/lit/ - Literature

>>14726570
There are no people after the Greeks.

Screwtape Proposes a Toast is somewhat anti-democracy. Definitely anti affirmative action at any rate.

aristotle’s Politics

Representative democracy is shit for a variety of reasons. Namely that all these elected officials and representatives don't actually serve their voters and the public and instead serve other interests. So you now have the monarchists declaring that democracy has failed and it's time to bring back monarchies, but these bloodlines are actually some of the above mentioned "other interests" which have been exploiting and manipulating elected leaders and government officials in representative democracies. They are in fact responsible for the mess everything is and not any kind of solution.

Direct democracy is something which has yet to be used in its purest form on a large scale and solves all of the above mentioned problems.

>>14726719
Direct democracy is a meme. It can only work if the only things people vote on is trivial shit while all everything important is managed in a technocratic manner unaffected by democratic forces. This is inherent to democracy. The challenge of any democratic society is how to protect all the functioning parts from the chaos of democratic politics.

>>14726570
What idiots believe in democracy?
What's that?
The founders of western thought?
Well, they're fucking morons anyway #blacklivesmatter

>>14726908
Name one thing which couldn't be managed by a public vote. Keep in mind that for all this to work ideally the public would also have full transparency of everything.

>>14726947
I'm on board. Let's assume full transparency and direct democracy, through technological means, on a self-sustaining island of 100 adults.
Adam can gather lots of fish using his net, leaving nearly no fish for anyone else, who must subsist on coconuts. Betty introduces a bill that forbids the use of net fishing. Adam, not wanting to lose his wealth of fish, tells people that if he didn't use the net, the fish population would decline.
How do you guarantee that Betty will win the vote, and not Adam? Both can talk openly with the other 98 inhabitants, but only Adam can bribe them with extra fish.

>>14726947
You'd also have to assume a populace that isn't apathetic or uneducated.

>>14726908
DIRECT democracy is stupid, because people are stupid.
Representative democracy, on the other hand, is better. Not perfect, but better.

Democracy is ethical yet ineffectual, Authoritarianism is unethical yet effective.

>>14726971
Authoritarianism and Democracy are propaganda terms without substantive differences in how polities go about their statecraft. Ultimately power will be exercised and some authority will be classified as legitimate.

>>14726963
A few things.
>everyone is already tired of Adam hogging all the fish and would support any way to prevent this
>they wouldn't believe his lies
>Bribery and vote buying would still be verboten, and since you can't just make a backroom deal with one elected official in secret, and instead have to go door to door to literally thousands or even millions of people, there's no way you're getting away with it

>>14726971
Even if the average person is stupid at least they aren't malevolent, and would deliberately vote against everyone's best interests.

Representative democracy right now actually does have governments doing things which go against the best interests of the majority in favor of corporations or agendas, some of which actually are malevolent towards the public.

Authoritarianism is only effective at forcing one person or groups plans on everyone, and their vision is going to serve themselves rather than the majority.

>>14727063
corporations would just lobby the people instead of the government. The people's consent is easily manufactured and they are very susceptible to advertising and propaganda.

>>14726719
I think direct democracy would only exacerbate the unaccountable informal power that elite institutions like the media, universities, NGOs etc have.

>>14727079
The power corporations have over any country right now is through money they can provide a government or its officials, and the people are powerless to do anything about it. Under direct democracy corporations would have to actually serve everyone's best interests in order to gain any kind of public support. Propaganda and empty promises would be worthless and a good way to get the public to stop you from doing any business in their country. Only things which genuinely work out best for the public would be tolerated, and corporations would constantly be operating in fear of public backlash.

>>14727157
>Under direct democracy corporations would have to actually serve everyone's best interests in order to gain any kind of public support.
No, they have the power to set the discourse and shirt the overton window of what is reasonable and what is a concern.

>empty promises
they work. Trump still doesn't even have a wall. people love the zeitgiest of politics and get board of them once the talking points stop being trendy. Moreover, they don't have to make any real promises, you can successfully control how a person will think simply with media they don't recognize as political, but simply "normal"

The conditioning happens outside of the democratic context.

>fear of public backlash.
The public holds little power, effective backlash is always directed by economic competitors. Sometimes you just need a scapegoat sacrifice to placiate them.

>>14727117
One of the first things that should be done is a vote to prevent media influence in the democratic process, perhaps by banning all media which is owned by that small number of corporations and having the public run it all.

Universities would be a trickier matter because the groups which influence what they propagandize people with are more subtle. Maybe you could just have public votes on what subjects they should teach. The majority of people are already opposed to certain things which are clearly agenda driven.

>>14727193
The public has ALL the power under direct democracy. Corporations would be obedient fearful servants and nothing more.

>>14727193
And the Trump thing is representative democracy. Not direct democracy.

>>14727215
>he public has ALL the power under direct democracy. Corporations would be obedient fearful servants and nothing more.

This is the kind of narrative corporations would spin to the people to give them the illusion of power.

>>14727205
Lmao

>>14726971
Brainlet reductionism

>>14727291
It's not an illusion, though. If the people don't like anything about what a corporation is doing they can either change it or GTFO.

>>14726570
is finding life hard to live not really a mark of a loser?

>>14727443
What "the people" like or don't like about a corporation is manufactured by that corporation. There isn't any shared conception of "the people" without such institutions in the first place. Again, the masses never set up the points of debate.

There are different types of demoracy and there are different arguments for each type. Here is a short list of some basic reads.

John Dewey's Democracy and Education

Hannah Arendt On Revolution

Democracy Defended by Gerry Mackie

>>14726570

>>14726574
>There are no people after the Greeks.
Such a ridiculously extreme opinion... it's... beautiful.

>>14726574
vehemently based

>>14728026
I miss him bros.

>>14728034
We all do.

>>14728000
>What "the people" like or don't like about a corporation is manufactured by that corporation.
May be true in regards to competition between different products which aren't really much different, and a mascot or convincing ad can make the difference, but not in general.

Some examples:
>The majority of people are opposed to Glyphosate in their foods
>The majority of people are opposed to GMO foods
>The majority of people are opposed to corporations polluting and destroying the environment
But all these things continue because they can't do anything about it.

>>14728078
>But all these things continue because they can't do anything about it.
And governments and elected leaders are complicit in some of it.

I propose a stratified recursive branching governmental network spread across the entire nation, connected up through multiple levels of increasingly specific/technical matters of decision-making, akin to Allende's Cybersyn project, ranging from every individual citizen up to some number of top officials, with the fulfillers of each position in the network voted on by the total sum of ballots from every position directly connected tangentially connected to them from "below". This fractal-state department would branch out to fill every gap of the land and operate as one giant organ with governance effectively being continuously distributed across the land. Just imagine...

Try Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction by Frank Cunningham.I read it for a class. It details a lot of the contemporary models of democracy.

>>14726719
>Direct democracy is something which has yet to be used in its purest form on a large scale and solves all of the above mentioned problems.
Communism /in its purest form/ can solve all the problems socialist states have had too!

>>14726719
>but these bloodlines are actually some of the above mentioned "other interests" which have been exploiting and manipulating elected leaders and government officials in representative democracies. They are in fact responsible for the mess everything is and not any kind of solution.
You are shit stupid, just like any philistine who isn't a polymath.
>Direct democracy is something which has yet to be used in its purest form on a large scale and solves all of the above mentioned problems.
Theoretical systems can theoretically solve any issue.

I don't know what is worse. An republic that inevitably degenerates into a corrupt oligarchy, or a democracy that inevitably degenerates into mob rule. Ideally, the former would be less chaotic. But who knows. We still have a form of mob rule in the Western "republics" despite being oligarchical.

>>14726934
>The founders of western thought?
HAHAHAHHAHAHAA
>>14726570
>Why is that most people still believe in democracy?
Because "most people" are stupid.
>Is there any book that effectively argues for democracy?
Check /lit/'s wikia for guides. As shitty as this board is, it's good for spreading authors around.

>>14726570
>Is there any book that effectively argues for democracy?
USE YOUR FUCKING BRAIN AND STUDY FOR YOURSELF, YOU MONGOLOID
Look at the problems of today and history and you will notice a pretty obvious fucking trend, that only a delusional retard would avoid.

>>14728419
*Plus it would be grounded in reality, which is a lot harder to refute than yet another theoretical argument against dumbocracy.

>>14726570
because
>muh Greeks
>muh Enlightenment (muh Greeks)

apparently we haven't figured out yet that good cultural output is not necessarily tied to good governance structure. Oh well. Greece must be looked back to at all times. I just wish we had more information about ancient Persia really.

>Greeks
Neither Plato nor Aristotle were in favour of democracy

>>14728481
Aristotle's "Best Regime": Kingship, Democracy, and the Rule of Law by Clifford A. Bates Jr. makes the argument that he was friendlier then we give him credit for.

>>14728448
>ancient Persia
Where are they now? The territories they haven't lost since are ran by an Islamic Theocracy.

>>14726570
I find it funny how people try to argue that Machiavelli was in favor of the type of republic we have have now. He was thinking of a Roman Republic style of governance. Not this "Democratic Republic" we have. It makes me laugh so hard.

>>14728488
Bullcrap. He was exactly right - democracy is just a tool for the poor to confiscate the property of the rich
>In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

>>14728539
>democracy is just a tool for the poor to confiscate the property of the rich
I wish he was right to be honest.

Everyone in this thread is trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

An electoral system is not a democracy. Look up the word "sortition" which none of us were ever taught in school despite allegedly learning about the entire history of democracy in our history and civics classes.

The relationship between an elected official and their constituents is an adversarial one. They don't win by doing what's best for you; they win by getting you to vote for them. The often proposed solution to this fundamental problem with representative elections, is "direct democracy," but that is faced with two insurmountable problems of its own: It's technologically unfeasible, and it would result in too many uninformed voters and nonparticipants.

A real democracy would be similar to the system we have now, with executive and judicial branches, but the legislative branch would be replaced by a system of juries.

The city wants to build a new bridge? Assemble a jury. They will hear every side, examine the costs versus the benefits to the city, the environmental impact. Just like a jury in a criminal trial, they will be forced to become informed voters, and they will be forced to participate, solving those two major problems of "direct democracy," and they will also be regular people from the community who will only benefit by making the best decision for the community, unlike an elected official who benefits by winning elections and not necessarily by making the community a better place.

The President (elected by a jury, not a nationwide election) wants to appoint someone to the Supreme Court? Assemble a jury. They will examine the judge's record, ask him questions, call other witnesses, etc. and they will not be incentivized to put an unworthy judge on the supreme court the way a politician could be, due to any number of factors.

Learn the word, anons: Sortition. Sortition is democracy; elections are not. This is one of the deepest red pills. The birth of democracy in the western world was not about "the people" rising up and taking power away from the monarchs, it was about a small wealthy elite rising up and usurping the power of the monarchy and taking it for themselves.

Elections are oligarchy. The ancient greeks knew this from the beginning. Sortition is democracy.

>>14728540
He is
That is the purpose of taxation

>>14728539
>>14728586
brainlet take. taxation existed long before democracy.

>>14728586
Are you actually living in a country or are you just reading theory about what life in democracy would be like?