[HN Gopher] Must democracy "deliver the goods" to beat autocracy?
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       Must democracy "deliver the goods" to beat autocracy?
        
       Author : tornadofart
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2025-08-08 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (democracyorbust.bearblog.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (democracyorbust.bearblog.dev)
        
       | maldonad0 wrote:
       | Democracy, or "Democracy"? Did the people have any choice in the
       | Patriot Act and many others? On the actions following the 2007
       | crisis and the extraordinary bailout? Do EU citizens have any
       | choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control?
       | 
       | Democracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After
       | a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites
       | and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than
       | a show.
       | 
       | The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups
       | where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going
       | on.
        
         | kingstnap wrote:
         | In small groups, you can often manage consensus rather than
         | majority rule.
         | 
         | If you had a small group that actually frequently had 50%+1
         | rulings, I feel like you would fracture real fast.
        
           | maldonad0 wrote:
           | In small groups, democracy is synonomous with consensus.
        
         | nosignono wrote:
         | > The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small
         | groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows
         | what's going on.
         | 
         | This is demonstrably untrue, there are plenty of cases of
         | stable democratic systems. They just tend to exist outside of
         | capitalism (or stand in opposition to traditional capitalist
         | practice). It often relies on syndicalism or federation to stay
         | distributed. Maybe that's compatible with your "small groups"
         | statement, where many small groups coordinate together to form
         | big groups to get things done.
        
       | arduanika wrote:
       | Generally a nice short post of unmitigated moral clarity, but
       | then it's jarring to see this equivocation about "the arguably
       | autocratic China". "Arguably".
       | 
       | Are we being asked to call a spade a spade here, or what? If so,
       | why these weasel words?
       | 
       | When emulating those "who went to Spain to fight Franco in the
       | 1920s [sic]", is the idea that we should denounce fascism, but
       | only in ways that won't offend the Party?
        
         | maldonad0 wrote:
         | The author is conflating democracy with liberalism.
        
           | nosignono wrote:
           | Many such cases. The Democrats, (in)famously, conflate the
           | two. Ask Democrats about direct democracy and you'll get a
           | whooolllle lot of hemming and hawing.
        
         | tornadofart wrote:
         | Author here. Not a native english speaker. Will remove
         | "arguably".
        
       | nosignono wrote:
       | A whole of stuff here feels... emotionally loaded in a way that's
       | designed to be manipulative rather than heartfelt. Saying "A gun
       | craves to be shot" is a clear example -- guns don't crave
       | anything. I'm a pro-gun leftist, so maybe I'm just sensitive to
       | this _specific_ example.
       | 
       | Another example, much of the article uses "China" to suggest a
       | broad, villainous other. Like so much American media, this reads
       | like, "What are we, _China_? " or alternatively, "Surely we are
       | better than _China_... " Which assumes a level of backwater, out
       | of date, poorly run culture in China.
       | 
       | As a concrete example, the author says something to the effect
       | of, "China claims to have quickly built a hospital, which I very
       | much doubt." And explains nothing further -- why do you doubt
       | that? What evidence do you have? Or are you just relying on your
       | audience to credulously agree that because it came out of China,
       | it's bad or a lie?
       | 
       | Additionally, the article appeals to the idea that we are all
       | self interested by our fundamental nature. That we're all
       | programmed to survive at all costs, and the means of that
       | survival is _individual_ self interest. Plenty of folks (myself
       | included) believe that our survival instinct is one of social
       | cohesion -- we survive because we band together into social
       | groups.
       | 
       | So I agree with the conclusion -- we _should_ be fighting
       | fascists, and we should be doing it with strong policy and
       | aggressively pushing fascists out of shared spaces (a bar that
       | permits one nazi to be there is a nazi bar), I just think this
       | article doesn 't make the case for that very effectively.
        
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