← Back to context

Comment by teiferer

14 hours ago

> The best level of democracy is no democracy.

That's a quite fatal view. I'm not going to defend the shortcomings of democracy as a system or the issues all real implementations have. But democracy has a feature that is unique about it: as long as it actually is a democracy, as soon as things go a way that the people don't like, they can do something about it and change course. For better or worse, but they can. That's the main point of democracy.

Besides, having votes or electionsor is really just a minor detail of the concept of democracy. There is much more to it, like a free conversation in society, strong independent education, journalism, justice, protection of minorities, etc. The will of the people doesn't fall from the sky or is set in stone. It's a permanent conversation which needs all the other mechanisms. If all that happens is a vote every few years, that's not at all indicative of a democracy. Neither is democracy synonymous with majority rule.

> Very few people realize that there is option to not use government cohersion as a solution to everything.

What is "cohersion"? There are "cohesion" and "coercion". Assuming the latter, what does this have to do with democracy? An autocracy or dictarship or whatever non-democratic system you can imagine also likely has a government, and their coercion mechanisms tend to be worse than in democracies. In a democracy you have an independent judical system that you can use against government overreach.

>There is much more to it, like a free conversation in society, strong independent education, journalism, justice, protection of minorities, etc.

All in theory. Otherwise we wouldn't debate this. Historically none of these traits are unique to democracy, but developed society. US had a civil war over protection of minorities even though it was considered a democracy.

>In a democracy you have an independent judical system that you can use against government overreach.

Which can only follow laws passed by the government. Separation of powers is not unique to democracy. Again the coercion mechanisms doesn’t matter, but the severity of it.