Democracy. Is it worth it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0d4-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html?hpid=z2

Death of this dignified man reminded me of tiny state of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew's personal success story. I don't know whether any of you read his From Third World to First: The Singapore Story but it is definitely worth your time.

In this way I would like to question the effectiveness of democratic rule. Being a mix of liberal economic policies and political authoritarianism Singapore manage to escape poverty and join the world's most developed countries in 30 (!) years. Don't you think on a limited time span centralized and strong government show better results than volatile and gentle democracies. Examples of South Korea and Taiwan included.

 

That dignified man was a collaborator with the Japanese during their occupation of Singapore during WWII. He wasn't forced to work for them, but chose to.

Just to balance things.

 

To balance things out....
The look on your face an hour later if you kindly refused to work with the Japanese during their occupation... can you describe that?

 

It's not really effective.


My company gets employed by local and state governments.
Sometimes they ask us and others to make plans costing millions. They are ok-plans to good-plans. Than an election happens. And the new government pulls the plug on it, to invest what remains of that budget on other plans. So all that time and money invested goes down the drain.


A change of government.... is just insanely expensive.
If a dictator through some corrupt system is more expensive,......

Well nobody knows. We just assume a democracy is better.

 

There is no governmental style that is necessarily better than the others. It all comes down to many, many other outside factors such as resources and the history of the society as well as what is going on around the world.

Had the US started under a communist system that system would probably still be in practice today.

You can't just plop down a system of governance anywhere in the world and expect that system to bring success by itself.

 

I am not suggesting demolition of democratic rule in the US, that would be nonsense. The system that operates, even poorly, is always better than something that can be created but required severe change. However if the democracy is not that good why are we fighting for democracy and human rights all over the world (even if local inhabitants do not want to be liberated)? Citizens of Saudi Arabia seem to be pretty satisfied with absolutely undemocratic government. I don't know much about Libya and Syria but I guess they were much happier at times of authoritarian rulers.

 

We are still following the Truman Doctrine.

The Truman Doctrine, 1947. With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.

 

Did you read the article I linked? Did you?

He applied for a job the Japanese had listed in a newspaper. I even made that clear in my post. There was no force involved whatsoever.

How you get from that position to what it would be like to refuse to work for the Japanese is a world apart.

So, speaking of looks on faces, how's it feel to have egg on yours?

 

Hmm, you've found one example of totalitarian success, even if we were all to agree it was a success. Are you not aware of hundreds of examples of totalitarian failures in recent history, leading to poverty, corruption at best, mass executions, civil wars, genocides at worst.

 

First of all, Singapore was never a totalitarian country as you put it. It was dominant-party democracy. Still pretty far from Saddam or even Assad.
Second, South Korea and Taiwan followed the same path after WWII. Now they are stable and democratic societies.
Third, what you don't like about Singapore success story? Even brain-washed Marxists cannot deny Lee Kuan Yew's success.

 

True Democracy cannot work, what our founding fathers envisioned was the wealthy and uncorruptable to rule and represent the people as a whole. The professional politician killed our ideal sometime in the guilded age.

 

Yes, and democracy is Marxism, a famous WWII leader said!

 

Oh so Singapore is a democracy after all (admittedly I am not an expert on its political system). So does it answer the question you asked in the title of this thread?

 

Listen, the world is a little bit more complex that you tend to believe. Singapore is a nation that was led by one man for more than 30 years. Is it possible in a democracy? Yet it is clearly far from totalitarian state.

 

Sure, if people have a choice to democratically change their leadership - it's undoubtedly a democracy even if people choose not to exercise this right. I guess the answer to your question is unambiguous yes, democracy is absolutely worth it, your OP Singapore example confirms the conclusion in fact.

 

I think you are making some very good points. There is of course no doubt that a dictatorship is most efficient and if it was a benevolent dictator this likely be the best place a nation to get to.

The problem of course is how to guarantee that the dictator who replaces the benevolent one will be as kind.

A problem with "democracy" it can be inherently inefficient. Another problem is that a democracy without proper restraints can quash individual rights and freedoms just like a dictatorship.

This is where we sit now. Our democracy continues to quash individual rights and freedoms, is becoming more and more of a police state and is horrifically inefficient.

Without an educated public a democracy is easily corrupted. In our case both red and blue work for the interests of the oligopolies and the voting public are kept too uneducated and ignorant to realize it and so they happily keep voting in governments who are complicit in helping to give the oligopolies more power. The oligopolies then use this power to create a system of quasi indentured slavery.

Without a fair and free media an uneducated group of sheep are easily manipulated into going any desired direction. In this way the Oligopolies can allow voices of dissent giving the appearance of freedom... so called "necessary illusions in a Democratic society" while further enslaving the populace.

These voices of dissent are easily lost and drowned out by the cacophony of the raging masses.

Elected officials are controlled in relatively the same manner. Sure there will a few in congress that will speak up for the people from time to time but these voices are easily drowned out by those who are on the take.

There is a reason why we have ridiculously serious penalties for those caught insider trading but, for those in congress it is perfectly legal. Just shut your mouth and go along with the system and you will be well taken care of.

There is a reason why Phil Donahue has not worked since he publically criticized the Iraq war. The system allows criticism but you will pay a price and of course most people are not willing to pay that price.

What happened to Phil is a warning to those who speak out of turn in the future. The same has happened with whistle blowers and I am not talking about Snowden. I am talking about those who tried to use legitimate and legal channels.

I still prefer democracy over other forms of Government as it is the one most likely to maintain individual rights and freedoms. The Constitution is one of the greatest documents ever written (IMO) as it took our system of government a long time to figure out how to circumvent the rights and freedoms guaranteed in that document.

Unfortunately the system has figured it out and it does not matter whether one votes Red or Blue. Both continue to trample on individual rights and freedoms, create a police state, and reduce economic freedom by imposition of indentured slavery through regulation and selective tax laws.

There is a reason why our high school graduates, after completing 12 friggen years of education, can not tell you what a logical fallacy is never mind have a good understanding of what constitutes a valid argument.

Ignorant sheep are far easier to control.

 

His job was to listen to open radio stations, and translate it. He did that, while he was shadowed. Your idea's that Japanese occupied territories were an open and free society, and you could do what you like and walk the path you want.... what a joke. It was hardly better than the ruthless British colonial rule. And to help the fight against your colonial oppressor has it's appeal.

 

That waste you are describing is probably peanuts compared to what they spend as "Foreign Aid". For instance Israel has been such foreign aid receiver for the past 67 years while many Americans are subsisting on food stamps, losing their homes or racking up huge credit card debts.

The Israel Lobby is huge and powerful and can practically make or break the American President. It dictates Washington how to conduct their Foreign Policies.

In a democracy nobody is responsible, and usually the rich get to rule or get their wishes looked after. The common folk shoulders the responsibility and bears the cost. The common folk also fights the wars, which are rarely for the defense of their own homeland, but rather for someone else.

What a thankless sacrifice!

http://thebilzerianreport.com/how-much-does-israel-cost-the-average-american/

 

Groucho also said: "I refuse to join a club that would have me as a member."

And likewise also has literally nothing to with with anything we've been discussing here...

 

not only in short time, but also in long run, strong and centralised rule is necessary; the US and UK are examples of it.

 

We're not fighting for democracy all over the world, we're fighting for governments to do our biddings. Washington tosses around the words 'democracy' and 'human rights' for propaganda reasons. An example is Syria where the majority of people support and voted for Assad, and yet we will not accept him because of his alliance with Russia. The excuse Kerry used was that there was still fighting going on, even though the only people going against Assad were foreigners. Yet in Ukraine where the majority of the people were not represented in the elections because of threats against the candidates, Kerry accepted the results...even though they were still fighting.

 

They do. We don't choose democracy because it's more effective at producing good choices. We do it because it requires us all to share responsibility for the bad ones.

No one believes even half the folks in this country have anything intelligent to contribute to the process of government (although we rarely agree on which half). But if we excluded even a small group of people from the process, those people would eventually find a fault with even the best policies and would claim tyranny had imposed that fault on them. This is how revolutions occur.

America will never have another revolution. Because anything we've ever done wrong was equally the responsibility of everyone who voted for it, failed to vote on it, or failed to convince enough of us there was a better way. And the most anyone could ask for is that next time we consider all suggestions and vote for the guy who seems to offer the best ones. Which is all we've ever promised.




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The reason we haven't had another revolution is because the country is too large, too powerful, and people are too dispersed from one another to really unite against the government. Other than the Civil War, there were the draft riots in New York City, where the Irish who couldn't afford to get out of the draft in the Civil War began lynching blacks. And then there was the war in Boston, when the poverty stricken Irish Catholics entered en masse into the hub of Protestant Anglo-Saxonism.

I had a grand uncle who found out the people in the nice German town he lived in had it up to here with the feuding Greeks and decided to get rid of them. He placed an order for two thousand rifles, which immediately aroused suspicion. The Federal government was notified, and that was the end of that.

 

Our Founding Fathers wanted the country to be led by those with a nobility of character rather than birth. Ha! And look at what we have now. Instead of nobility, we have arrogance of character to the umpth degree.

 

The weird thing about Singapore's extremely strict criminal law system is that some of the men will be really, really rude in passing because they know no one's going to punch them. I think every man I bumped into on the street there swore at me and that's pretty weird for a place as ethnically diverse as Singapore.

I also question the wisdom of having a "Mer Lion," sounds dangerous.

Don't get me wrong, overall it seems like a great city, but every action has a reaction.