Democracy vs Authoritarianism

Engineer

Engineer

Major
bladerunner said:
This would have to apply more so to the apologists of authortarianism
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Too bad for you the Western view on freedom and democracy preclude the existence of such people, for under such view authoritarianism is completely wrong, cannot be popular thus cannot have supporters. To say there are apologists of authoritarianism is effectively admitting that such Western view is misleading all along, thereby admitting the arguments brought forth by plawolf, jackliu and myself are correct.

The same view on freedom and democracy also holds that a democracy is practically infallible. Democracy is automatically assumed to be right and popular under such view. The assumption would lead followers to response to any challenge with "X is worse than democracy" or "Y is worse when it happens outside of a democracy" like an autonomous robot. These people are in essence apologists of democracy.
 
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bladerunner

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
Engineer said:
Too bad for you the Western view on freedom and democracy preclude the existence of such people, for under such view authoritarianism is completely wrong, cannot be popular thus cannot have supporters

/QUOTE]

Thats accordinging to engineer , but in fact its a erroneous statement.
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J

jackliu

Banned Idiot
Please just ignore bladerunner, he have proven time again and again, he does nothing but fire off cheap shots. Don't encourage him, don't reply to him, I like to keep this trend clean, talking to bladerunner will have a very high chance of this whole thing getting locked.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Major
bladerunner said:
Thats accordinging to engineer , but in fact its a erroneous statement.
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There is nothing erroneous about it, for I never dispute the fact that authoritarianism can do rights, be popular, thus acquire supporters. Only apologists for democracy would claim these are impossible outside of a democracy and hold democracy as the only viable path in the development of a civilization. The last come back of these apologists to any challenge is always "that person must be working for X nation", for they are too indoctrinated to realize there can be other alternatives.
 
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M

montyp165

Senior Member
Engineer said:
There is nothing erroneous about it, for I never dispute the fact that authoritarianism can do rights, be popular, thus acquire supporters. Only apologists for democracy would claim these are impossible outside of a democracy and hold democracy as the only viable path in the development of a civilization. The last come back of these apologists to any challenge is always "that person must be working for X nation", for they are too indoctrinated to realize there can be other alternatives.
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Basically it's a regurgitation of the old "No True Scotsman" fallacy all over again.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Major
jackliu said:
Going off topic a bit, yes I agree that young dynasties are most dynamic, and towards their end, they are riddle with corruption and leadership weakness.

However I don't know if the quality of the emperor is the sole cause of this decay, I think the problem is more with concentration of wealth and land into a few, and also concentration of power. The very few elite land holders controls all the assets, while everyone else work as tenet for them, this means there will be no social mobility anymore, if you are born a serf, chances are no matter how hard you work, you will end up serf as well. Also as the elite gains economic power, they also gain political power, that means they will influence the government to tax them less, so all the tax burdens falls on the normal people.

That is when people usually revolt, the empire get weaken, you have new dynasty or invaders from outside taking advantage of the situation.

And when the new dynasty forms, all the old land holder elite's power are broken, the land again belong to the states, and everyone start off relatively the same level again. And just like before, the old cycle continues.

I know this sound very much sound like the old Mao's communist's class warfare theory, even I don't believe in communism, but I do this this theory hold some water, what is your take on this?
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Interesting. The situation about concentration of wealth that you have just described sounds very similar to current situation in the US, and to a lesser degree the rest of first-world countries. I wonder if we would see successful revolts in the West within our life time.

Anyway, you are right in that the emperor is probably not the sole cause, but the premises in my argument still applies. When those have power only look out for themselves, they are incompetent and the dynasty falls. When those have power are competent, they look out for the best interests of the country, hence strengthen the dynasty. These show a disconnection between the type of system and success.
 
J

jackliu

Banned Idiot
Engineer said:
Interesting. The situation about concentration of wealth that you have just described sounds very similar to current situation in the US, and to a lesser degree the rest of first-world countries. I wonder if we would see successful revolts in the West within our life time.

Anyway, you are right in that the emperor is probably not the sole cause, but the premises in my argument still applies. When those have power only look out for themselves, they are incompetent and the dynasty falls. When those have power are competent, they look out for the best interests of the country, hence strengthen the dynasty. These show a disconnection between the type of system and success.
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If you were to read about the history of Roman Republic, I see many parallel with modern US. Also actually the income inequality here in US is already pretty much to the extreme, we have top 20% of the population owns 84% of all the assets, and the bottom 40% of the population owns 0.3% of all the assets.

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But even so I don't think if the situation like this continue to exist will start a revolution. Simply because US is just way to wealthy, the basic need of the people can be easily meet, the cost of food here in US is only about 10-15% of daily expense vs 30% in China, and over 50% in India. You can see that the poor people here are usually the ones that are obese, because they can't afford to buy good food to eat healthy, instead they have to eat those cheap process food which make them fat.

So no, as long as people can survive on basic minimum salary, everything will be fine. HOWEVER, there are some indications on the horizon which I see would potentially stop all of this, for one the abandonment of US dollar as world reserve currency due to uncontrollable debt would be most likely causes, because US can't afford to finance it is economy on printing paper anymore, and also another economic depression due to structure unbalance of the economy might be another potential cause.

But enough about US, let's talk about the topic, can you read that long post of my and see if you agree or disagree or have anything else to add?
 
A

airsuperiority

Captain
jackliu said:
Can't believe they lost my post about the media's function in a democracy. While my position is that democracy is a very good idea when done right, with the media serves as the watch dog for the people and keep the government's false ambition such as war in check, however time and time again, it has been shown that the media itself is not that free, nor do they serve as any serious counter balance to government's stupid ambition. So I'm not against free media, I am against the media that we current have, which it calls itself the "free media" but in reality it is controls are actually far worse than the authoritarian controlled media.

When people often think of democracy, they would think of USA, UK, France, Germany, New Zealand etc... all of them are democratic one way or the other, presidential or parliamentary system etc... and they all share one thing in common, they can be said to be successful, it is able to wisely distribute the resources to benefit the masses, and also provide decent services for it is people that it governs.

However, what many people forget that when you think of democracy, you should also think of nations such as Philpines, Indonesia, India, Haiti, Republic of the Congo, Peru, Bolivia, Brazile etc.. all of which are one way or the other, democratic in choosing it is government and leaderships. However all these nations have very dysfunctional politics and economy, the true power is being hold within the hand of the elites, no matter who is elected, they elites are the ones that are truly in control, and they can use whatever social, economic and media means to maintain power. (One can argue that US is heading towards that direction)

And when you examine the successful democracies closer, most of them are concentrated in Europe or direct descents of the Western power (New Zealand, Aulastria etc..) And by no accidnet, most of these nations are white majority, and most of those nations are within the US sphere of influence. From this I can argue, that their success is not primary due to democracy, but rather due to a shared culture and historical background, and most of them started the whole process of industrialization, democratization way as early as 1700s.

I think most of the nation got rich, have gone through a process of industrial revolution, because working in a factory is the greatest form of income redistribution, because in manufacturing, often wages are the most expensive cost, and the workers themselves often do not need any higher form of education, so the barrier of entry is very low, so they can make enough money to better themselves or their children. I see US, Europe, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan have all gone through this process, and now so is China. After industrialization, then a nation can go ahead and develop a service economy, which in general have much higher pay, but the barrier of entry is a lot higher, because you would need a certain level of education to be able to work in the call center, computer programmer, tax accountant, lawyer etc... This is why I think it is a huge mistake for India to skip industrialization to try to leap from agriculture economy straight to service economy. This would only means the very few who can afford education will get ahead, while those who are stuck in agriculture will stuck there forever, that means the society will eventually have a extreme elite rich class, a few middle class, while vast majority of the population would be stuck in forever poor. And when those European nation was in the process of industrialization, they were not really democratic as you think today, there was wide abuse of labor, abuse of human right, abuse of woman, abuse of children, abuse of minorities, in fact if you want to take their today's standard judging China, compare to their own past, it would put China's current Industrial Revolution's labor and environmental practice to shame. It is only after those nation got rich, they being to be more considerable of people's right, they started to give woman and minorities the right to vote, they begin to regulate the labor laws, food and drug laws etc.... not before, not during the process of industrialization. Also, those nation also started the process of democratization way early from within as early as england's magna carta, and through out time there was gradual changes to the society to this day.

I think in order for a society to work with democracy it must meet a few prerequists first.

1. All the basic need must be meet, food, shelter etc... One cannot bother to vote if they are starving, this is happening in most of Africa and India.

2. The people must not see politics as a game where the winners takes all, one must understand it is ok to give and take, to win and lose. Many society are not ready for this, they often see politics as an extension of other matters such as blood feud and religious conflict, this is what happening in Middle East.

3. Democracy must work in a society where people are somewhat educated and can make conscious decision base on critical thinking, this is missing in many African and South East Asia democracies, and increasingly United States as well.

4. The society itself must respect the right of law, where corruption is not be the accepted norm from all part of the society, this is missing in Latin America, South East Asia.

5. The government must be willing to implemented programs that directly involves the people, and the people in turn must also expecting the government to intervene into their life as well. This is very much missing in India and Africa democracies.

All I see is United State government try to slap on democracy to any nation on earth regardless of their historical and social background, this often end up in epic failures.

I also think there are some areas that authoritarian government have advantage over democracies, I'll post those later.
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what you've said is called modernization, and yes it's valid to see in such a way
 
A

airsuperiority

Captain
jackliu said:
Engineer, Great reply, I agree with most of your posts, but I don't want this whole thing to be so one sided, so I'm going to argue that there are some areas that democratic government have advantages over authoritarian governments.

1. I think democratic government are more accountable for it is people on the local scale, when everyone knows everyone in town, it is less likely for a official to abuse his power if he was elected.

2. Modern democratic nation make horrible empires, they can invade nations, overthrow governments and support other authoritarian governments. But in doing this, they must fool it is own people, this might be easy to do in the beginning, but once things turn bad, it will be impossible for them to sustain the PR campaign. So I think modern America's structure is very much like ancient Rome, but it is foreign policy is actually very similar to ancient Egypt. Rome was able to expand it is territory by force, but ancient Egypt was also a superpower, but it never expanded beyond Egypt itself.

One can argue that in today's age, direct invasion and colonization is out of the question for any country. But I still think with the level of US military power, it would have done so much worse than now.

3. Democratic nations usually have stronger tradition of rule of law, even though I know it is often get abused by the people or the power elites, nonetheless, it still install a strong tradition into people's mind to make them feel that the ultimate source of the power is from the book, which in theory everyone is equal.

That's all I can think of, I know for every example I listed, there are a list of nations that are democratic and violates those points. But rather than looking at India or Philippines, what do you think about the successful democratic nations such as US and Europe? Is it really democracy that make them successful so far? Or is there something else? Maybe some kind of cultural phenomenon?
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valid points and descriptions.

Something we must also learn to distinguish is, authoritarian rule vs authoritarian values vs liberal democratic rule vs liberal democratic values

HK is a prime example of authoritarian(but semi-democratic) with a lot of liberal democratic values. when we're discussing these, we should know what applies and what doesn't in various scenarios. An authoritarian rule with liberal democratic values will be like in HK, while Iraq will be a democratic rule with much remnants of authoritarian characteristics, such as police brutality. And even in this scope, police brutality as a characteristic can always be argued as a tendency to surface amongst authoritarian states, not that it necessarily be a characteristic of authoritarian. To rule is one thing, while the rights and values a society may enjoy is another, and technically can be of different combos.

Finally, above points regarding accountability, transparency, and minimal police power abuse are indeed merits of democracy. One can argue how useless those bags of cells that are elected and how a state isn't getting anywhere with its policies, but this doesn't detract the privileges and guarantees of certain rights the citizens enjoy.

Authoritarian states can also see successes like a first world state, enjoy privileges of liberal democracy, uses a free market economy, while retaining its effective rule...theoretically. As for how true this is, my first thoughts would be Singapore
 
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Kurt

Kurt

Junior Member
You miss the roots of all these democracies in the cities of Medieval Europe and there especially among the Jewish communities, who as intellectuals had a major influence on shaping the Western World. This was the traditional system that nurtured the most successful timocracies that in mutual backing by the common people accustomed to the same rules, but with less money, took over the states that were created by military autocrats. Even socialism has argueably roots in the centuries of conflicts between guilds of craftsmen and timocratic patricians. The system of elected representatives can be traced to the more or less instituted town alliances that often were part of a threepartite parliamentary system (with clergy and nobility controlling the rural lands) to traditionally check the authoritarian ruler - the king. These burghers took over and that's why there are citizens - not subjects and no slavery despite that it is still a tempting concept for prostitution.
The European repulican roots with democratic elements are in their towns that unlike the old poleis of the Greeks and the Middle Eastern nations were integrated into a larger land controlled by a more militaristic and less tradelike group, the nobility, with the king of the land conquered as their highest member in control.
Chinese democratic tradition is more on a village basis, but equally with a divine supported warlord at the head of state. In a way the Chinese tradition shares more with the Jewish tradition in Europe, who lived as small enclaves of democratic rule (but in world that worked very different). The European idea is republican with roots in the standardised Roman adaption of the Greek poleis ideas that suited a lot of people to join voluntary and despite dwindling numbers to survive the Early Middle Ages as concepts.
The important part about this European system are rights and trust.
The rights have a tradition of centuries because the towns had to attract members of the growing rural population as their own numbers were unsustainable by their reproductive success (hygienic problems), while their wealth and affordable lifestyle in this economic system was a major pull factor. Thus the system has been honed to put people into an economically successful system. Breakdowns, such as the early industrialization were due to very large numbers of former rural labour being integrated into new production systems without grasping the whole set of traditions on such a large scale in so short time. With the return of craftsmenship's influence the old tradition assimilated the massive inflow of cultural newcomers, who previously had been accustomed to more authoritarian rule in the rural regions.
The trust is the basis for economic success and of equal importance for businessmen as for craftsmen. Being a trusted members of this network allows for more efficient economic interaction, while at the same time submitting the individual to obey rules to the benefit of his contractors. It's very hard to grasp the economic importance of this human interaction. I posted the Ghana example before, who have managed an outstanding Sub-Saharan African civil rights record and a decent economy, but still are hampered by lack of mutual trust.

HK and Singapore in my opinion are templates of the European city concept transported to the Asian cultures. Some friends of mine visited these cities and like them a lot because they are even better than the inventors in realizing many organizational ideals of the European city concept. Be that as it may, I think on rural community level democracy will return to China as a very efficient problem solution with low administrative burden for good performance. For the organization of cities HK and Singapore will have a major influence. It's quite good to remember that while cities had a strong emphasis on civil rights and mutual trust in business transactions as their base of success, many successful entities, such as the renown Hanse League cities, Venice, Milan, Florence or Genua, weren't all republics nor democracies. Such a system can work with an authoritarian ruler who is clever and knows when to transgress borders and when to obey them - Vetinari is the best fiction character to highlight such a personality.
 
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