
The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy - SubiculumCode
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/08/shawn-rosenberg-democracy-228045
======
Merrill
So long as the electorate is asked to vote on policies, democracy will fail
because for large nations the policy issues are too complex for the electorate
to deal with.

The original idea in the US was for the electorate to elect representatives on
the basis of their character and intellect. The representatives would then
study the issues and create appropriate policy responses.

In fact, there was even a second level of indirection to isolate the Senate
from current passions and fads of the electorate by having the Senators
elected by State legislators for 6 year staggered terms.

~~~
9wzYQbTYsAIc
I’ve often thought that it would be easier for people to make votes on moral
questions rather than policy questions.

~~~
9wzYQbTYsAIc
I really don’t know why this is being downvoted, because that is what the
research shows...

~~~
fallingfrog
Because nobody but you has any idea what you’re talking about. What
constitutes a “moral question”? If it’s not attached to some policy, then
what, exactly, are we voting on? Seems like a poorly developed half-thought.

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tenebrisalietum
Too many people end up on the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These
people end up overworked and want relief from a monotonous, stressful,
overworked life, and aren't thinking further ahead than that. So they will
indeed give up liberty for security.

It's ultimately because people use other people to accomplish goals, so it's
always a big pyramid scheme.

There is probably no escape from this while human labor can help others
achieve goals.

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mar77i
IMHO the problem of populism is not as centrally a threat to democracy as the
article states. The more central problem as it recently manifests is called
"same images, different movies". People read about the same events in two
publications, and make two completely opposing interpretations, and go out
there to defend their interpretation. It doesn't occur to them they might be
wrong once in a while, as we all are. On this front, the article makes rather
skewed distinctions between the advantages and disadvantages between social
media and legacy media outlets, as well. Only because legacy media outlets
supplied you with a narrative doesn't make them any more trustworthy than the
cleaning liquid merchants you can see on TV in between broadcasts.

If you publicly chip away on people's trust in the most basic premises about
governments, you're nothing short of a fool. Reining immigration is a good
thing, because integration of immigrants is a lot of work which costs money,
therefore cannot be practiced at infinite scale, and racism is not something
that happens exclusively to white people. I swear I can wear a hoodie with my
bleak, sewer-dwelling European face and not exactly look trustworthy to you,
just as well. To argue that had anything to do with the skin color namely
makes whoever came up with this example very much a racist instead.

I'm filing this article under "dangerous nonsense", therefore. We should
invite populists of both sides of the aisle to debate issues with one another
so that maybe, we might not think as ill of one another and courageously carry
democracy into the next centuries, so that we can learn to deal with attacks
on basic western principles like this one. Wait, I suggested we required
courage. We're doomed.

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ajbonkoski
This a load of nonsense FUD. It's all sensationalism in response to the
current political climate. He'd be singing a completely different song at the
height of Obama's presidency.

Even the language and word choices are FUD: "elites". Conspiracy theories work
because people respond more viscerally to fear and uncertainty than to
optimism.

Even more amusing: his argument is actually that (1) we basically didn't have
a democracy because the "elites" ran the show, then (2) technology made the US
more democratic, so (3) democracy will fail.

What? Because things are more democratic, the democracy that we never actually
had is going to fail now?

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drak0n1c
There's a relevant quote from Heinlein's classic science fiction novel,
Starship Troopers:

"There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free".
Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the
decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those
noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they
could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without
sweat, without tears. … I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to
imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money —
which is true — just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best
things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and
devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life
is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value."

~~~
Fjolsvith
TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Also from Heinlein.

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throwawaynull
I have a serious question, hoping someone can answer thoughtfully.

Why are populism and democracy - in this article and elsewhere - treated as
opposites, or at least incompatible?

For me, I understand the definitions as follows:

Populism: "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who
feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups"

Democracy: "a system of government held accountable to the wishes, needs,
priorities, interests and voices of ordinary people - typically through
representation"

If the populist thesis is that powerful elites, wealthy magnates and
corporatists running their country disregard the concerns of ordinary people -
couldn't that be true and also democratic at the same time?

~~~
youdontknowtho
Populism is always decried as unserious by media because they are biased
towards status quo.

FDR was elected four times being a democratic populist.

EDIT: the paper does mention right wing populism specifically. It's dangerous
because it's antidemocratic by nature.

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malandrew
I'm confused by this article presenting populism as not democratic. If people
are freely voting directly, that's democracy (rule by the people). Whether or
not their voting decisions are driven by populism doesn't mean it ceases to be
democratic. Populism if anything is the pathological case of democracy.
Democracy is essentially _mob rule_ and one reason the US was set up as a
republic using representative democracy instead of direct democracy.

Furthermore, this article only talks about right-wing populism and completely
elides left-wing populism. The two go hand in hand, fueling one another
because of reactionary-ism.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
It's considered one of the fundamental pitfalls of democracy[1].

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority)

~~~
Fjolsvith
Its a good thing that America isn't a democracy. [1]

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic)

~~~
blacksmith_tb
It may or may not be a good thing, but your quip certainly hints at the kind
of structural choices that have gone into the design of the federal government
(for example the two houses of congress).

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youdontknowtho
Aristotle thought that democracy required some level of maintained equality to
be stable. Madison thought that elites should run a democratic republic so
that economic equality wasn't needed.

We expanded the concept of who has franchise, but never expanded the equality.
A certain level of economic and educational equality was assumed by the
founders when they constructed a government where only landed gentry could
vote.

You can't have it both ways. The current system will keep skewing towards
pitchfork-ville until elites realize that it's in their self interest to
decrease the level of inequality.

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simonblack
We may call them democracies, but I venture to state that there are _no_
democracies existing in the world today. What we do have is a lot of
oligarchies which are _labelled_ as 'democracies' but are in fact no such
thing.

If that rich billionaire or multinational company has more political clout
than you, you are not living in a democracy.

~~~
nolok
Then in your view there has never been any real democracy, and there will
never be.

There will always be some people more influential than others, people like to
have leaders to follow and listen to, it’s who we are.

~~~
Fjolsvith
People instinctively back the leader they feel is the luckiest because there
is a subconscious hope that leader's luck will bring them luck as well.

This is what I believe was the biggest reason for the outcome of the last
election.

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TheCryptoTengu
Was always told when I was in the Marines the Masses pay for the few. Easy to
see the masses pay for the few corrupt politicians. The few corrupt companies
who spend billions to lobby. On and on down the line. We have lost morality
and instead feed on emotions and greed.

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fulafel
Anyone have a link to the paper?

~~~
C0d3r
Here you go:
[https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8806z01m](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8806z01m)

~~~
Merrill
Thanks!

>The structural weakness of democracy.

>While recognizing that the rise and fall of RWP movements reflect fluctuating
social and economic circumstances, I want to suggest that recent developments
are manifestations of something more fundamental. They reflect a basic
structural weakness in American democracy, one that renders it ever more
vulnerable to the threat of right wing populist alternatives. This weakness is
that democratic governance in America (and elsewhere) has not been successful
in creating the citizenry it requires. Thus it is left with citizens who lack
the requisite cognitive and emotional capacities to assimilate its cultural
definitions and norms, to function in its institutional organizations and to
participate in its public sphere. The claim I make here about the nature of
the citizens in modern democracies, particularly the American one, is not new.
However a consideration of its structural underpinnings and implications is.

Earlier in the paper he described the characteristics of a citizen in a
liberal democracy. It is very unlikely that they exist in any great number,
and instead a liberal democracy operates by elites conditioning the thinking
of the mass of citizens through education, media, and other means of swaying
public opinion. Thus, liberal democracy is an oligarchic authoritarian regime
that tries its best to not appear to be such. It current quandary is how to
exert sufficient control without revealing its true nature.

------
alfromspace
_Democracy is hard work. And as society’s “elites”—experts and public figures
who help those around them navigate the heavy responsibilities that come with
self-rule—have increasingly been sidelined, citizens have proved ill equipped
cognitively and emotionally to run a well-functioning democracy. As a
consequence, the center has collapsed and millions of frustrated and angst-
filled voters have turned in desperation to right-wing populists...He has
concluded that the reason for right-wing populists’ recent success is that
“elites” are losing control of the institutions that have traditionally saved
people from their most undemocratic impulses. When people are left to make
political decisions on their own they drift toward the simple solutions right-
wing populists worldwide offer: a deadly mix of xenophobia, racism and
authoritarianism._

This is really total nonsense. That doesn't sound the end of democracy to me,
that sounds like democracy in action. He just don't want the rule by elites in
the _guise_ of democracy to end. There's nothing anti-democratic about these
policies he's tarring as "racist" and "authoritarian", which I assume would be
things like stopping illegal immigration or securing one's country's
territorial integrity (which, by the way, don't even ever happen due to the
intervention of elites). But I guess he finds these things self-evident. That
isn't good enough for me.

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notfromhere
It's kind of hard to blame the people for Trump when the people didn't choose
Trump.

Between the structure of the Senate, House, and the Presidency, plus things
like gerrymandering and voter suppression, how much influence does the voter
even have?

~~~
Fjolsvith
Well, enough of the people must have chosen Trump because Hillary ain't
president.

Comments like this never get downvoted on Lib HN, yet are just as offensive to
conservative readers as conservative comments are to liberal readers. I'd flag
it if I could.

~~~
notfromhere
The people didn't pick Trump because we don't function in a presidential
system where a) the people elect the president directly, b) the ballot
functions on a one vote, one man principle.

The president is elected by gaining enough Electors, whose voting totals do
not correlate with the total amount of votes nationally for the president.
Instead, the votes are weighed based on the state's congressional delegation
and senators, which is based on a population proportion for the house and none
of the senate. So some states have a higher impact on the EC total than
others; for example, a voter in California has less marginal impact than a
vote in Wyoming.

The comment isn't wrong, and its pretty telling that modern conservatism is
triggered and upset when facts are presented.

