"Democracy is the best form of government for all the world's inhabitants."

do you agree or disagree with this statement and why?


thanks all for your responses!

I've been looking at your question for a while now, so I figured I'd take the bait...
Ideally, I think we should be self ruling and cooperative, working together for the benefit of all. That's my ideal view of the way the world should be governed.
However, humanity isn't ready to do this yet, perhaps we're not emotionally evolved enough yet, there's too much greed etc., so we work with what we have.
Unfortunately, those who know the most about the way the world works altogether are politicians, who learn how to benefit from the world's systems for personal gain, while at times, creating changes that will benefit the world itself, while making sure those at the top of the power pyramids in the world stay at the top.
I don't think we have truly had someone stand up for the rights of the people in a very long time and that is what democracy is supposed to be about, the people, not the money. Until we are able to change the way we have come to view democracy, I think we're leaving the door open for further exploitation and suffering of the people of the world.

I figured it was either bait, or a homework question....

my question is will there be anything left once the politicians figure it out?
Politicians that actually care about what's best for all the people not thier own wallets that is.

I agree that our current politicians are often bad choices. But our current politicians are elected via a democracy, aren't they? What makes us think that allowing people to directly decide issues will result in decisions that are any better? I think your opinion on the reason we have a representative democracy is much different than mine. In order to answer the question of whether democracy can be replaced, I think it is important to understand why we have democracy.

I think a large part of the misunderstanding of democracy originates in the term used by Teethandclaws: self-government, or "self-ruling". Democracy is the farthest thing from self-ruling I can imagine. Instead of being allowed to decide for yourself how you are governed, every person in the nation gets to decide how you are governed. Each individual does not rule himself; each individual is ruled by everyone else.

So democracy is not some part of freedom. The "freedom to vote" is very much the "political power to take away someone else's freedom". It isn't really a freedom allowed the voter, it is the political power of the voter to deny someone else's freedom.

Most people who are not you have no incentive to protect your freedom. They do not know you, and they are not denied anything by denying your freedom. So in a direct democracy, people who have no motivation to protect your freedom are given the political power to decide your freedom. And it doesn't usually work out well.

But what government do we choose in place of direct democracy? Dictatorship? Again, the dictator has no motivation to protect your freedom. The real problem we see with both a democracy and a dictatorship is that the people with the political power do not have motivation to protect your freedom, and because of that, they are as likely to deny freedom as to allow it.

So the solution to this problem must be a government which is motivated to protect people's freedom. That is where representative democracy comes in. The idea of representative democracy is that if someone with political power isn't protecting the freedoms of the people, that person should lose his political power. But who decides when a politician is not protecting the freedoms of the people? The majority of the people do.

The idea is to use the majority vote as a method preventing corruption in politicians, as a method of preserving freedom. The idea is not to allow the majority the power to deny freedoms or make politicial decisions; in a representative democracy, majority votes serve to remove poor politicians from power.

The hope here is that we will get a different kind of politician in power, a better kind. Take this example, for instance: Let's say we have three groups of people with competing moralities. We'll call them groups A, B, and C.

In a dictatorship, the freedoms of any of the groups could be ignored because the dictator doesn't have any incentive to protect those freedoms.

In a democracy, when the freedoms of group A come up for a vote, groups B and C may vote against those freedoms, for groups B and C do not have any incentive to protect them. When the freedoms of group B come up for a vote, groups A and C may vote against them. When the freedoms of group C come up for a vote, groups A and B may vote against them. In the end, the only time a group's freedom and interests are looked out for is a group which encompasses 51% or more of the population, and that still leaves 49% or less of the population with no one looking out for them.

But let's look at the same example in representative democracy. In a representative democracy, if a politician only appeals to group A, he'll only get one third of the votes. If a politician only appeals to any one of the three groups, he'll only get a third of the votes. In order to win, this politican needs to appeal to at least two of the three groups. And since not everyone in those groups is likely to vote for him, he's saftest appealing to all three groups. The hope behind this is that each group would sooner preserve its own freedoms than deny the freedoms of another. If group A believes in enslaving group B, and a candidate supports enslaving both group A and group B, then group A is likely to vote for the candidate who supports enslaving no one instead. Group A would rather look out for its own freedom.

Representative democracy still has problems, especially when one group becomes large enough to encompass the majority. When that happens, a candidate needs appeal only to that one group in order to win, and again 49% or less of the population is left with nothing. In order to prevent this problem, the founders of the nation made our federal government very popular. When there are more people, more different groups to represent, it is more difficult for one group to gain a majority. However, it is not impossible.

Okay, now that we understand the role of democracy, we should be able to better understand whether we can do without it. If we could come up with some other, better method to encourage politicians to protect the freedoms of the people and to replace those politicians who do not, then we would be able to replace democracy with this new method. I haven't heard any good suggestions for replacing democracy yet, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Jaxian,
I didn't write that I thought democracy was self-ruling. I probably wasn't clear on what I meant.
I meant the ideal way the world to be run, would be for everyone to live in peace without the need for a government for the benefit of each other and the world, but that I did not believe we, as a species, were ready for this.
I feel that way about the world and democracy also. I do not feel that everyone is ready for democracy yet.
I believe democracy is a part of the evolution of humanity. However, I do not believe democracy to be the end of the evolution of government. I believe that it is capable of evolving beyond what it is now, as we evolve socially.

Hi, this is my first post on here, so I will defintatly try to not look like a complete ass. But to start off my post I will qoute Churchil on this, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." I truly believe that Democracy is the best form of goverment to any previous. It is not the type of goverment that fails any of these but actually the people representing and the people being represented. As any blind man can see, people in America today take for granted thier goverment, not caring on any other election but the presidents, and only caring which candidate will give them the most money back. So yes, democracy is the best form of contemporary goverment.

Well, you basically blast the 'people" as being corrupt, then turn around and say democracy is the best system. There is a bit of an inconsistency here.

Absolutely true. Democracy deals with "Who Rules." It does not deal with "How that rule is exercised. There can be democracy with tyranny, and freedom without democracy.

Yep. Every election is an effort to shake the loyalties of voters.

Not just direct democracy, but all forms of democracy.

Its easy to protect a person's freedom- just leave him alone. But in democracies, that has proven to be a very difficult proposition. Monarchies, aristocratic republics seem to do a better job of it.

But does it always work? No. And is not one of the problems that politicians generally do not have to be particularly skilled at anything to get into office. All they have to be is popular, which usually has nothing to with particular knowledge but rather promises to give constituencies "more."



But this is not a realistic scenario.

Right, to a degree. What this means requires is that groups A,B,and C must conform to a ceratin extent.

I am not sure what you mean with these statements. Could you explain a bit for me?

In order for democracy to function there must be a common frame of reference. It means that everyone sort of has to agree with the general principles; the debate rages along the details. Otherwise compromise is impossible, and so democracy breaks down. Its one of the reasons why critics of democracy believe democracy is inherently totalitarian.

The scenaroi presented was right to a certain degree. BUT the the three groups must have that common frame of reference. Otherwise it will be difficult for that person to gain the support of two groups. But if there is a common frame of reference, all that person has to do is peel away support by appeals of "compromise." And that would end the freedom protecting aspects of democracy.