Why We Are A Republic, And Not A Democracy

Exactly. We're a representative democracy. And why I don't like ballot initiatives.

 

Wooden shoes and silk slippers fit in here somewhere....

 

There are other choices. I think representative democracy is what people mean when they say democracy. Also as more people are educated the rabble that some of our founders feared have become better informed.

 

Madison supposedly spent years researching the ways that successful societies imploded, and I recall ancient Greece being a prominent example of a society that seems to have perished from an overdose of democracy. Plato’s Republic treats democracy pretty savagely, though his solution is rather terrifying.

 

Whatever. I'd be the perfect philosopher king.

exiled'24

 

Makes them feel better about corruption tactics and those shenanigans that would result in minority rule (such as congressional district gerrymandering).

 

We do tend to cling to quaint notions and feel good narratives.

 

One year, a group votes 9-1 that all members of the group should forever be treated equally.

Years later, times are tougher, and 6 members vote to give themselves a higher proportion of resources than is given to the other 4.

Following which of these two votes should be considered “democratic”?

 

Indeed. This ‘republic v democracy’ debate always seems to beg for us to define our terms, which appears to be a task we in which we are usually unwilling to engage.

Often the word “democracy” seems to be used interchangeably with majority rule. Should majority rule decide everything in a society? I doubt many of us would say so, but this begs a real non-semantic question: how should we make these other decisions? Just let a government leader unilaterally make decisions? Flip a coin?

There can be no perfect answer I think, but Madison seemed to have perhaps the best answer to this question, promoting a two-tiered decision making system of (1) high level consensus enshrined in a constitution for core tenets and decision rules themselves, and (2) lower threshold voting for smaller and more detailed issues. What we should call such a system seems besides the point.

 

Neither, 'voting' on stuff is not the same thing as democracy. The supreme court votes as do corporate boards, and they are not democractic insitutions. Democracy should be understood as the sharing of power, on egalitarian terms. In princple, that means you cant just vote away someone else's power or vote to give yourself more. That's what happens in America though, because it lacks sufficient democratic insitutions, not because it has them.

 

Ah, going back to the classics from your previous incarnation on this board (including the same dubiosly sourced quotes), the virus thing is the only fresh wrinkle you've mustered in ages

 

I'd have to disagree. Ballot initiatives are the only reason Florida isnt Texas, or abortion is still legal in Kansas.

 

While I also think democracy is too often confused with voting, I do wonder in your system how does someone exercise their power in rule making without something akin to voting?

Also, I wonder what exactly makes the Supreme Court non-democratic? Is it that they aren’t elected directly by voting or the populace?

 

Thanks. I didn’t see it under the link.

 

Democracy is a set of practices, voting can certainly be one of them. But voting doesnt equal democracy. And you just explained why the SCOTUS isnt democratic, the other being its nullification powers that it made up themselves.

 

No one thinks everyone should vote on everything. I’m still not sure what the point is. Our system is set up so that everyone who votes has a say in their representatives. No one disputes that.

What they dispute is how one sided the electoral system has become. They dispute the gerrymandering done to preserve minority opinion control.

 

People champion democracy because there are a significantly larger number of takers than contributors in modern America. The quickest way for these takers to get more from the contributors is to dilute the power of contributor's votes.

Nothing more, nothing less. Politicians want votes and since there are more takers, you know who they champion.

Also, what do you think is the easier way to get votes, earning them by improving all your constituents lives or finding a guy with $100 and taking $50 so you can pay 2 people $25 for their votes?

 

I do think these are among the key issues of today, and I do hope it acceptable to take a moment to point out that these are the core issues of the Forward Party platform:

Our Platform

 

This is a fairly dim view of the human condition, but putting that aside for the moment, how best can we be assured of improving people’s lives if not through democracy?

 

When ratified the largest to smallest state was 8Xs difference… Virginia to Georgia. Today is 70Xs California to Wyoming.

I bet the standard deviation of state populations is similarly 10Xs less equitable.