Mfw i realise democracy doesn't work

I used to believe that democracy was right as each vote counts for the interests of each citizen.

I used to think, well, it doesn't matter if someone is an idiot or ignorant. His vote is in his interest and it matters not whether I subjectively determine his vote to be wrong or uninformed as I would then have to define what constitutes 'uninformed' and this could be open to state abuse. That it is better to allow complete freedom than to restrict it to those who have been subjectively deemed to be 'qualified'.

But as I sat in that class, and looked out unto the retards before me. All I could think was "My God!"

Being bad at reading graphs doesn't necessarily mean you are bad at telling which person won the tournaments associated with running for office.
One just feels better than the other, instinctively almost, based on how they handle the campaign.

You are making a very embarrassing reductive analogy, retard.

You are the one who proposed that most people being unable to read an economic graph leads you to believe democracy is a mistake. You later clarified that you think so, because being unable to read an economic graph implies you are bad at choosing who to vote for.

It does.

Economies literally make or break a nation.

Would you support the majority of people voting in a candidate who wants to borrow 10s of trillions to finance a country but will lead to collapse when they can't pay back the bonds over a candidate who wouldn't do such a thing?

>It does.
That is a very embarrassing reductive analogy, in your own words.

>Economies literally make or break a nation.
Yet not every single member of the nation needs to understand the formulae that supposedly drive that economy. Economy isn't a science, its like reading the future by tossing chicken bones.

>Would you support...
No. Also such a candidate would to poorly in the tournaments, as the people who indeed understand the economic principles would attack him, as would his competitors, so the less educated people will see that candidate doing poorly, even if they can't tell why. People can recognize who is winning a social tournament without knowing the rules.
Ask a woman what makes a man handsome, she can't give you a solid ruleset, and will contradict herself. Yet she can easily pick a man who almost all women will rank as high on the handsome hierarchy ladder. It is like children playing a game fine, but being unable to write down the rules if asked.

>Attending lectures
>He needs someone to spoonfeed him

It's classed as a social science so you're wrong, retard.

Also, your social tournament analogy is fucking retarded because it presupposes the ability for a democratic society to consistently choose who is 'better' for them.

Stop using this Reddit analogy or I will no longer reply to you.

>Would you support the majority of people voting in a candidate who wants to borrow 10s of trillions to finance a country but will lead to collapse when they can't pay back the bonds over a candidate who wouldn't do such a thing?

There's no problem with paying back the bonds if you control your own currency. It's all just an inflation management issue.

>top 20
>Britain
>good
>mfw

>autism

That would put it well into the top 150 unis in the world.

Lmao

Borrowing that kind of money and printing money to pay it back will lead to huge inflation and perhaps hyperinflation, perhaps the surest way to destroy a national.

Le cringey oxford/Cambridge student enters the thread

An apathetic youth and poor education isn't unique to democracy.

Besides, there is no direct democracy - those governments we call democracies are republics that vote for representatives, who we (hope) get chosen by their qualifications.

(Eh, wait, okay, you're right, democracy is broken.)

*cough* But aside from that, even if it was a direct democracy (which I suppose you could do, to one degree or another, with modern internet technology), in such a world where folks had the option to vote for something every few days, how many of those same kids do you think would actually vote?

If we had semi-direct democracy in that fashion, I assume most folks wouldn't bother to vote on every issue. The few that did would likely be better informed than most.

...and the alternative, be it dictatorship or monarchy, or what not, is simply going to draw up someone from that same pool of idiots, that said pool of idiots are willing to get behind enough not to assassinate or start a civil war over. So it's just as likely to go bad, and when it does, fixing it is a lot messier.

>It's the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others.

That depends what the denomination of currency the tens of trillions are in and the poster I replied to was talking about not being able to pay it back, it was me that raised the issue of inflation as a potential problem.

Not so much so, if you are the world reserve currency.

(Well, so long as you can hold onto said status.)

>...and the alternative, be it dictatorship or monarchy, or what not, is simply going to draw up someone from that same pool of idiots, that said pool of idiots are willing to get behind enough not to assassinate or start a civil war over. So it's just as likely to go bad, and when it does, fixing it is a lot messier.
This... Find me a better alternative that isn't potentially just as bad or worse.

Seriously, not even defending democracy here - give me a fucking alternative, I beg of you, please!

Economics isn't a science, don't be ridiculous. Its as scientific as gender studies. Economics are warlocks commuting with the stars and right at best 52% of the time.

>I haven't studied the history of the scientific method or an ounce of economics the post

Fuck off, retard.

>mfw monarchists are just smug euphoric faggots
Not even surprised

Using the same historical reasons to call economics a science would lead you to call demonology, eugenics, astrology and alchemy also sciences.

Your post made 2 errors, retard.

1. Assuming there is such a thing conceivable as 'science' or a methodological monism we could follow

2. Thinking economics was just betting on the stock market by chance and ignoring its mathematical foundations

Go away.

>economics is a science, because such a thing as "science" is inconceivable

Are you joking?

No, you are attempting to define science under a rigid structure which doesn't exist.

I am explaining to you that it is universally accepted that economics is a social science and has mathematical foundations.

Social sciences are not natural sciences (such as biology or physics), though and the natural sciences are what people are referring to when then just use 'science' without a qualifier.

And there is a debate within the discipline of economics itself as to whether economics is a 'science' in terms of being equivalent to something like chemistry or whether it is merely a social science.

>Implying Democracy is about being a gentleman and a scholar.
It literally doesn't matter. It's all about freedom of choice of representation. You, claiming that it doesn't work because you feel like a segment of the population shits it up makes no difference. You may not like your democracy, that doesn't make it defective. Different people have different interests and worldviews.

>democracy (which I suppose you could do, to one degree or another, with modern internet technology)
Ya know, I think more direct democracy actually would go a long way towards fixing all sorts of shit, even if the general population is full of idiots.

Even with Federal and State legislation combined, there'd hardly be a handful of things to vote for on a weekly basis to eat any real time, given how slow said legislative bodies tend to move these days.

You'd still need to elect representatives to actually do stuff and manage the real time things, maybe a body of analysts, orators, and drafters (all of which already exist), but you could easily replace most of the legislative functions of Congress.

Imagine how much more invested folks would be in their politics and nation if, say every Friday, they sat down at their computers, perhaps with their family, mulled over the various issues that had been brought to fore that week, stuck in their vote, and saw the results by the next day. Imagine how much more confident everyone would be in the illusion that they actually had some say in the society they were a part of, and thus how much more cohesive they would be as a national unit.

But alas, that would require the people currently in charge electing to either share or give up their power.

Science is a study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.
Economics is not a study of the natural world, nor is it factual. In fact, a factual observation of how well our economic predictions turn out will bring us to the conclusion that economy is throwing a slightly weighted dice.

This discussion as to whether economics is a science has been debated to death already and adds nothing to the debate on democracy.

>top 20 Unis in Britain

> (You)
>Science is a study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.
>Economics is not a study of the natural world, nor is it factual. In fact, a factual observation of how well our economic predictions turn out will bring us to the conclusion that economy is throwing a slightly weighted dice.

Go back to Ribbit, pleb. This discussion is not open to plebs who don't know anything about the philosophy of science. Also, economics definitely is study of the natural world which is why it's a social science, brainlet.

Don't talk about things you don't know anything about, brainlet.

I seriously hope all of the people coming out with this shit are Oxford / Cambridge / MIT / Ivy League tier mother fuckers. I suspect they're more McDonalds tier, however.

Top 20 in the UK puts it firmly into the top 150 in the world.

>i lost, so let me pretend to be retarded and to have been baiting all along

I accept your surrender.

This is why you're at a top 150 university

No argument to be found from the redditard.

>Economics is not a study of the natural world

Austrians pls leave

If you honestly think claiming social science is the study of the natural world while puffing up your chest about your knowledge of the philosophy of science and referencing Reddit I just feel bad for you.

You don't sound like you have a clue at all.

Still no argument to be found from the redditard.

I'm not OP.

>In fact, a factual observation of how well our economic predictions turn out will bring us to the conclusion that economy is throwing a slightly weighted dice.

?

Le Reddit fallacy.

Kid, you don't even know what social science is.

No arguments to be found whatsoever.

Don't bother. It's a meaningless sentence.

In any of your posts, yes.

> At extended family get together
> For some reason politics comes up (Ausfag)
> Talking about the "budget deficit"
> "Yeah we have to live within our means, we can't be spending more than we earn"
> Try to explain the concept of governments leveraging debt to finance spending projects that give a greater return
> None of them understand the difference between household budget and government budgets

It was in that moment I knew democracy was a failure

Democracy takes advantages of mans latent animal instinct to seek conflict and identify with others, through either left or right. So what it truly does is distract the populace from the relevant matters of law, and instead engage in the childish popularity contests of power seeking elites.

A poorly informed populous isn't unique to democracy, and in any other model, your leaders are drawn from that same pool of idiots, only now they are unaccountable to those they rule over.

Tribalism, also, not unique to democracy, and is often extensively employed in maintaining most forms of government.

*More so than others.

Democracy is complete shit

But 18th century Monarchism and 20th century Fascism are worse.

Some form of technocratic/meritocratic socialism would be far better than either of those options.

>Some form of technocratic/meritocratic socialism would be far better than either of those options.
Any details on such a replacement system in some desperate effort to get this thread back on topic and away from the reddit-memecusers arguing over semantics?

I've yet to hear of a meritocratic system I'd feel comfortable with (including Heinlein's), and there's so many flavors of technocratic that it doesn't necessarily exclude democracy.

>Any details on such a replacement system in some desperate effort to get this thread back on topic and away from the reddit-memecusers arguing over semantics?

Dude, economics really isn't a natural science.

...

Sorry, bro, I couldn't resist. At least I bumped your thread.

Man youre the retard here...
>not same dude
You think people would vote Y/X because they cant understand whatever you study?
Maybe your highschool classmates didnt read the fucking book because theyre not autist like you and dont care about some gay ass graphs

Monarchism is literally how things were run for thousands of years and arguably how things boil down anyway even in this "modern era" and you still just dismiss it because it's old.

It's a completely arbitrary way of running a country. You could get a wise philosopher king or you could get a blithering inbred retard that inherits the throne when they are five and starts a war when they are fifteen just because they want to fuck the queen of another country.

Just to be clear I'm not saying rulers elected democratically are perfect, far, far, far from it, but at least there is some level of accountability to the masses. It's a shit way to govern a country but it is still the least bad way mankind has discovered.

>my modern anecdote proves that democracy does not work, despite all its objective contribution to human society

You're a dumbass.

I'd rather the apathetic citizen under democracy than an apathetic citizen under tyranny.

You fucks take all the freedom you have for granted because you're comfortable. You won't realise what you've lost once all your liberties are taken away.

>Are you saying that because people are bad at reading economic graphs, they are also bad at telling who won a tournament? Or that they are bad at deciding which tournaments to run?

Not him but yes I would argue that that is indeed the case. Tournaments are inherently antidemocratic as they are decided by a defacto aristocracy of judges. The average person is incapable of serving as an effective judge of a tournament event, and democracy is the equivalent of deciding who won the Superbowl by putting it to a vote among a population that didn't even watch most of the game.

>Well I wasn't really paying attention but the last team I saw score a goal was X so I guess they won, I'm voting for them.
Pathetic.

...but we elect the "judges" to make these decisions for us.

That's what passes for "democracy" around here - republics.

Granted, we're supposed to elect them based on their expertise, rather than their charisma, but alas...

Typically the country was run by advisors and lesser nobles, who would lose their money and power if they made poor choices with their small responsibilities and possesions; at which point they would be replaced by the educated child of a successful noble.
The monarchic family itself was in a constant state of replacement as lesser families worked their way up the socio-political ladder, and monarchs really only existed to give broad policy decisions and settle disputes between underlings, sort of like a very efficient court of appeals.
Poorly performing monarchs were often removed quite quickly, either through assasination and replacement via civil war, or societal collapse leading to a new, reformed monarchy.

That just speaks to how shit British Uni's are.

>I'd rather the apathetic citizen under democracy than an apathetic citizen under tyranny.

Literally no difference.

>"this is so boring, I don't get it"
>talking or using their phones for Facebook
>people actually declare "that was the worst lecture ever!"
Why did I imagine fat black girls saying all this shit?

>socialism
Fucking dropped.

Because you're subject to cultural stereotypes and they reinforce your preconceived notions.

Education got so watered down it means literally nothing. It's the equivalent of the military dumbing down their requirements so even women and fat people can get in, except on an outrageously large scale. Back in the day, let's say mid 19th century, you'd have to perfectly read and write in classical Latin and Greek for law school entry exams, nowadays every fucking dumbass can graduate from anything, the only disciplines where some excellence is still required are all either STEM or some kind of art.

Moreover, is mass literaly actually desirable? Check out the average people on twitter and facebook, they have all the wisdom of the world at their disposal yet all they ever give a fuck about are the Kardashians or the NBA or some shit. They're absolutely no smarter than the dumbest medieval peasant, the only difference is that unlike medieval peasants they now have the ability to put their retardation on display for all the world to witness and emulate.

If any voters don't have the ability to say their vote doesn't or can't count then they will be able to justify violent protests in the name of changing a system they're not involved in.

At the end of the day voluntarily choosing to vote eliminates most of the idiots anyway, so as long as they don't vote its a win-win. That's how the US and UK work. What's the flaw In that? That people can potentially vote?

just because there are mathematically principles to economics doesn't mean its a science

Voting solves nothing as it implies a collective of humans can make a rational judgement on an indiviidal, that is why political parties play on human tribal desires like FREEDUMB, LIBERTY AND A WHOLE LOAD OF NONSENSE that doesnt improve a nation.

All democracy has done has turned the government into a bigger enemy to the public as the government now psychologically plays the public against eachother as we have seen from the madness in America. Even before Trump Americans had this intense ape like tribalism towards their political parties that was a consequence of the democratic system.

>The majority of Americans can take care of a country
>In a country where More than two-thirds of adults were overweight or obese (68.6 percent).
>The majority of Americans can't even take care of their bodies
Turns on your Neurons

Believe me, people don't actually give a fuck about representation, they care about safety and happiness. If they're secure and happy they don't give a fuck whether they have a right to vote, and if they live in shit all the voting rights in the world won't change that.

Think of it this way, when you were a kid you weren't butthurt that you couldn't vote, you simply didn't care. Even today we don't let the children vote and nobody thinks it's some kind of heinous injustice, now apply it to all pre-modern mankind and it's the same principle. The fucktarded notion of Phrygian democracy apostles about all people yearning to have a say is completely false.

>through assasination and replacement via civil war
...and you see this as somehow superior to simply voting them out?

I mean, if there was some way you could ensure your monarchy would supply people of superior abilities, great - but in reality, they are just as apt to be fucked up individuals as near any other member of the aristocracy, and be even further disconnected from the problems and opinions of the people at large.

I think you're severely underestimating the passivity encouraged by the fact that people have the illusion that their voice is being heard - and don't have to start a civil war every time something fails to go their way. (And the desired stability and safety that in turn provides.)

Children are at least left knowing that one day they will be able to vote - and, come adolescence on, can even influence their parent's voting habits. Children might accept that they are second class citizens with no real rights for their first eighteen years, but requiring they accept that for life, is historically haphazard, particularly when they hear of other lands where this is not the case.

My disposition wasn't that the capacity to vote creates a scenario where people become "apostles of democracy", but simply that in a democratic system when you have the capacity to vote it does effectively allow the administration to state that the individual should have proposed a better argument and got people to agree with him on the issue and consequently vote for said issue. It's a rational and simple argument against rioting and violent protest that more hierarchical systems lack and are often held hostage by their populations when conditions aren't improving, like in China.

>...and you see this as somehow superior to simply voting them out?

It is. Perhaps the worst thing about democracy is that it's nearly impossible to fix because the masses would rather live in a cesspool that they voted for than a utopian dictatorship.

Re-election rates are largely unaffected by overall approval ratings of representatives because everyone thinks all of congress is shit, except of course- their congressman.

People get voted out of office a LOT more often than civil wars and assassinations happen. So it seems you're much likely to end up with a shit dictatorship for a lifetime than a shit elected government for a lifetime, especially when account for shit like TERM LIMITS.

...and say what will about this recent election, it certainly demonstrates that a non-professional politician can take high office, if he has enough charisma, and the professional is despised enough.

>democracy doesn't work
OP you are retarded. The very fact that of the wealthiest and most powerful nations today, most of them rank highly on a list of democratic freedoms is a clear indicator that not only does democracy work, it far exceeds other governmental forms. Just because it does not work at perfect efficiency, doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Please then user tell me, where are the rigorous economic experiments backing up and supporting their mathematical models? If economics is so full proof and scientific, why then do we use phrases such as "most economists believe" rather than stronger terms such as "y will happen as a direct result of x," instead of appealing to some fake authority.

>Re-election rates are largely unaffected by overall approval ratings of representatives because everyone thinks all of congress is shit, except of course- their congressman.

>implying this is the real reason

The reason is because people vote based on party lines, and can't be assed to give enough shits to change their representative through internal party politics. That and the people who say they don't like their congressmen will most likely not even know their damn name.

>give me a fucking alternative, I beg of you, please!
Well, this is how I'd do things
>abolish party system and the traditional institution of the presidency
>direct democracy on a local level
>technocracy(corporatism) on a national level with a council of ministers on top whose powers combine those of a traditional president and prime minister
>simplification of national laws, encouragement of local laws and customs

Eh, how exactly does one "abolish party system"? I mean, when we started this nation, all the founding fathers considered parties to be the bane of democracy, but they formed anyways. Eventually you're going to have a group of like-minded people, or folks who claim said, and they are going to align themselves with one another. You'd have to ban both freedom of speech and freedom of association, which, even if you could make it law, is next to impossible to actually enforce.

...Nevermind where your judicial and legislative bodies are in this picture. How you deal with local laws that conflict with one another (for instance, everyone and their mother making their own currency or dumping all their waste in a river that runs right into the next district), and how you could ever hope to simplify laws, when you've put corporatism, the top reason why laws are so complex, at the top of your governmental pyramid.

I mean, not that I fault you for trying, but this doesn't sound anymore thought through than "eliminate two regulations for each new one".

>he thinks the problem of induction can't also be applied to all the sciences

lmao, pleb

Economics is boring.
And a fucking fly on the wall compared to the earth system sciences.
A fucking fly, wait..what? Why is the fly getting bigger? What's happening to the wall?
Then de fly gets 2 big for its britches and exploses! "PLAP!", Goes the explosing fly. Then it all did the die

>I mean, when we started this nation, all the founding fathers considered parties to be the bane of democracy, but they formed anyways.
I'm not American.
>Eventually you're going to have a group of like-minded people, or folks who claim said, and they are going to align themselves with one another.
Which is perfectly fine. I am not against association, but it should be done on an issue-by-issue, not ideological basis. The politician's role is first and foremost that of a bureaucrat and his actions should be guided by pragmatism, not an abstract ideology backed by a rigid party line. On a local level, without the backing of a party, this ensures that his election and continuous involvement in politics is solely the result of his own merits. On a national level, parties would be redundant in a corporate state given that most of the issues that a politician would vote on are those that are linked to his own career path, ergo his decisions wouldn't(and shouldn't) be based on a worldview, but on concrete facts.
>...Nevermind where your judicial and legislative bodies are in this picture. How you deal with local laws that conflict with one another (for instance, everyone and their mother making their own currency or dumping all their waste in a river that runs right into the next district)
Those sorts of laws would be national laws, by local laws I am referring mostly to laws that fall in the sphere of social and moral issues.
>how you could ever hope to simplify laws, when you've put corporatism, the top reason why laws are so complex, at the top of your governmental pyramid.
'Classical' 20th century corporatism, not the boogeyman American conspiracy theorists make out of the term today.

>I am not against association, but it should be done on an issue-by-issue, not ideological basis. The politician's role is first and foremost that of a bureaucrat and his actions should be guided by pragmatism, not an abstract ideology backed by a rigid party line.
Well that's all well and good to say, but how do you enforce it? I mean, abstract ideologies are already core to our political lexicon, you've got left/right conservative/liberal parties formed before you even get started. People will come together, decide what they mean, and back people who agree with them and attack those who don't, thus creating rigid party lines - and thus are directly related to success in the politician's career path. Bam, political parties. Even if you officially ban specific political parties, as some nations attempt to, you still have winks and nods that create them de facto, or simply by cult of personality.

I mean, without some seriously draconian effort, you can't really do anything about it, and even with that, the best you can do is mitigate it.

what does this have to do with democracy you cretin

I think he is saying people are too dumb to choose who rules over them, or that democracy produces this stupidity, or that, through some vicious cycle, both.

Not that it wasn't a shitpost of a way to open that topic, but meh, par for the course in the anarchist collective around here.