
Sacrifice democracy, while you still have time - aptrishu
https://medium.com/@aptrishu/sacrifice-democracy-while-you-still-have-time-bb0ffb7d9c99
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emodendroket
Anybody who's read anything about US history would have a chuckle at the idea
that a democracy cannot build canals.

I'm also a little puzzled that your post-democracy solution, apparently, is
the House of Commons and the House of Lords, more or less.

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paulddraper
IDK why this is top 50 on HN.

Not to be "mean", but it's either broken thoughts or broken English (not sure
which), and off topic to boot.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
> evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle
> or talking points.

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sharemywin
Communism doesn't have a great track record either.

1\. Tienanmen square

2\. Great firewall of china.

3\. Most of the judicial system in china

4\. cuba

5\. venezuela

Also, the stock market and the 24 hours news cycle hasn't had as long a time
to corrupt china like it has democracies.

Most of the US is optimized for better stock results.

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aptrishu
So, I am not saying to adapt communism. But to think of a better alternative
that should at least sound logical (unlike democracy). We need to understand
the faults in our democracy rather than criticizing china's government.
Because I know there are many conflicts within china but the economic growth
there is much better.

~~~
aptrishu
The ancient greeks designed this whole concept. Can't we? Do something better?
A healthy discussion was the reason for its partial working at that time in
Greece but its not possible now. It is simply not feasible.

~~~
emodendroket
Modern democracies don't look that much like Athenian democracy did.

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John_KZ
This is a topic that in general warrants a lot more discussion and attention
than it currently receives. Also, while the components of it's analysis exist
in the academy (economics, management, sociology, psychology etc) I don't
think it exists as a separate domain and I don't think anyone publishes about
it. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

In my limited understanding, as I've spend a lot of time pondering about these
questions, the problems the writer is concerned about (corruption,
inefficiency, distribution and management of resources) are not a side effect
of democracy itself. Democracy allows for these problems to be corrected, and
indeed in many democratic countries they have.

Regarding the slow development of India (and much of the world) in comparison
to China, there are quite a few pieces to the puzzle that the author misses.
China was both lucky and unlucky. The reason they were allowed to advance so
fast, unlike India, Africa and much of Europe actually, is because they
accidentally (in my opinion) managed to strike a number of conditions, which
allowed them to develop while in control of their country. Similarly with
South Korea.

That is that they joined the era of globalization with a strong, central,
national and authoritarian government and a lot of impoverished workers. The
Chinese government managed to be "left alone" by US corporations by playing on
capitalism's greed without borders: They provided a very cheap workforce, by
the condition of managing it themselves. By keeping the cancer of foreign
corporate infiltration off their land, they could reinvest the profits on
local infrastructure, which gave them a high ROI (as they were selling the
developed countries) and simultaneously acquire technical know-how on
production technologies.

Foreign powers tend to leave systems that work for them in place, ie nobody
tried to fix India's caste system when they first arrived, because it provided
stability for them. Similarly, the modern western corporations saw the Chinese
government as a tool to control and manage a billion workers for free.

This is in contrast with much of Latin America's countries. When people took
control of their own country, completely opposing the interests of US
corporations, they would be murdered by US-funded coups and dictators. So that
leads me to believe that the practical road to success for small countries
lies in taking advantage of the predictable behavior of foreign powers and
gradually taking out the leash from their necks.

And what holds for international issues scales down to intra-national ones.
Proper organization and coordination between parts of society can lead to a
practical, achievable path to a better world. It's a very complex problem
because knowledge of the proposed solution can lead to an alteration of the
circumstances, but it might be solvable.

Sorry for the blogpost.

~~~
tr0ut
I wouldn't say China's rise to global power (in many different categories) was
due to "luck". China has been one of the most advanced civilizations in
history. They also have the second largest military force. The US did not have
to manipulate the Chinese workforce into global trade. China was a willing and
very capable participant. You need to realize they are a large and powerful
country. Not a banana republic.

Further more The Great Leap Forward is estimated to have cost 20-50+ million
Chinese lives. I'd say China did pretty well on its own with out foreign
intervention when it came to "greed".

