
America Is Not a Democracy - ust
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/america-is-not-a-democracy/550931/?single_page=true
======
emodendroket
> It is true that to recover its citizens’ loyalty, our democracy needs to
> curb the power of unelected elites who seek only to pad their influence and
> line their pockets. But it is also true that to protect its citizens’ lives
> and promote their prosperity, our democracy needs institutions that are, by
> their nature, deeply elitist. This, to my mind, is the great dilemma that
> the United States—and other democracies around the world—will have to
> resolve if they wish to survive in the coming decades.

I think I'd harken back to an older view of the conflict: large concentrations
of wealth (the natural result of our economic system, unregulated) are in
direct opposition to the principle of "one man, one vote."

------
mnm1
America doesn't have a democracy problem--it has a republic problem. Clearly,
a republic is failing the people, mostly out of its own design. The founding
fathers' ideas may have worked in the ages of slavery, and Jim Crow, where
exploitation actually led to great wealth creation, but they do not work now.
They work great at keeping the people down, in check, and out of politics,
just as the founders designed. Really, the main problem here is that Americans
stupidly think that they live in a democracy when this has never been the
case. Obviously, America is not a democracy. It's always been a republic and
people are now realizing just how oppressive a republic ruled by bribes from
the elite is, now that the main concerns are less about oppressing minorities
but simply about the survival of the majority, something that is no longer
guaranteed. Let's face it, American government isn't about to change soon, so
it'd be in our best interest for the people who think we live in a democracy
to realize that we don't. After all, if you don't think you have a problem, a
solution is impossible.

------
analyst74
I'm not sure the first example where the town failed to buy out a bad water
company supports author's argument.

The article hinted that the company was doing something malicious that on the
voting day, "locals who had toiled on the issue for years noticed many
newcomers", who eventually voted the idea down. It almost sound like those
newcomers were brought in by the company to influence votes in its favor.

But in my experience with condo boards and other small democratic
organizations, there are always a small but vocal group who tend to run the
show, while the majority just carry on with their lives without paying too
much attention to the local politics. That does not mean those people have no
opinion on major issues, and their opinions tend to be revealed at those kind
of major votes.

It sucks if you worked for years to get your ideas through, only to be voted
down by the majority. But is this really a failure of democracy?

~~~
emodendroket
I guess the trouble, in my mind, is that these instances are often grey enough
that a justification like this could come up, but there is a tendency, in
aggregate, for things to break one way. For an example that is probably
familiar to HN readers, consider municipal broadband.

------
VonGuard
Never has been.

~~~
madengr
Yes. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy is two wolves and a sheep
voting on what's for dinner.

~~~
d0lph
Actually a republic is a type of democracy.

~~~
madengr
The People's Democratic Republic of Korea is both.

~~~
d0lph
In spite of the name, North Korea is a dictatorship.

~~~
madengr
I agree, that was my point.

~~~
emodendroket
Well then it doesn't really seem to answer the argument that a "representative
democracy" and "direct democracy" can plausibly be classified as two forms of
democracy.

~~~
qbrass
Give all the voting power to one person.

------
d0lph
I think it is actually, you see, the elections and such.

------
neo4sure
The author makes sense initially but towards the end seems to be attacking
American institutions like the Supreme court. That was odd.

America was founded on a messy system where not everyone got what they wanted.
It was always a compromise.

However, this messy system did bring us out of slavery into the modern era.
Now though one of the last abominations of this messy system is causing most
of the issues in the republic. I wonder why the author does not touch the
subject of "Electoral College".

The "Electoral College" elected both "George Bush" and "Trump" subverting the
will of the majority. The first president led us into an illegal war that
enriched his corporate buddies. The second one will be judged by history.

In my opinion, until we get rid of the "Electoral College" America will never
be a true democracy.

~~~
emodendroket
Judicial review was invented by Federalists specifically to subvert Jefferson
really. It's in some sense an antidemocratic institution.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Judicial review was invented by Federalists specifically to subvert
> Jefferson really.

Judicial review is simply the concrete manifestation of two things express in
the Constitution:

(1) the judicial power regarding cases and controversies arising under the
Constitution, laws, etc., and

(2) The Constitution’s express limits on what laws Congress has the power to
pass.

It's anti-democratic in the sense that Constitutionally-limited government is
itself anti-democratic, in that the electre representatives of the people are
denied the unlimited power they would have in a parliamentary supremacy model,
but not in any other sense.

~~~
emodendroket
I don't like treating the development of ideas like they just sprung from the
ether devoid of masters or historical context. Certainly it can be seen as
flowing from those principles, but it came to exist in a particular
circumstance -- namely, when Federalists thought raving Jeffersonian Democrats
were going to ruin the whole republic with too much democracy and invented a
legal theory that said they could throw out their laws.

