
Is democracy dying? - charlysl
http://news.mit.edu/2018/starr-forum-democracy-dying-0227
======
andromeduck
I think the problem is democracy just doesn't scale very well because it
requires empathy and altruism and that operates at the scale of human
experience. You need some kind of commonality or shared experience to keep
people together. In the 50s-80s you had the experience of the wars and cold
war to keep people active. Since then, there hasn't been too much of that save
maybe terror attacks.

For the US specifically, I think we should be going back to letting states
take the lead on social issues like wellfare, gay marriage, abortion, drug
decriminalization/legalization, gun control and whatnot instead of trying to
do everything at the federal level - especially via ever more contorted
constitutional interpretation.

The benefits from this kind of approach would be the ability to do quicker,
more focused policy iterations with less controversy at the state level for
the willing states before getting locked in federally and difficult to change
as opposed to the opaque backroom deals and guessing games of today.

~~~
mvid
This only sounds like it would work if each state had some kind of physical
and cultural separation. We already see in Illinois how state level gun
control is failing. It doesn’t matter how strict Illinois sets its gun laws,
they still pour in from the lax neighbors.

If we want to let human rights choices be set at the state level, we need to
provide some kind of subsidized “get out of dodge” program for the people
negatively affected by the state level decisions, as those people are usually
the poorest and least mobile. Can you imagine trying to sell “your taxes are
going to pay for moving gay people to California/NY” to the constituents in
dark red states?

------
mmaunder
Democracy with universal suffrage has barely been around a century. In South
Africa, it is just over 2 decades old. It's new, it's messy, it doesn't always
go our way. What amazes me is that the USA can swing from one side of the
political spectrum to the other and the country holds together and happily
repeats the process every few years.

~~~
fenk85
Sorry to break it to you buy Democrats are not left, if anything they are
center right by western European standards, the Republicans on the other hand
are going right off the cliff [https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-
maralago-remar...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/03/politics/trump-maralago-
remarks/index.html)

aside: Last time Europe had politics like above it ended badly for millions of
people worldwide, except this time nuclear weapons abound

~~~
barsonme
And the US’ right would be considered quite far left compared to many Asian
and Middle Eastern countries. I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to
make or how it’s relevant to GP’s. It’s quite clear GP was referring to the
US’ policies spectrum, not that of the entire world.

~~~
fenk85
The point I am trying to make is that the US is not oscillating happily
between left and right as the OP claims, but is veering further and further
into authoritarian right territory.

I doubt many people in US would like their country to become a "shithole
country" to quote their current president, but yet here we are watching
history unfold

~~~
logicchains
A hundred years ago Americans were being sent off to war to die en masse
against their will, and it was a crime to speak out against the war effort.
America's still nowhere near as authoritarian as it was.

------
Iv
I have a very cynical view of democracy but it turns out that these days it
makes me more optimistic about democracy.

Democracy has never been about electing the brightest, never. Democracy is
actually not at all about how we choose the person who will rule (as is
demonstrated by US who elected twice this century someone who lose the popular
vote). It is about the fact that in face of enough unpopularity, the current
leader will be gone in less time it would take to overthrow them.

The goal of democracy is not good governance, it is civil peace.

When you look at it this way, from the outside, democracy is working perfectly
well in the US. The big test will be to see if the next transition goes
peacefully, impeachment or not.

As far as systems go, the main competitor for the US system is the Chinese
system, that is a meritocracy. Well, as imperfect a meritocracy as the US is a
democracy, but looking at the diplomas of the leaders there, you will see far
more scientists and less lawyers. For decades, it has managed to offer
transitions and to evolve its dogmas. Xi Jinping's power grab offers a similar
test than Trump's US. We shall see what happens at the next transition. We,
democrats (in the non-US sense), do not thing that a power structure like the
PCC can stay decent without counter powers and elections but the PCC's
endurance and success at managing the biggest country in the world is to be
acknowledged.

Another system that could, unexpectedly, reappear and offer a competition is
plain old absolute monarchy. I keep an eye on the kingdom of Saudi Arabia
where the crown prince has decided to clean up some corruption and has
(correctly, IMO) identified religious extremism to be the main reason his
country lags behind. He has announced staunch reformism. It is yet to be seen
if this will actually happen or if it just PR, but if it does, monarchies may
come back in front of the scene too.

All in all, as much as I love democracy, I am happy that we seem to stop being
complacent about our imperfect systems and may finally seek improvements. I
believe that democracy is the most advanced and workable system but it is not
the easiest to manage and our societies and cultures still have a lot of room
for improvement.

~~~
nopriorarrests
>The goal of democracy is not good governance, it is civil peace.

This is an excellent point.

On the other hand, though, it was 8 years of GWB, which was resented by the
half of the country, then it was 8 years of Obama, which was resented by
another half, and now, well, things are definitely not improving. My point
here is that it seems that democracy getting weaker and weaker for solving
that civil peace part of equation.

I often wonder, if the current situation is the lowest point, and politics
will get more moderate from here. It should be, but then, so it was during GWB
term...

~~~
Iv
Half of the country hates the other half. It does not date from GWB. Some date
it back to the civil war. If that is so, the US democracy has been remarkably
effective at keeping peace.

------
notacoward
The prospect facing democracy might be not death but mitosis.

In the US, the EU, India, and elsewhere, trust in the national-level
institutions necessary to sustain any regime from democracy to dictatorship
has been eroding. This seems to be part of a deliberate strategy, but that's
less important than the result. In most of these places, there are moves
toward fragmentation and separatism. In the US it hasn't quite gotten that
far, but there sure is plenty of sniping between "red" and "blue" states. (It
doesn't seem to matter that most states are really "purple" in actual
elections because they still tend to identify one way or the other.) "States'
rights" has been a theme on the conservative side forever, but now even
liberal governors and state legislatures seem to be more inclined to defy the
federal government on various policies. The sense of common purpose that
others have pointed out seems to be missing at the national level. Maybe it
_can 't_ be sustained at population levels of 300M or more. In the US, that
might mean more decisions delegated to the states and a more limited federal
government (which AFAICT is what the US founders actually intended even with
their second attempt). Or maybe it will mean actual separate states with EU-
like arrangements to facilitate migration and trade, and likewise elsewhere.

------
ian0
I may be naive but I think this is a tech problem.

The vast majority of us share a common set of ethical norms. We are also
relatively savvy. If we _know_ someone has acted against our interests before
we wont be keen on working with them again. Eg. A dodgy Mechanic. And this
goes for everyone, regardless of education level or armchair-economist status.

There is a technical solution out there that combats misinformation and riling
people up against each other. And promotes educated decision making. So that
we can approximate an optimal policy that complies with ethical norms and
shared longer-term goals. And evaluate the impact of policy as best we can.

This probably wouldn't mean direct democracy (as there are very few experts in
a given field), but rather in built in validation of expert opinion and
evaluation of consequences of decision making. A little less prone to abuse
than our current systems.

You can even see hints of how it could be done in online communities such as
HN, where despite a relatively diverse community the shared goals of learning
is still optimised.

I dont think this is head in the clouds, technology impacts governance all the
time, from printing presses to pamphlets to socmed. And we have done some
pretty impactful things with it recently, governance could be next.

------
d--b
First, I think it'd be good to separate the Western world from the rest of the
world. The West has been meddling with other countries' governments for
centuries, such that it's impossible to say that true democracy ever existed
outside the West. Is it better or worse today than it was 50 years ago? Hard
to say... What seems to be the case though is that more countries are escaping
the West's sphere of influence than 20 years ago (after the collapse the USSR,
only the West remained).

In Western countries, I think it's an issue to link the rise of national
sentiment to a decline in democracy. Disinformation is certainly a thing, but
for it to work, I believe there needs to be a general discontent with current
politics such that people are using the urns for exactly what democracy has
been designed to do: change government when people are unhappy with it.

US democracy will be in danger the day when access to some information is
prohibited or some parties are forbidden, which is far from being the case.

These people at MIT forget that most republicans are fairly moderate, and a
good chunk of Trump voters would have voted for Bernie Sanders if he had been
nominated.

------
lucideer
I'm not sure if democracy is necessarily dying everywhere, I—hopefully not too
naïvely—think there's a little more diversity in worldwide politics than that.

Reading the article though, this seems to be US-centric. Perhaps the title
could be changed to "Is US democracy dying?", in which case, at least to an
outsider looking in, it seems that death happened quite a long time ago. I'm
not sure if Buckley v. Valeo was as big a turning point as some make out, or
if it was really that different before that, but certainly modern US political
decision-making seems quite disconnected from constituent concerns.

~~~
qubex
I’m in Italy, we’re voting in our first national elections in five years today
(despite having three/four governments in the intervening years, depending on
how you count). Democracy definitely seems dead or at least mute here. As I
made my way to the polling station, I was reminded of my favourite quote from
Thomas Pynchon: “If they can keep you asking the wrong questions, they don’t
need to worry about the answers”. I don’t mean it in the sense a conspiracy
theorist might, but in some other ineffable or inexpressible sense whereby
parliamentary politics has simply become to weak and ineffectual to contrast
and compensate for other forces that act on societies (economic and financial
ones, particularly). That might be why strident or extremist viewpoints of
various kinds are more prevalent now than they used to be: because faced with
a body politic that cannot effect change or even visibly affect the
trajectory, many people just choose what they perceive to be a bigger rudder
to steer with.

------
charlysl
This question is explored in detail in the book "The Retreat of Western
Liberalism" by Edward Luce (2017); it is one of the best books of the year
according to The Economist.

I haven't finished reading it yet, never mind digesting it, but it is
fascinating and though-provoking. The following paragraph should wet your
appetite:

 _In Moscow’s view, history is back and nothing is inevitable, least of all
liberal democracy. Others, in Beijing, Ankara, Cairo, Caracas, and even
Budapest, share Russia’s hostility to Western notions of progress, as do
growing numbers of apostates in the West. Are they wrong?_

 _This book is my attempt to answer that question. Let me declare now that
nothing is pre-ordained. To a person whose life has coincided with the rise of
democracy, the spread of market economics and signs that the world had finally
subscribed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (even if much of it is
paid only in lip service – hypocrisy, as they say, being the compliment vice
pays to virtue), merely to pose the question is troubling enough. Wasn’t that
debate settled a long time ago? Isn’t the march of human freedom unstoppable?
Doesn’t the whole world crave to be Western? We can no longer have any
confidence in that. It was remarkably arrogant to believe the rest of the
world would passively adopt our script. Those who still believe in the
inevitable triumph of the Western model might ask themselves whether it is
faith, rather than facts, that fuels their worldview. We must cast a sceptical
eye on what we have learned never to question._

~~~
ForHackernews
I think Western-style liberal market capitalism is a lot more compelling than
Western defeatists believe.

[https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/jihad-
hyperpanda/](https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/jihad-hyperpanda/)

> The truth about the clash of civilizations you hear people discussing is
> that it’s all the other way: The Mall is invading Islam, the Mall is taking
> over. There isn't any Sharia Law in North Carolina, but there damn well are
> US-style malls in even the most conservative Islamic countries.

> In Najran, in the most remote corner of Saudi Arabia, a state so afraid of
> Western contamination that it doesn’t even issue tourist visas, there is a
> mall. And, when I lived there, you could watch —literally watch—the conflict
> between Sharia Law and Mall culture, five times a day.

------
Protostome
Think about this: Looking at the past few years it's becoming more and more
clear that data has an enormous value and grants a lot of power to the
entities that are able to extract knowledge out of it. In turn, this knowledge
could shape a policy that will yield the desired outcome much more reliably.
Up until now, democracy, with its distributed governance system has had a
significant advantage over more concentrated forms of governance systems.
Simply since making decisions involved more people, and therefore, the
decision process was much more controlled.

Now, it seems like dictatorships is on the verge of getting the upper hand. In
democracies, there are limitations on data accumulation (privacy laws) and
data is distributed across government entities in a way that is (sometimes
even intentionally) hard to consolidate. In dictatorships, data for all
entities could be concentrated in one location, granting the government a lot
of power if it will use the data to its full extent. China is a great such
example, they are working towards this goal as we speak, by putting cameras
everywhere, monitoring all Internet traffic, and more...

------
jopsen
It's easy to view the past as some romantic fairy tale.

In reality the world has probably never been more democratic than it is today.
The current political trends might flip in a few years. Things might be moving
backwards, but the US might still have stronger oversight of it's intelligence
agencies than it did in the 70'ties?

As long as people aren't silently outraged we'll be okay :)

------
dictum
About the US, it's not very reassuring when, in the same week, the President
says "(Xi Jinping), he's now president for life. President for life. And he’s
great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give
that a shot some day.” just a while after saying "I like taking the guns early
(...) take the guns first, then go through due process".

Even if he's joking about the US _giving that a shot_ , he's pandering to a
newly-anointed "president for life".

[https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/968953652483379202](https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/968953652483379202)

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/04/donald-
trump...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/04/donald-trump-
praises-xi-jinping-power-grab-give-that-a-shot-china)

------
probably_wrong
I've always wondered: is there a paper/thesis somewhere suggesting a better
alternative to democracy? I don't mean the usual (monarchy, dictatorship,
etc), but rather something entirely new.

I imagine there must be at least one political sciences/philosophy student
somewhere who gave this a thought, but I never found anything.

~~~
verbify
There's demarchy - a random sampling of the population. Like democracy, it
ensures that people have a way to change laws they don't like.

Unlike democracy, it doesn't suffer from the fact that the corrupt or power
hungry rise to the top. Lobbyists would have less power.

There are also some suggestions that a random sampling of a population will
lead to a better selection mechanism - similar to suggestions that promoting
randomly would be better for
organisations.[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/01/random-
promotion-research)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

~~~
dragonwriter
> Unlike democracy, it doesn't suffer from the fact that the corrupt or power
> hungry rise to the top.

I don't see any reason to believe that is true in any substantive way. Most of
the corrupting and influence mechanisms that work in democracy work in
demarchy, and some are cheaper. OTOH, there's an entirely new corruption
mechanism introduced, corrupting the “random” selection mechanism (either at
the source or between the notional mechanism and the public reporting of
results, which is ultimately what really matters).

~~~
verbify
The idea is that the funding mechanisms at the heart of democracy comes with
strings attached - people who are pretty much required to accept donations to
get elected. These donations often have strings attached.

Besides that 'The desire to be a politician should be enough to ban you from
ever becoming one' (Bill Connolly), those who don't accept dubious donations
will suffer in advertising dollars compared to those who do.

Additionally it has been noted that psychopaths often rise to the top - a
problem that isn't presented with demarchy.

------
Mononokay
In government? Yes. On the internet? It's coming back.

Really though, in government it died with Athens.

------
mdekkers
Yes, democracy is dying, assuming it was ever "alive" \- barring small, token
movements, the rich ruling classes have always been that. We, the people, are
often presented with unpalatable choices and little hope of changing the
actual status quo. Looking over a significant timeline, say the past 50 years,
we see a trend of the rich getting richer, the poor remaining poor, and the
middle classes sliding into poverty. The only relevant skillset most
politicians are bringing to the table is "getting elected", so essentially
democracy's leaders are the winners of a popularity contest.

As a species, we are ruled by special interest groups, greed, and lust for
power. This has always been the case, and will remain to case for a long time
to come. The only difference is that the ruling classes have learned that the
best way to stave off violent revolution is to provide the masses with some
creature comforts and the vision of "working hard (for them) to make more
money (controlled by them) so you can buy more stuff (sold by them)". We live
in a post-scarcity environment that is artificially kept under the thumb. The
real problems we face - such as a rapidly approaching fresh water shortage,
environmental calamity, and a rapidly changing production environment (robots
and AI will eat the jobs) - are being ignored in preference to ever increasing
profits.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
“Being too cynical and pleasantly surprised is not more sophisticated than
being too idealistic and disappointed.”

[https://mobile.twitter.com/jonlovett/status/8899319641442467...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jonlovett/status/889931964144246784?lang=en)

~~~
zaptheimpaler
Having a truthful model of the world is important to me, whether that is
labeled as optimism or cynicism. The history of the world does show that small
numbers of people have wielded huge power for a long time, and that has fact
hasn't changed.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
If you have “little hope of changing the actual status quo” why would you even
bother trying to affect change? Therefore you’re maintaining the status quo
through cycnicism.

Your “truthful model” is another person’s abandonment of any hope of improving
the world.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I'm not the OP, but they did say "often" not "always" \- i would agree with
that. Blind hope is of little use just like uninformed cynicism. Seeing a
tough fight does not preclude one from fighting.

------
adamrezich
It bums me out when I see articles and online discussions about democracy in
the US (the article mentions both the US and the world) and I CTRL+F
"republic," only to find instances of the word "Republican" and zero mentions
of the fact that the United States of America is NOT and has never been a
"democracy," but rather a federal republic.

------
YouAreGreat
No. It's true that democracy was weakened when the early "wild west" internet
interfered with broadcast media's ability to steer public conversation. The
temporary result was a rise of anti-democratic populism in the west.

However, democracy is already reasserting itself, as governments and capital
learn how to shape consensus formation on the internet.

------
mrwnmonm
Just take a look at this image
[http://english.ahram.org.eg/Media/News/2014/9/26/2014-635473...](http://english.ahram.org.eg/Media/News/2014/9/26/2014-635473273882629702-262.jpg)

------
lordnacho
I think there are some real problems. Some constitutional, some cultural.
Applicable to many countries, not just the US:

\- We like to think that we keep our representatives accountable through
transparency. Now we can no longer claim the information is too hard to get.
Now tell me how often your rep voted in a way that suited your preference. Or
tell me how many times he voted at all. Or tell me his name.

\- Your representatives represent you on everything. Even things they didn't
talk about in the election. And those things might actually matter to you.

\- The space of politics has gotten huge. In the early days of democracy the
state did not reach into every walk of life. Now of course there are political
ideas about the size of government, but you can't deny the scope of it has
massively increased. We're asking a lot of ordinary people to decide on things
that they aren't experts on, that don't affect them because they are removed
from that particular part of life.

\- If you live in a country with multiple parties in parliament, your reps
need to horse-trade issues they like for things they don't care so much about.
Often this leads to them not being able to deliver on their program, with the
excuse permanently being that they aren't a majority.

\- Politics has become a career in most countries I follow. Especially in the
European countries, it's almost like athletics: you have to have joined a
party from a young age. Who makes it and who doesn't depends not on experience
in the rest of society, but position within the party hierarchy. An old boy
from my school was a UK MP, but he never made it to the front bench because
he'd spent his whole working life doing an actual job in industry (rather than
a job in media, which is a job in politics).

\- Politics/career 2: once you're invested in a political career, the option
to do a real life job is both closed and unappealing. There's some ordinary
exits/sabbaticals: you get sent to Europe where you can hide from the media
and spend lots of taxpayer's money without even showing up to work (they cheat
and send their entry passes for one guy to scan), or you can work for a
pseudo-government organisation like an NGO. But mainly you really, really want
to just stay in your current position. Especially if you're a minister and you
collect a lifetime pension after some threshold.

\- Messiah Politics: If we elect Obama, a smart, educated guy who is a great
speaker, everything will be better. He's so smart he'll know what to do about
every issue. I don't have to do anything, he'll take care of it. And lets make
the whole election campaign into a heartwarming movie.

\- Organized interests: they're organized, and they know how to influence
career politicians. Corporations that want to sell guns/butter, pollute the
environment, and cheat the consumer. Trade unions who want unreasonable
concessions. And so on. What can we do about this? And organized, specific
interest group can win stuff because that interest is weighed against the
diffuse interests of all other interests. To start with, we should probably
make it completely clear who is doing the talking. Where is money coming from,
and who have our reps been meeting with? I think the state of transparency
varies a fair bit across countries, but I've never seen anywhere where it's
completely clear and easy to discover this kind of information.

\- Media culture: everything is sensational. Force the guy to say yes or no.
Flip side of that, never say yes or no, just explain your position in a long
winded way. Or talk around the question. Everything is myopic, there is no
holistic impression, despite what I said about your rep being your rep on
everything. Constant crisis: is this the issue that forces rep X to resign?
Nothing is ever said that puts things into perspective, like the history of
some topic (minimum wage, marijuana, gambling, everything...).

Potential improvements:

\- Term limits. Ideas about how to govern, like liberalism or socialism don't
die. But there's no reason a single person would have to stay in power to
explain such ideas.

\- Pay people what they made before. You don't discourage high earners from
serving, and you don't encourage people for whom parliament is a huge salary
increase.

\- Complete transparency. Rep X will meet these people on these days. They
represent XYZ organization, which is funded in these amounts by these people.
Have an independent body review this, like the doping agency in sports.

~~~
SubiculumCode
Term limits tend to hand power to the beureaucracy because the newly elected
official doesn't know enough policy to be effective.

Democracy needs:

Democracy needs smaller states and districts. Citizens per representative as a
ratio is higher than ever, and we lose representation responsive to local
concerns.

Media now focuses on national politics. State and local politics suffer
because of it.

Increased State/Decreased Federal power provides a way for ideological
divisions to be resolved at the local level , and thus lose potency as
political red meat.

Move to a weekly news cycle so policy can be worked out and digested before
being reported.

Foreign state powers ( especially geopolitical advesaries) should have very
limited access to manipulate hearts and minds of citizens.

Mass microtargetting of citizens with personalized propoganda tailored to
their personality and weaknesses should not be permitted or heavily regulated.

~~~
hackeraccount
Personally I've thought government and democracy both work best the more the
local they get. The problem with that is there's just more inherent power when
you have power over larger groups of people. If you have a fix or even a "fix"
for a problem or even a "problem" then the temptation to implement it over the
greatest number of people you can is extremely high. If it's a good idea (and
why would do it if it wasn't?) why do it just for the city? Why not do it for
the state or the country? And once you're doing something for (or to)
everyone, how can you test to see if stopping that is a good idea?

------
anovikov
I think that yes, democracy is dying, and popular 'for all' democracy with
universal suffrage has been a bad idea from the very beginning. People who
don't own significant amount of property (say, sufficient to provide rent
above poverty threshold), shouldn't vote, because their votes are
irresponsible by definition, and they are too easy to manipulate. Worst case
it leads to 'bread and circuses' mode of societal collapse.

~~~
mdekkers
_People who don 't own significant amount of property (say, sufficient to
provide rent above poverty threshold), shouldn't vote, because their votes are
irresponsible by definition, and they are too easy to manipulate_

Can you back that statement up with data?

~~~
ianai
I’m hoping I read that wrong because it sure sounds tyrannical.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Sure sounds like late 18th century America to me.
[https://a.s.kqed.net/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-voting-
ri...](https://a.s.kqed.net/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-voting-rights-
timeline.pdf)

(Which is terrible, to be clear. I support making Election Day a national
holiday and probably enfranchising 16 year olds.)

Edit: anovikov, you keep getting flagged and I have a question for you: I am
genuinely curious as to whether you actually believe this, or if you’re trying
to make a Swiftian ‘eat the poor’ commentary. I cannot tell and would love to
know.

~~~
nosuchthing
Election day on a Tuesday is INSANE.

It almost seems like that is designed to prevent the working class from
voting.

~~~
lgregg
It is insane. You would think with our technical advancement as a country that
we would be able to vote remotely and also obtain good information about
candidates and their policies.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Washington state has figured this out. I think Oregon has too.

