Well, I enjoy hearing the battles that occur within this website, may of which are against democracy (I will not state my preference-yet), and so I would like to hear what the Mises community thinks of democracy (i know some of you disagree with others). I thank you for any posts.
Democracy is nothing but slavery.
Thanks.
Hoppe nails it pretty well in “Democracy: The God That Failed”
I know about this stuff, but I saw this character (ruben? I think. I’m knew) that defended democracy.
I don’t know how a sane libertarian can defend democracy. Democracy is nothing more than a tyranny, but instead of having one tyrant, you have many.
If you mean modern socialist democracy it’s just an illusion to make tyranny more palatable for the people. People are allowed to have some rights and engage in somewhat free market but eventually democracy turns into a full dictatorship because the power of the government always extends at the expense of the people.
Well said…
Democracy is actually a pretty clever way to enslave people by giving them an illusion of control and making them waste their energy on meaningless political activity. Occasionally, some groups like NRA may push for something useful, but in the end you just get more and more government intervention until you can’t cook a meal without calling a lawyer.
Haha good one.. or how about a carbon-footprint tax for breathing. Crazy control freaks I tell ya [:P]
Ironically, I feel that in some ways we were less controlled in the Soviet Union/Russia.
Consider this:
I was occasionally left alone at home with not adults and only a smart Irish setter as a companion since I was 3.
I walked to school and local shops on my own since I was 7
I was first given alcohol when I was 4
Just these facts would have been enough to take me away from parents in the United States. Free country, indeed.
So many great points there. One of the biggest is that the US enjoys this fantasy, partly enabled by its semi-island geographical situation, that it is so much freer than everywhere else. There are all sorts of subtle reinforcements of how much worse it is everywhere else. What a bunch of hooey.
My husband and I are preparing to sell our house. If and when it sells we are planning to live abroad for a while, to get some perspective, to get some experience, and to ride out some of the ugliness.
Insofar as democracy entails the existence of the government, it is bad.
I still think democracy is a fine enough system. But it is outdated as it has failed to modenize.
It depends on how one defines democracy. Democracy as in a central political system of elections or indirect representative democracy is predicated on coercion, monopoly and oligarchy to begin with (and hence the “control” allowed to the citizen is practically meaningless), and democracy as in majority rule is inherently inconsistant with individual rights. But democracy as in purely consensus decision-making is essentially anarchism (I.E. is predicated either on unanimous consent or a process or chain or network of individual instances of consent; with the option to not consent or to disassociate being respected; a self-governing society or group of societies within societies). So basically there’s 1. democracy as the illusion of control and consent 2. democracy as universal or mob-based slavery and 3. democracy as participatory consensus-based interaction.
All the great democracies I know of are actually part of a hybrid governing model. Usually there would be a dictator who basically ruled with an iron fist in theory. But mostly he/she just sits back and only intervene when bickering continues forever and somebody have to decide. However, these models only exist in software projects and other voluntary organizations.
Adding thuggery and taxation is just asking for trouble…
How exactly would one modernize democracy? (Or is that not a typo and you mean modenize which, not finding a solid definition, I can only guess means to become representative of the most common set?? Nah, it’s probably a typo.) The only way to improve people (the root of the problem) is make sure society adheres to libertarian ideology - and that’s kind of to/gugh and totalitarian to pull off.
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Modernising democracy is somewhat like saying that the Constitution of the United States of America should be “modernised” from time to time, except that I have no way of imagining how exactly democracy can be “modernised”.
To modernise Democracy:
I suppose you’d open the existing “democracy file” and do a Save As… and name it Neo-Democracy. Then you add a bunch of ridiculous new rules, invent some new collective terminologies representative of your particular favored group and make sure, this time, that that group is the group who gets their way and is permitted to dictate the proper (by concensus) mores and prohibitions to those non-favored groups who are, of course, not agreeing with “us”, ideologically backward and who therefore must be educated.
Democracy, again, is an extension of the people. If the people are, in their core, eager to impose their morals on others by force of government, Democracy is “Bad”. As long as pragmatists rule, are willing to settle for 2 generalized wrongs make a right style of justice, think that compromise is a good thing, and make lazy generalizations (rich, poor, blacks, whites, capitalists, liberals, republicans, democrats, conservatives) all because they cannot conceive of an absolute moral code requiring only that initiation of force is wrong, Democracy will be “Bad”. That’s a code which should be axiomatic, but for some reason, is not. If they did adopt and admit such a universal code, they would also have to admit that their social goals and reasoning up to this point has been evil and flawed. Most are not willing to admit they are evil.
By the way, is technology good or bad? Democracy, I think, can be correctly classified as a “Social Technology”. In its pure form, it is an idea. In its applied form one could say, like rifle or a motor or a can opener (assume a can-opener?), it can be used for “peaceful” or violent purposes.
JAB