How do you feel about “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”?

12 comments

1. Seems pretty accurate.

2. I think we can all agree that anarcho-monarchism is the best form of government.

3. Sounds about right. Democracy can all sorts of flaws, can get messy, and be prone to inefficiency. Alternative, more authoritarian, forms of government may have short-term benefits, but in the long run they are worse than democracy, and really no better than democracy.

4. As a flippant summary? It’s accurate enough.

5. It’s idiotic self-congratulation. And it assumes a great deal about what’s meant by ‘democracy’ – Churchill’s Britain had and still has a House of Lords, for example.

   A lot of ‘primitive’ societies have very democratic systems in which leaders need to keep the people happy or they’re kicked out. Things like attaching leadership to bloodlines occur when societies become much larger than the human Monkeysphere and the cost of having warlords fighting to seize power exceeds the cost of passing leadership to people who may or may not be qualified but avoiding massive fighting.

   In the same way, democracy (in any sense of the word) doesn’t guarantee good decisionmaking or a functional modern society. Democracy exists to keep the people from overthrowing the system all the time; it gives people meaningless contests to struggle over, induces the feeling that they’ve having an effect, and consoles the losers with the belief that they can turn things around next time and need to respect the system until that happens.

   It’s largely a show, and to the degree that it’s actually politically meaningful it tends to be destructive.

6. It is just a cliche and people think it’s much more of a profound statement than it is.

7. Disagree, a constitutional republic is superior.

8. I agree with it, for the most part. Democracy has flaws, chief of which is that it relies on the wisdom and judgement of the average voter. However, it’s flaws do not outweigh its benefits.

9. Broad, but true.

10. With all the shitheads we keep electing I’m starting to think Monarchy is the way to go.

11. Obligatory fuck Winston Churchill.

    Consensus-based direct democracy is pretty good, as forms of governance go.

    Representative liberal democracy, as a performative pressure-release valve to justify and legitimize the institutional violence necessary for capitalism to maintain itself, is a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

12. Reminds me of an arguement over america calling itself the “greatest country in the world”. The “rebuttal” was “only when compared to every other country”. This was said unironically, and my faith in humanity shrank two sizes that day.