democracy vs autocracy

Popular democracy

Enlightened autocrats do not exist

i'm willing to try

not even a few qualifying rounds ffs

could call it the ilx political canon

democracy

because it serves as a useful distraction and fake rudder while a qualified civil service runs the place

if you dont have the latter then thats yr biggest issue tbh

The trouble with autocrats is all of em have had syphilis since the 16th C.

How bout a two-tiered system where the people act in good faith and act as if they are democratically electing accountable public servants.

But - here's the clever twist - once democratically elected, those officials misinterpret the result as a mandate, and decide to act as putatively benevolent autocratic dictators?

Win-win. Best of both worlds.

Enlightened autocrats do not exist

― flappy bird, Monday, March 9, 2020 1:15 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago)

ataturk, maybe?

Voted autocracy.

(Please call the police)

autocracy, but only if i get to be the autocrat

otherwise democracy i guess

autocracy has been thoroughly road-tested, democracy at large scale much less so. both frequently produce shitty governance, but I'd say democracy has the edge in that it is more volatile and rarely ossifies into an endless yoke of horror.**

**autocracies that take on the protective coloration of democracy through totally sham 'elections' abound recently, but should never be seen as anything but autocracies.

Lol why would this ever even be a question for anyone that isn't already a fascist. "benign autocrat" is a contradiction in terms. you can't be 'benign' and rule over human beings.

democracy exerts rule over human beings, too

Yeah, flappy OTM. The evidence for autocrats doing a better job of co-ordinating responses to major threats seems v slim to me.

The Westminster Parliament tends to work like what YMP describes ime, at least when a party wons a majority. Some of its fans explicitly advocate it on those grounds.

*wins

democracy

because it serves as a useful distraction and fake rudder while a qualified civil service runs the place

if you dont have the latter then thats yr biggest issue tbh

― BSC Joan Baez (darraghmac), Sunday, March 8, 2020 9:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45028000/jpg/_45028400_fa7cd24f-10a2-47df-873f-94d904c5ddfa.jpg

ataturk, maybe?

No.

marcus aurelius?

i'm not really being that serious, i'm voting for democracy too

Listening to the Revolutions podcast is a really good antidote to the idea that autocracies are better at dealing with crisis... It might be true that a medical emergency calls for measures that might seem authoritarian, but I think that can happen in a democracy as well, in fact I think the prime minister in Denmark can declare a pandemic emergency and be allowed to do some pretty undemocratic things. A strong democracy is probably more likely to survive that without falling back into autocracy?

Democracy. But not in the way you think of it ;-) ;-)

Has anyone seen a democracy? Let me know if you do.

was gonna say any democracy i know is just a time-limited version of ymp

"you cant be benign and rule over people" is im afraid the luxurious appeal of someone who needs nothing done

As the little blackberry said once in a rare moment of sobriety between signing off on NKVD death warrants to have league one attendance numbers of people shot "when you chop wood it int bloody oven chips that's flying everywhere!"

There have been very few to no legit democracies that do what they claim to do in the modern era, they've all been at the mercy of semi-hidden power, whether that be the ultra-wealthy, corporations or darragh's Platonic skilled bureaucracy.

But there's near limitless room to refine and adjust and maybe improve democracy. Whereas with autocracy we know exactly what we're getting and how it works and it can only ever be a lottery where the best possible outcomes are likely to be worse than the average democracy.

Also one of these is morally bad if that means anything.

So Democracy, not as an acceptance of the status quo, but as the beginning point of a set of demands about how we should be able to organise our species.

As far as the differences between these two systems in terms of their ability to immiserate, oppress and murder, I still think that those have been largely superficial so far.

neither of these terms are good descriptions of any regime itw imo

because it serves as a useful distraction and fake rudder while a qualified civil service runs the place

this otoh is much more truthful

the deep state of regional bureaucrats and ppl w/ expertise & specific power bases is the real autocracy in many nominal democracies (in which a tiny % of political decisions are made democratically). elections are just one form of accountability, they're a negative check on power rather than a positive method of using it

the maturity/power of any system is the power that exists within it for the professional experts to hold the elected representatives to account

a lot of ppl think the opposite ime

xxp
yep, the likes of Applebaum will try and tell you differently with western chauvinist specs on but it isn't really the truth.

There still hasn't been a HBO quality television drama based on the Bhopal disaster that is just as critical of the corruption and murderous neo-colonialism of US democracy as Chernobyl was of the moribund Soviet Union regime.

That's awfully specifik, mate

so what?

In the UK there is such an entrenched old money elite that have enjoyed a long period of hegemony going back to the medieval era. UK parliamentary democracy in it's current form is never going bring a fair distribution of power and wealth, that much is sure. We've had fucking long enough to try as well ffs!

Sure, sure. I'm just not sure demanding HBO make the right kind of tv drama is the best place to start.

Go take yer mouth for a shite!

HBO is the top US broadcaster who made the drama Chernobyl you know, it's quite simple really.

manx tynwald vs ruthenian khaganate

honesty and self-criticism could be a very useful soft power. But that isn't how democracy rolls.

Yeah, no HBO drama was ever critical of the us. Down with democracy.

Bring back the ting though, ogmor otm

I was just generalising how Western narratives can be just as propagandist and dishonest as anything that you find in any single party system. You grim troll.

Parasite to be re-tweaked as North Korean propaganda to troll our Dane.

Don't give them any ideas, or they'll abduct Bong like they did Shin Sang-ok

Bong's next project:
https://youtu.be/_6OqNGbw8Ek

There still hasn't been a HBO quality television drama based on the Bhopal disaster that is just as critical of the corruption and murderous neo-colonialism of US democracy as Chernobyl was of the moribund Soviet Union regime.

― calzino

shit, i only learned the other day that the us gave shiro ishii full immunity from prosecution in exchange for his, uh, "scientific knowledge", and i've heard loads of thrash metal songs about josef mengele

although mostly i guess that's down to my having heard "reign in blood" but not "world painted blood", i can't pin the responsibility for that on slayer specifically

shit, i only learned the other day that the us gave shiro ishii full immunity from prosecution in exchange for his, uh, "scientific knowledge",

The us put a whole aristocracy of indicted war criminals back in government as soon as it was expedient. There was a whole other layer of them ‘facilitating’ for the military industrial complex pretty much as soon as it looked like Korea was going to go bad. Their sons are today’s LDP.

A democracy is only as good as its level of popular participation, IMO. The ideal would be a kind of fractal democracy starting from the community and building up to the nation. There's kind of a chicken+egg problem at work here: people don't participate because they don't realize their stake; they don't realize their stake because they don't participate. Structurally, capitialism has us self-identifying as consumers before we self-identify as citizens.

Also (at least where the United States is concerned), our entire system of government is effectively still built on the out-of-date premise of a small contingent of landowners calling the shots. The best solution would be a brand-new Constitution, but that is never going to happen.

There have been very few to no legit democracies that do what they claim to do in the modern era, they've all been at the mercy of semi-hidden power, whether that be the ultra-wealthy, corporations or darragh's Platonic skilled bureaucracy.

Not all democracies make such grandiose claims as the US or France tbf.

Providing general direction to a skilled bureaucracy who run things is... how I would expect a democratic government to work?

I don't think that that's how even modest or less grandiose democracies present themselves tho? For obvious reasons, really. Even if a limited technocracy is the best of all possible governments it doesn't seem like an attractive offer.

And couldn't that kind of technocracy exist just as easily under a nominally autocratic government? Which isn't a point in its favour imo.

Providing general direction to a skilled bureaucracy who run things

I think a lot of govts that, say the US govt wld deem not democratic consider themselves to run on this basis

I never understood "peace, order, and good government" to mean anything else, tbh, but I guess I grew up and live in a city where half of everyone is a bureaucrat.
xp Yes but I think it tends to do its job better under democratic direction. My point, though, was that the question of democracy vs autocracy does come down to who is directing the bureaucracy and probably should.
2xp I explicitly cited the US as one example whose claims do seem overstated!

Or at the least grandiose.

Oh I misread ogmor, sorry.

"Yes, he is my cousin," he confirmed quite unnecessarily. "I also noticed a while ago that he had left. I'm sure he's taking his rest cure."
"He is a very rigid, very respectable, very 'German' young man."
"Rigid? Respectable?" he repeated. "I understand French better than I speak it. What you mean to say is that he's pedantic. Do you consider us Germans pedantic - us other Germans?"
"We are talking about your cousin. But it's true, you are all a little bourgeois. You love order more than liberty, all Europe knows that."
"Love... love. What is it, exactly? The word lacks definition. What one man has, the other loves, as the German proverb puts it," Hans Cantorp contended. "I have been giving freedom some thought of late," he continued. "That is, I heard the word mentioned so often, I've been thinking. What all Europe refers to as liberty is, perhaps, something rather pedantic, rather bourgeois in comparison to our need for order -- that's the point!"

also worth considering that many powers operate (or have operated) as nominal (ok i'll stop saying nominal now) democracies domestically and as autocracies abroad. any time anyone suggest a democratic approach to foreign policy they tend to get laughed out of town

Now that issue does concern me. Any country that regards itself as a global superpower is clearly not operating as a democratic power unless the globe is included in its demos. But... is that autocratic international regime a good thing?

Mann's Magic Mountain is the perfect antidote for a lot of of the problems w/ this borad as of late, ty Mordy!

I think a lot of govts that, say the US govt wld deem not democratic consider themselves to run on this basis

― ogmor, Monday, 9 March 2020 12:53 (thirty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

two major issues id take with this as a test tbh

i don't want to be like all those communists who claim that every communist government yet in existence isn't run by true scotsmen, but democratic governance as i was taught it in the us doesn't seem like a system that has ever been put into practice

oddly enough the "fractal democracy" zchrys describes strikes me as being pretty similar to the system of government described by tocqueville... but that government was the government of white male landowners, based on a constitution that enshrined the right to race-based chattel slavery

it's the scale thing, people back in the early days of democracy fretted a lot about "mobocracy" and while a lot of that fretting is frankly elitist and exclusionary in nature - i don't think white male landowners are better suited to governance than anyone else.... well, i am outraged, i do think there should be more mass popular outrage than there is even, but i don't consider that outrage to be a sound basis for governance.

i don't think "a new constitution" would do much; laws are only useful so far as they can be enforced, and the notion that everyone shares enough fundamental beliefs and principles to have a common system of government is not one i find persuasive at the present moment.

I grew up and live in a city where half of everyone is a bureaucrat.

Which half?

jk

Direct democracy on the Athenian model (many decisions being made by a citizen assembly, as opposed to professional elected legislators) excluded lots of people (slaves, women, etc.).

Perhaps in some largely automated utopian future, humans will have the leisure time to try that again. But with something more like universal adult participation. While the robots are busy doing most of the menial labor, people will be putting stuff like zoning plans and line-item funding measures to a simple majority vote of rotating assemblies of 500 (meeting by VR).

I mean, zombie uprisings and toxic rain and devastating war and plague are probably more likely, but let's not discount the possibility of slightly less depressing potential futures.

two major issues id take with this as a test tbh

I'd say these issues exist in any such test cf. democracy indexes with their arbitrary scope and judgements. I prefer the honesty of the more nakedly subjective/ideological/chauvinist judgements, esp when you have to wade through loads of pretence while you can tell the authors really just want to dub certain countries 'unamerican'

the two objections id raise would rather more pointedly raise an eyebrow as to

- whether the US passed in any fair measure itself as a state that functions

- the arguable value in light of the above of the US govts opinion on the validity of any other state's apparatus

sure but those are the v same inescapably subjective and vague issues. reminded of the astra taylor doc what is democracy? (& book w/ juicier title: democracy may not exist but we'll miss it when it's gone). I wld argue for democracy as dispersed & localised power (and crucially, ownership) on the grounds it's more likely to deliver good decisions and with much lower risk than concentrated power

good decisions also heavily subjective there

feels like the only way round this whole subjectivity biz might be to let everyone have a say????

guys.

dmac is planning an ILX coup.

This is the first seed... softening ILX up to consider autocracy.

In a month, I Love Football will be the only forum left.

what a relief

If I Love Football is the only borad left, where must the Spurs fans have their say?

wmc to mod i love football

down with all heteronomous societies

^to the walls

The biggest problem with democracy is how poorly it scales up. At the township level it can work like a dream. Every step up from there incrementally introduces new problems. Still it works better than having a czar, king or president-for-life.

"Worst system except for all the others," amirite

i agree, down with all heteronormative societies

what do you mean that's not what you said?

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