
How Stable Are Democracies? ‘Warning Signs Are Flashing Red’ - jseliger
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html?action=click&contentCollection=Food&module=Trending&version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article
======
siavosh
My current thought is that corrupted capitalism has corrupted democracies
making them unaccountable to the majority of people, leading to a massive and
still accelerating level of economic inequality. When this happens all sorts
of bad things happen; political monsters, populist demagogues, racism, loss of
faith in democratic institutions etc. Leading to people wanting to radically
change the system to someone who says they will 'get things done', which has
to be outside of the system.

These are truly concerning times; in America at least, no one in political
power is discussing serious policy proposals to reduce the influence of money
in politics and hence address the accelerating transition of wealth from the
lower and middle class to a tiny fraction at the very top. This is not a
stable course. Even the current president elect despite his populist slogans
is going to increase the regressive tax rate based on debunked trickle down
economics (what actually helped lead to the current inequality in the 1980s),
and wants to eliminate the estate tax all together. Both of these will merely
accelerate the current course. No light is visible at the end of the tunnel.

~~~
drewrv
I think the recent election demonstrated that money doesn't matter that much.
Voters actually have power. That's the silver lining to the depressing reality
that voters don't care if industry writes regulations, the executive branch
tortures people, and the rich pay even less in taxes.

~~~
YCode
> I think the recent election demonstrated that money doesn't matter that
> much.

Can you elaborate on that? I'm unaware of how it was demonstrated.

~~~
tbirrell
I think he meant that despite all the big money and power behind the Clinton
campaign, enough of the electorate chose to vote against the establishment to
render it ineffectual.

~~~
andrepd
Trump is a multibilionaire. Not quite the big money vs underdog story.

~~~
Amezarak
The Trump campaign as massively outspent by the Clinton campaign almost 2-1.
It also received much less outside money - 60 million versus 190 million. [1]

According to OpenSecrets, Trump spent 56 million on his own campaign. [2]

In historical US election terms, that is quite the underdog story, even if
it's still a lot of money.

[1] [http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/](http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/)
[2]
[http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00023864](http://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00023864)

~~~
andrepd
For me, an underdog story would be a common citizen getting elected with
little money, and 100% crowd funded money from the people, at that. A
billionaire heir getting elected by spending his millions, and "only" 60
million from someone else, leaves absolutely no sense of being an underdog,
even if he did spend less than his rival (100mil instead of 200mil. Big whoop)

~~~
Amezarak
> A billionaire heir getting elected by spending his millions

I don't think that's an accurate way of describing his campaign. The campaign
funding includes donations to the campaign in those figures. Only 22% of
Trump's campaign funding was from himself, while 27% was from small individual
contributors and 15% from large individual contributors. Clinton obviously had
much less self-financing (0.27%), while 18% was small individual contributions
and 53% was large individual contributions.

The 'someone else' in my post is money spent outside the campaign altogether
from superpacs. SuperPACs are associated with 'big money' but to my knowledge
there's nothing stopping normal people from donating to them.

Unfortunately, your underdog story is just not viable in a democracy of three
hundred million. A common citizen, as you put it, simply has no means of
getting the attention of enough people, and standing out from the crowd,
without money, or to raise that much money. Even wealthy, well-known non-
politicians have trouble with that - you see them pop up sometimes in the
primaries. There's a reason most American Presidents were already politicians.

If you add your email to your profile, maybe we can talk about it offline? I'm
interested but I have a hard time seeing how we can have national politics
without money playing a big role.

------
glup
I find the rather scant coverage of election topics on HN to be a glaring
warning in its own right... if the technocratic class is focused on
bricklaying (Go, TensorFlow, Docker, etc.), who is deciding what gets built at
the macro level? Maybe it's time we all take responsibility for creating a
fair, just, open, and economically robust society?

~~~
sgslo
I know its fun to think of us tech crowd as being somehow superior to the rest
of the populace, but nothing could be further from the truth. We are just as
ignorant and naive as the next set of folks down the line. Believing anything
else is craziness.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
I agree that it's a trap to think that working in tech makes us inherently
smarter or more capable. But, I think our particular perspectives and biases
are valuable to understanding the world outside of tech, if only because what
we do has a significant influence on so many peoples experiences of the world.

Consider: Trump's campaign relying so heavily on social media; social media as
a recruiting and organizational tools for extremist organizations; the issue
of fake news sites; the role tech plays in enabling/accelerating
globalization; tech as integral to global surveillance apparatuses.

> We are just as ignorant and naive as the next set of folks down the line.

Sure, averaged out over the variety of ways a person can be ignorant and naive
(emotionally, financially, politically, etc). But nonetheless I think it would
behoove us to stay engaged and reflective about our role in the world beyond
tech, rather than saying "Nope, nothing for us to discuss, just keep laying
the bricks".

~~~
pc2g4d
Our perspectives are indeed valuable, but the problem is that here we are on
Hacker News in our own little bubble, disengaged from the rest of society.

After Trump's election I came to the conclusion that I had let myself get
sucked into a left-leaning filter bubble, which was why I was so surprised
when Clinton lost. I realized I had no clue what really mattered to "the other
half" of the country, and that terrified me. Equally terrifying was that there
are (at least) two bubbles, neither of which comprehends the other, and very
few central mediating platforms that connect these two worlds.

On Twitter I decided to follow Breitbart. Yes, Breitbart, the much-reviled
bogey-man of the left. And yes, I find some of it objectionable. But really
the surprise has been how not-totally-insane it is. It presents an alternate
worldview which is in its own way coherent and (dare I say it?) legitimate.
Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, it doesn't matter---the point is that
without bringing these separate worlds into meaningful communication, America
is in for some real turmoil. And HN is part of this. It's rare for me to see
things here that really challenge the mainstream narrative. It basically all
confirms what I already believe. That's what drew me here in the first place,
and though many of us probably like to think of ourselves as free-thinking and
willing to confront contrary evidence, I'd imagine that's why many of you are
here, too.

~~~
throwaway1892
From my perspective on the other side of the Atlantic, the result of the
election is coming from deep division within America, with people on each side
of the divide not communicating / understanding each other (hell, even Sam
Altman wrote about this before the election).

------
AndrewKemendo
What I see nobody discussing is the very old concept of political cycles - in
Greek the term was Kyklos (literally cycles).

It has been fairly well documented that societies undergo four distinct phases
which repeat:

1\. Anarchy 2. Democracy 3. Aristocracy 4. Monarchy

This also matches up with the Strauss-Howe generational theory:

1\. High 2. Awakening 3. Unraveling 4. Crisis

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

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory)

~~~
dpark
> _It has been fairly well documented_

Has it? Citing some ancient Greek philosophy hardly counts as good
documentation.

You also have the cycle mostly reversed.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Yes, if you read Polybius and the source material for the fourth turning it's
pretty well understood.

Cycles don't have a start/end...but I'd consider anarchy the starting point
for humanity.

~~~
dpark
No, you're pushing these as accepted theories when they are not. Strauss-Howe
has had quite a bit of criticism and so far as I can tell Kyklos/Anacyclosis
seems to have little attention at all except from people interested in
historical philosophy.

You're also conflating two different theories that don't mesh meaningfully.
The Strauss-Howe theory is predicated on complete cycles of ~90 years. I'm
utterly confident that the US has not cycled through anarchy, monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy twice.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Actually, they are so baked into economics that they are overlooked. Sismondi
in his development of the business cycle theory, now a fundamental feature of
economic theory and thus political theory, cited Polybius frequently. The
point is that there are cycles of societal organization that can be
demonstrated fairly unambiguously.

~~~
dpark
It's one thing to say that social structures show evidence of cyclic behavior.
It's another thing entirely to say that it's an accepted fact that every
democratic society will inevitably fall to anarchy and be reborn as a
monarchy.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I mean history is pretty replete with examples...more than enough books have
been written on this.

Note that the Anarchic period is usually very short and often accompanied by
war because people can't figure out how to live without a ruler apparently.

------
CPLX
To coin a phrase, it's the income inequality stupid.

Current trends are inherently unstable. You can't have a workable political
system when nearly all the economic gains accrue to a small group at the top.

This has been the fundamental tension in political systems since we've had
political systems. Some have been screaming their heads off about it for
years, but with minor exceptions there haven't been genuine working and middle
class focused political movements in the west with actual power in at least a
generation. This is what happens when you do that.

~~~
iainmerrick
_Current trends are inherently unstable. You can 't have a workable political
system when nearly all the economic gains accrue to a small group at the top._

I don't think that's necessarily true (unfortunately). There's probably a
threshold where inequality becomes unsustainable, but it could be very high.

See Axelrod's _The Evolution of Cooperation_. It's most famous for the
iterated Prisoner's Dilemma contest, where the simple "tit for tat" strategy
beat all the others, but there's a lot more great material in there. "Tit for
tat" is just one stable solution, but there are others.

Another stable solution is an unpleasant-sounding caste system, where
everybody is nice to people of higher rank and nasty to people of lower rank.
That system is self-sustaining and resistant to interlopers as long as it's
self-policing, i.e. the insiders punish people who buck the system. Even
people at the bottom of the pecking order are incentivized to play along and
keep their heads down.

Similarly, I think extreme inequality could be stable and self-sustaining. I
think it would require people to actively reject "government handouts", which
is exactly what we see in a lot of political rhetoric these days.

Almost all large corporations have extreme salary inequality, but they're
still relatively stable and successful entities. Why wouldn't the low-level
workers demand more pay? Because it's a "meritocracy" \-- we need high
executive salaries to attract the best people, and if you just work a bit
harder maybe you'll get promotion and earn the big bucks for yourself.

~~~
CPLX
> Another stable solution is an unpleasant-sounding caste system, where
> everybody is nice to people of higher rank and nasty to people of lower
> rank.

Yes, to some extent. I suppose there is an argument you can make that there's
another Nash equilibrium at the point of extreme inequality, where a couple
people are rich and everyone else is essentially starving. But that sort of
seems besides the point, given how complex and interconnected our current
economic and political structures are.

> Almost all large corporations have extreme salary inequality, but they're
> still relatively stable and successful entities.

On what time scale? I would argue that if governments were even 1/10 as likely
to fail as large corporations the world would be quickly reduced to rubble.

~~~
iainmerrick
_I suppose there is an argument you can make that there 's another Nash
equilibrium at the point of extreme inequality, where a couple people are rich
and everyone else is essentially starving._

I meant more an equilibrium where there's a pyramid and everyone knows their
place. (Maybe the lowest class needs to be small rather than large, I'm not
sure.)

 _But that sort of seems besides the point, given how complex and
interconnected our current economic and political structures are._

I don't understand this, can you elaborate?

 _On what time scale? I would argue that if governments were even 1 /10 as
likely to fail as large corporations the world would be quickly reduced to
rubble._

You're right, corporations are definitely shorter-lived on average (although
there are some very long-lived ones).

I guess there are some important differences between companies and countries,
notably that countries are tied to a particular land area and population. And
they're far less numerous than companies.

I still think my point is relevant and worth exploring, though. If democracy
(or any other system) is so great, why don't companies tend to use it? Even
companies that are worker-owned tend to be run in fairly traditional ways (see
e.g. John Lewis in the UK).

------
m741
Something I've wondered recently: in the past 10-15 years, how many
functioning democracies have fallen apart vs been created?

I'm fairly ignorant about this, so please correct me if my perceptions ar
wrong, but Turkey seems to have devolved to autocracy after being democratic
for a while. I've heard scary things about Poland. Venezuela, as mentioned in
the article, fell apart. Obviously there's Putin's Russia, though I'm not sure
Russia was ever really democratic.

I can't think offhand of any new, functioning, democracies.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I 've heard scary things about Poland._

Poland is fine, don't listen to the bullshit in mass media. That was just some
noise of little importance to anything whatsoever, perpetuated because the
party that lost last elections wasn't too happy about that fact.

~~~
mtgx
So the proposal to ban abortions was just a lie?

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/polish-
governm...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/polish-government-
performs-u-turn-on-total-abortion-ban)

What about the story that Poland is one of the few European countries that
want access to encrypted communications?

[https://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-
jobs/news/fiv...](https://www.euractiv.com/section/social-europe-
jobs/news/five-member-states-want-eu-wide-laws-on-encryption/)

~~~
nolok
How is any of it undemocratic ? If people elect candidates who are anti
abortion and pro surveillance, then being democratic means those laws should
happen.

"Democracy" doesn't mean "they do what you agree with" nor even "they do
what's best for their citizen", it means the citizens elects the one they
want, even if it's the guy whose policies are so bad he's going to send them
backward 20 years.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> How is any of it undemocratic ? If people elect candidates who are anti
> abortion and pro surveillance, then being democratic means those laws should
> happen.

See, _this_ is why the US is supposed to be ruled by a constitution, rather
than just be a democracy. The constitution says that there are things you
can't do, even if you have a majority (unless you have enough of a majority to
amend the constitution).

Now, granted, that's been eroded under the last few presidents, with
(probably) worse to come under Trump. But this is why it matters that we have
a constitution that limits what a president can do.

------
rm999
I see this as part of the waning influence of the USA as a world hegemon. The
USA and its allies, as a matter of foreign strategy, have propped up secular
"democracies" since WWII. This has led to world-wide stability and peace
(especially post-cold war, when its sphere of influence expanded into Soviet
territory). But, this often involved supporting unpopular and/or autocratic
leaders who would maintain a democracy as long as they could overthrow
unsuitable leaders (often with covert American help).

I think there have been multiple backlashes to this in recent times. The
socialist revolutions of central and south america, the arab spring, the rise
of Putin's influence in the ex-soviet sphere of influence, and now the rise of
nationalist anti-globalization leaders like Trump. A lot of people world-wide
are deciding that America's place in world affairs is no longer tenable or
desirable.

I'm totally mixed on this and consider myself fairly neutral. I appreciate the
relative peace and stability that we've had, but I also think it's been
untenable. A better world will likely come, eventually, from more distributed
decision making that doesn't involve just a small % of the world's population.

~~~
dagss
That is a very optimistic view. What mechanism would ensure distributed
decision making in a world where power is very unevenly distributed?

~~~
foota
Seems like the U.N. is a crippled organization by the privileges that members
of the security council have.

------
clumsysmurf
"In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between
these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time
lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style
brutalality. "

Unelected bureaucrats become nonviolent totalitarians.

The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594038635](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594038635)

~~~
HarryHirsch
_Unelected bureaucrats become nonviolent totalitarians._

I for once am grateful to the faceless bureaucrat at the FDA who demanded that
Theranos submit their device to FDA for appproval. This unnamed fellow is the
Stanislav Petrov of medicine.

~~~
int_19h
On the other hand, you also have FDA certification process to thank for the
Daraprim monopoly and its consequences (like the ability to raise prices 50x).

Which is to say, regulation can be good sometimes, and it can be bad
sometimes, even when it's the same exact regulation. The trick is to find a
balance that is beneficial to all of us overall.

~~~
HarryHirsch
It's unfair to pin Daraprim (and stock price movements when a candidate fails
Stage 3 trial) on the FDA. They are tasked with safety. Pricing is an issue
outside the remit of the FDA, one that most of the civilized world has dealt
with successfully, usually through some form of centralized buying.

~~~
int_19h
It is fair to compare FDA to similar agencies in other countries, and ask
whether their focus on safety is too extreme, to the point where it hampers
other issues of importance.

For example, is there any European country in which a generic alternative to
Daraprim hasn't been certified yet? If there isn't one, then why is US special
in that regard?

Centralized buying is only a partial solution to drug prices. Access to cheap
generics is also a part of that puzzle. If FDA procedures get in the way of
that, it may very well be that the net balance for us is negative.

------
ihsw
It seems simple -- progressive extremism and progressive supremacy is what
threatens democracy in today's West. The obstinate and divisive leaders of
neo-liberalism have made absolutely no effort to reach across the aisle and
greet their political opponents midway, instead opting for tasteless attacks
and tone-deaf dismissal.

Democracy involves meeting each-other half-way without exception and clearly
the likes of Merkel and Clinton have shown no interest in budging on wedge
issues, which only accelerates their fall from leadership. Clutching onto
power through underhanded further ensures our dangerous position on the edge
of a precipice.

~~~
gipp
Seems pretty ridiculous to assign blame for the lack of compromise to one side
or the other. Where are the rightists "reaching across the aisle"?

------
vivekd
How valid is this research? They seemed to have arbitrarily chosen factors
that the researchers seem to feel is "essential to democracy" and then simply
decide that these factors are in decline. Maybe I missed this but I didn't see
the researcher list what the actual factors were that were "essential for
democracy" and how these factors were chosen. It seemed as they just
arbitrarily picked factors that they felt were essential for a democracy and
then showed that these factors were experiencing a decline.

The countries chosen in the study, Poland and Venezuela are particularly poor
examples as they were both countries that were under long periods or
autocratic rule and then briefly attempted a transition to democracy which
failed. To hold these up as examples of a general trend of failing democracy
seems misleading.

What this really seems to me is people with a particular political bias
sounding the bell of doom because a candidate they dislike won the election.
Really they even mention Trump in the article and mention his election as a
sign of failing democracy - you can't get much more biased than that.

~~~
eumoria
Also Venezuela has the curse of easy natural resources it's generally awful
for a functioning democracy. That really skewed things in my opinion and isn't
very helpful in comparison to a nation like the U.S.

~~~
serge2k
> Also Venezuela has the curse of easy natural resources it's generally awful
> for a functioning democracy

Which democracies have been hurt by this?

------
iainmerrick
It's hard not to think that democracy could be on the way out. People losing
interest in democracy qua democracy, rather than what they can get out of it;
the hero-worship of entrepreneur barons like Musk and Zuckerberg. Maybe the
best we can hope for in the future is a benevolent corporate-style government.

For all the current furore right now about whether we're "normalizing"
fascism, note that communism (as practised in China) is already pretty well
normalized. Other countries are judged on how friendly they are, not their
political systems, so China and Saudi Arabia are okay.

It would be great to see some real willingness to repair democracy in the US.
Ditching the electoral college would be a small but significant step. Almost
nobody likes it, after all! If we can just keep the discussion clear and calm,
and separate the proposal to improve the system from the result of _this_
election, maybe we could make progress. I'm not holding my breath, though...

I would also love to see experimentation with really radical forms of
democracy. For example, Arthur C Clarke's _The Songs of Distant Earth_ has a
fun aside about random selection of leaders. The Venetian Republic apparently
used multiple rounds of lotteries and nominations; incredible to think that
such a complex system was used successfully for centuries. (Excellent writeup
in the New Yorker: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/07/26/win-or-
lose](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/07/26/win-or-lose))

~~~
int_19h
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_democracy)

Take this, and remove all references to "workers" and "proletariat", and it
sounds like it could be a very workable system, more stable than direct
democracy, but with a much faster feedback loop than any modern representative
democracy (since any council can recall its delegate to the higher-level
council at any point).

~~~
iainmerrick
Yes, that's interesting! It failed pretty quickly in the USSR, though, so
clearly additional checks and balances are needed:

 _Lenin_ […] _issued a "temporary" ban on factions in the Russian Communist
Party. This ban remained until the revolutions of 1989 and according to
critics made the democratic procedures within the party an empty formality._

~~~
int_19h
In USSR, it was "workers' and peasants' councils" from the get go (so those
not belonging to these two categories were excluded). And the real power was
always in the hands of Sovnarkom. So I would say that USSR never really had
council democracy other than in name - just like most "democratic people's
republics" out there aren't democratic.

------
danielschonfeld
This reminds me Nick Hanauer video about the pitchforks that are coming.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbj6hIOMcSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbj6hIOMcSk)

------
Pica_soO
One of the biggest irony is that a lot of dictators and there cronies are
worried more then we are on democracy. Dislike it all you want- the day, your
generals decide that you are no longer need - having money in a stable place
half the world away, is a value for itself. Maybe those declining political
party's could ask some African dictators for donation?

------
vkou
There are currently serious discussions among the left as to whether or not
protesters should 'Bundy up' to be taken seriously.

The last time we've seen something like this was during the heyday of the
Black Panthers. Now, what does this say about trust in public institutions?

------
mirekrusin
What happened to that idea that Google wanted to create it's own country?

------
MichaelBurge
The NYT were enthusiastic supporters of Fidel Castro, who was a communist. He
visited their offices in person, mentioning that he couldn't have gotten into
power without them. It could be that there is systematic bias at the NYT
opposing democracy, except as a rhetorical technique to appeal to its readers.
Castro's chief executioner had this to say:

 _A foreign reporter -- preferably American -- was much more valuable to us at
that time (1957) than any military victory. Much more valuable than rural
recruits for our guerrilla force, were American media recruits to export our
propaganda._

They didn't seem to like Hugo Chavez(mentioned in the article, and a
socialist) at the time, which is evidence against it being a general trend.
I'd need to look at other leaders to see if it is systematic from the NYT.
Maybe Hugo just wasn't as good at dealing with the media:
[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/venezuela/chavez2.htm](http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/venezuela/chavez2.htm)

There could be bias from this specific author, though. If this author was
going to write any article at all, it was going to be about Trump destroying
Democracy. The same author used to work at Vox and there are many other
articles comparing him to a dictator: [http://www.vox.com/authors/amanda-
taub](http://www.vox.com/authors/amanda-taub)

How much independence are NYT writers given? Does the company take a stance on
certain issues? Is there selection bias for certain employees, even if there's
no explicit company policy on politics? This could be measured to some extent
by checking political donations from employees associated with the NYT. I
think that data is public.

None of these necessarily oppose their argument, but good evidence and
arguments subjected to enough selection bias can say any story you want it to.
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/js/the_bottom_line/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/js/the_bottom_line/)

Does the difference correlate well with immigration patterns? A lot of the
European countries are admitting many refugees and migrants from countries
with a lot of corruption. The US might have many migrants from Mexico or other
Central or South American countries with a higher corruption index. It could
be that the migrants don't care about democracies, because they weren't raised
in a culture that cares about democracies.

I'm 27 and prefer a Republic to a Democracy, since it keeps more power closer
to the people governed. I haven't looked at their study to see if I would
count as a younger person opposed to Democracy.

Sanders is a socialist and he seems to be pretty popular. It could be that
people are warming up to socialism or communism. That's different from the
system of government, but depending on how they did the study they could've
said that socialists are not in favor of democracies.

------
lechiffre10
United States isn't a democracy. It's a republic

~~~
vkou
A republic is a country that is not governed by a king or queen.

Russia is a republic. China is a republic. Canada is not a republic. Japan is
not a republic.

Describing a form of government as a republic is almost entirely meaningless.
It's a split-hair thought-stopper that adds nothing to the conversation.

------
slicktux
Not to fear my fellow Americans! The U.S.A is a Republic not a Democracy. . .
Although, many view it as a democracy. . .even president's do the same.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019834)

~~~
int_19h
The USA is a democracy under the 21st century dictionary definition of the
word "democracy", which includes representative democracies like USA.

It is _also_ a republic.

To be very specific, it is a constitutional federal democratic representative
republic.

Now, back when the Declaration of Independence was written, your statement was
true - for the simple reason that the word "democracy" was very exotic then,
as was the form of government itself. The people who used it then, used it
more in a sense of Aristotelian dichotomy between demokratia and politeia (the
latter word was later somewhat incorrectly translated to Latin as "res
publica"), and generally implying direct democracy.

Since then, numerous new democratic states appeared, with various differences
in their specific arrangements - and so there was a need for a word that would
describe the things that are common to all of them, and distinguish them from
states with other forms of government. "Democracy" happened to be the one that
was already in use, but also rare enough that its evolution wouldn't be
bothersome, and its etymology made it the perfect candidate; and so, here we
are.

So, what you were really trying to say - assuming that you meant the original
18th century meanings of the words - translates to modern English as, "USA is
a representative democracy, not a direct democracy".

Well, duh.

