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[Waray]

I'd like to ask the opinions of people on Democracy.

Reason is that although most "western" people I know consider it the best government form possible, but it has only been in it's current form for around 100 years, maybe even shorter.

And is there a "best" version of Democracy? The American way? Did the Ancient Greeks do it better?

And most of all, in a world were people moan that they want good leadership, isn't that really a call for an absolute leader?
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[Brf]

What do you mean 100 years? The USA has had this government more-or-less for over 200 years.

[Waray]

In theory the US had a democracy from the start in 1776 (or better yet, in 1774 when the first Congres took place).
However it's current form where everyone can vote while not based on priviliges/sex/race is a bit more recent then that, wouldn't you say?
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[JuntaJoe]

Waray is right. Sufferage laws were fixed in the early part of the 20th century and Jim Crow laws were struck down for some 30 years after that.

By WW2, America finally allowed everyone to vote in our representative democracy, which had been around as a "concept in progress" since 1780something when the Constitution was properly finalized.


As long as candidates of opposing viewpoints compete for an elected position in a free electorate then I say the country has a democracy that will serve it's citizens.


It's when you get into the various versions that beg the question of which system serves better.


The two biggest versions today are the competing Anglo-based systems that originated in America and Britain. America offers the representative bipartisan democracy. Britain offers direct multi-partisan democracy. We have Congress and they have Parliment. Every functional democracy in the world is a derivative of those two.

Thus, any serious discussion on democracy needs to first hash the virtues and vices of those two systems.

[Brf]

Yes. more recent than that, but in 1791 when the Constitution was ratified.

The fact that other races could not vote until 1870 and women not until 1920 is really immaterial, since the definition of a citizen of majority keeps changing in that regard. The age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971, but we dont want to say our government as-such didnt start until then do we?

[Georgie]

At one time, voting was largely limited to people who owned property. The thing behind that may have been that those who had a certain interest would make more responsible voters.

A stark contrast to welfare crowds who would obviously vote for whoever will give them the most freebees and slack-jawed, pimply-faced 20-30-year-olds who don't know what's going on.

[JuntaJoe]

And you know I favor lowering the voting age to 16, Brf.

So I'll stick with my "concept in progress" label for now.


But all this is semantics really.



I believe the original question is how well does the concept work.

That leaves a double ended question.

How well does the two modern methods work overall and which version seems to work better?

[Brf]

Why not lower the age to 6? Most voters are sheep anyway.... voting for whoever buys the best commercials.

[NibbyCat]

Thing is, any governmental style will work, if all believe in the system and are honorable enough to work for the system and not abuse it.

All systems have flaws that can be exploited, by those so inclined.

[JuntaJoe]

Brf wrote: Why not lower the age to 6? Most voters are sheep anyway.... voting for whoever buys the best commercials.

Ba Humbug? :P


I think that bringing the concepts and responsibilities of voting into the education system of young adults will help encourage the masses to take voting more seriously.

Right now, the youth walks away from school disaffected with the political process because no one cares what they say. They ignore the system until they get older and have a singular issue that affects their attitudes. They run to the polls with more emotion than intelligence. Victims of soundbites that cater to their one desire. So they vote like sheep for years or even decades because soundbite voting almost never produces the instantaneous results that they want. It keeps getting worse until they grasp that the system is about moving things by inches instead of miles.

Sure, I could be dead wrong, but I've listened to eager teens. A couple years down the line they don't want to be bothered with politics. They have a new life to start and think no one is listening to them in the centers of power.

It's an experiment that needs to be tried. If letting hot blooded teens into the voting booth short circuits the usual decade plus of useless votes and non-votes that is the usual fare, then we should take the risk.

We have 50 potential labs in our country to test the theory without really imposing on the rest of us.


Ok, enough on that rant.

Does anyone have some thoughts on the differences between the Congressional and Parlimentary systems?

[Georgie]

The drinking age is 21. Why should the voting age be 16? Even at 16, one is not capable of deciding what is best for ones self, let alone the country. We at 16 are not mature enough to vote. Period. Especially in today's world were folks seem to grow up a lot slower than our fathers did.

[Waray]

Brf wrote: The fact that other races could not vote until 1870 and women not until 1920 is really immaterial, since the definition of a citizen of majority keeps changing in that regard.

Ah. So it's freedom for us all, but from us all are excluded afro-americans, women, other ethnic minorities?

Democracy is a process of trail and error. And I believe a fundamental part of "good' Democracy is based on Constitutional Law. But I'd give you that the concept of good democracy is up for debate.
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[Waray]

JuntaJoe wrote: Does anyone have some thoughts on the differences between the Congressional and Parlimentary systems?

Basically the biggest difference is that Congres is seperate from the President, whereas the Parliament is not seperate from the ruling cabinet/head of state.

In the USA you have multiple seperate elections (for president, for Senate, for State) which are all bodies that balance eachother out while all being determined by democratic vote.

I'm not too familiar with the British version (funny, I practically live next to the UK but I know the US version better:P).

Also, I'd like to introduce the "European" model instead, where a multiple party system is and where the parties with the most votes (thus biggest representation in the Chamber) form a government.

Here in Holland we vote on a party and it doesn't matter what kind of party. For instance, if a Treehugger party would campaign very good, they could around 40 seats while previously not existing.
It also works the other way around, a party with a big mouth that got around 25 seats last election now sits around 3 because of the way they screwed up.
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[Brf]

Actually, voting exclusion by race was never part of the Constitution, and age wasn't a part of it either until 1868.The original Constitution did not define a citizen, so everything was in the minds of the enforcers. Women's role too has always been decided by society as a whole, not the central government.

I any case, I think the individual citizens have little control over the government, so it doesn't matter who gets to vote.

Actually, there is nothing in the US Constitution that guarantees that anyone can actually vote for President.... It just states that if there is an election for the electors, that we cannot be barred from it. Nowhere does it guarantee that there will be an election for the electors, or that those electors will vote for any particular person.

[Waray]

Brf wrote: I any case, I think the individual citizens have little control over the government, so it doesn't matter who gets to vote.

So we just let the rich upperclass vote for us all then?

I'm sticking with the bigger the audience, the more people you got to entertain.
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[Brf]

Well... the rich upperclass are the candidates. We dont have much choice on who to vote for.

[Waray]

So you'd like some changes in the current form of democracy?
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[Waray]

JuntaJoe wrote: Every functional democracy in the world is a derivative of those two.

Care to expand?

Reasoned that way I can say that the US owes the Dutch Unie van Utrecht & Plakaat van Verlatinghe bigtime in shaping their political world thus is a derivative of that one.
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[JuntaJoe]

Georgie wrote: The drinking age is 21. Why should the voting age be 16? Even at 16, one is not capable of deciding what is best for ones self, let alone the country. We at 16 are not mature enough to vote. Period. Especially in today's world were folks seem to grow up a lot slower than our fathers did.

Voting does not cause a loss of mental faculties like drinking does. Besides, the drinking age of 21 in America is because of our values and habits, not our maturity. Europeans drink far earlier with significantly fewer negative results. The drinking age in Holland is 16. It is 18 almost everywhere else. Then there is the family exclusion which allows parents to give alcohol to their children. We have a high drinking age in America because taboo causes alcohol gluttony upon coming of age. Combined with our heavy reliance on personal vehicles, you have too many youths trying to use alcohol for the first time alone mixed with cars.

And how are kids growing up slower? Calculus was a rare class given to a few select brainiacs in public schools back then. STD prevention was taught to military recruits because they barely knew what sex was, much less what a condom was. Kids saved pennies in jars instead of checking which banks offered lower fees on their debit cards. Bedside lamps were fixed by a skilled local repairman back then while kids today swap out harddrives and RAM chips as easy as they brush their teeth today.

No, kids just grow up different now, not slower.


And all this falls into the same question of who gets to vote.

Do we let the masses vote with all their fickleness in a truer democracy that represents the will of the masses -or- do we limit voting to those who pass certain standards because they may be better able to give the citizens what they need?

The first group is fickle sheep who are easy to manipulate with propaganda. The second group has the ability to completely control the lives of the populace for their own benefit.

As bad as the first group is at making the right choices, it has been shown that elite groups NEVER display the proper altruism to help society. They always end up at the bread and circuses gimmick to distract the masses while they enrich their world by manipulating the free markets.

Yes, the masses end up asking for the same bread and circuses, but they are less inclined to skew the free markets as they rarely can arrive at a concensus to control any select aspect of the markets. Opposition group cancel each others power out at the polls when it comes to controlling market aspects.

So I say let the mass idiots have their sway instead of elites. The freebees end up the same, but the markets are less constricted.



Waray, the system you describe at home is a slight variant of the British Parlimentary model. Most European government derive from that original system. The primary difference is the removal of the House of Lords. England made peace between the nobility and the populace and agreed to a power sharing. On the mainland, the rift was messier and nobility was violently excluded. But the setup is the same. Various groups compete for a percentage of the ruling houses. If no group forms a majority then a fragile power sharing structure is installed. While this system is much closer to the will of the populace, you run the regular risk of the loss of continuity in the command structure. Long term agendas are hard to complete.

I also feel size is important to choosing between the two models. Long term projects are not as big of an issue to a country of smaller physical size. Big projects are a bridge or power plant. In the US, big projects are the Interstate Highway system with 50,000 linear miles that can take decades to make. Would Holland have the time continuity needed in their power structure to complete the Panama Canal?

But Holland doesn't need a Panama Canal, a 50k kilometer highway system, or a space agency to build Moon habitats.

Contries of your population and size are well served by a more flexible but less less stable system. Countries like America, China, Russia, and India are better served by the more ponderous, but stable Congressional system. Which is why I believe that India has had such a hard time moving into the modern age. They use the Parlimentary system instead and leave continuity to a rarely governed bureaucracy. In a Congressional system, the Exectutive branch can grasp and control the bureaucracy to bring it into the line of the current needs of the country with autocratic powers.

It's clear that the larger the governed body is, in both physical size and populace, the more you need a section of the government with autocratic controls over the bureaucracy.

[Waray]

JuntaJoe wrote:
No, kids just grow up different now, not slower.


Amen :P

JuntaJoe wrote: As bad as the first group is at making the right choices, it has been shown that elite groups NEVER display the proper altruism to help society. They always end up at the bread and circuses gimmick to distract the masses while they enrich their world by manipulating the free markets.


Bit strongely put. Public schooling, open universities, social welfare systems were introduced by absolute monarchs to the world. The oligarchy of Greece has been very kind to us as well, even in our way of thinking and arguing.
However, history agrees with you that longterm is always the problem. And since democracy and economic welfare have gone hand in hand it's safe to say that for longterm economic stability, it is absolutely necessary to have a larger, more massier democracy.

JuntaJoe wrote:
Contries of your population and size are well served by a more flexible but less less stable system. Countries like America, China, Russia, and India are better served by the more ponderous, but stable Congressional system.

Interesting viewpoint. I absolutely agree that in decisionmaking and executing those decisions a more direct constant form is absolutely necessary.
The point which I disagree with, is that you put those two systems as the base, where I think it's clearly not the case.

Take a look to the American model for instance.
It cares influences/resemblances of the British government, Dutch Republic and other so called Enlightened governments (mainly Enlightened Absolutism) and ideas.

It was made with in mind the different States with their own powers as well as a central body and for me the most interesting (and best imho) thing, a Supreme Court which holds all federal & State laws in front of the light of the Constitution.
In Holland for instance a judge can't disapprove of a new law made by Parliament when it doesn't stroke with our Constitution. He can however destroy it by European Law instead.

The fact that the Supreme Court itself isn't that indepent from the continuity in the command structure is something else but I guess you can't have everything.
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