Scale is the factor here. You could say that small places can benefit from a sort of benevolent authoritarianism. I’m thinking Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco. None of them are bigger than a postage stamp and the population will go along with it. The bigger the country, the more injustices authoritarianism accumulates, the harder it is to keep people in line, the more suppressive it becomes.
Ideally, democracy trumps everything. It is the only system that has the built-in power to cancel itself. It needs all the people to be aware and to participate accordingly. It’s not perfect. It’s not always fair either. But I’d rather live in a system that can decide to end itself than in a system that would try to end me if I wanted to be critical about it.
No, democracy requires active participation, you try to simplify this to either positive or negative actors, but no matter the issue, the vast majority of people simply won’t care.
And the majority that doesn’t really care enough to form an informed opinion is the bane of democracy.
Scale is the factor here. You could say that small places can benefit from a sort of benevolent authoritarianism. I’m thinking Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco. None of them are bigger than a postage stamp and the population will go along with it. The bigger the country, the more injustices authoritarianism accumulates, the harder it is to keep people in line, the more suppressive it becomes.
Ideally, democracy trumps everything. It is the only system that has the built-in power to cancel itself. It needs all the people to be aware and to participate accordingly. It’s not perfect. It’s not always fair either. But I’d rather live in a system that can decide to end itself than in a system that would try to end me if I wanted to be critical about it.
Usually when democracy decides to end itself, it’s because it transforms into autocracy. Democracy doesn’t work and can’t work long term.
Democracy only doesn’t work when the people in it don’t want it to work. To not try is to throw out the baby with the bath water.
No, democracy requires active participation, you try to simplify this to either positive or negative actors, but no matter the issue, the vast majority of people simply won’t care.
And the majority that doesn’t really care enough to form an informed opinion is the bane of democracy.
Thanks for your thoughts. I don’t see either one of us winning the other one over so let’s agree to disagree.
Yeah, there’s probably no other civil outcome of this discussion.