people do what they want" is all right and good as long as interests don't clash. When they clash, however, there is a need of arbitration, and democracy is one way to take this kind of decisions. You could have despots doing it for you, you could have technocrats doing it for you, etc.

There is another thing that Loinburger doesn't mention, however. It is that a community should offer a variety of services anybody could freeride in, if they weren't forced to take part of it (through taxes). Whether you pay your taxes or not, you benefit from streets, public lighting, police protection, military defense etc. just as well. Fundamentally, these services and many other are collective in nature, and cannot be ruled by individual whim.

Democracy is a way to rule this, which offers satisfaction to the majority of the people.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by GePap
Democracy is simply rule of the mayority-this is what it meant at its inception, as Aristotle compares it to the Autocrat, or the Oligarchs.

The issue today is that we conflate democracy with individual rights. You could have an oligarchy with individual rights as well-voting for your leader is only one possible right to have.

So it is a simple answer-democracy is just the rule of th mayority. What we have today is a system of checks and balances and all sorts of institutions to balance out dmeocratic and oligarchic leanings.

No. Democracy requires that there is at least ONE unanimous vote, by which everyone agrees to follow the will of the majority. However, no one would do it unless given some promise as to what can never be done by the majority.

[Whaleboy]

Democracy is basically bollocks. Who's with me?

[Fake Boris]

I don't know of anything better.

[Whaleboy]

Benevolent dictatorship (assume no corruption and expertise in relevant matters), or possibility of AI technocracy operating on a concrete libertarian principle.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Not when people's wants conflict with one another. If I want to enslave you and you don't want to be enslaved, then clearly we have a conflict of interest, and we can't both do what we want.

so then make sure that it is illegal for people to be enslaved and for others to take and to coerce others. a democracy doesnt necesasairlyu do this.