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Comment by leppr | Hacker News Reader

"Representative democracies" train people to be apathetic.

Since birth they are made to believe that the miraculous democratic republic they live in gives them agency, and that the reason they actually don't have agency is because their fellow citizens are stupid and can't vote for the right things.

The result is a feeling of justified helplessness. There's no feeling of outrage at the greedy tyrannical ruling class, because after all either you or your neighors "chose" them.

And if taxation laws are unjust, it's your neighbors' fault. They voted for red while blue would obviously have your best interests in mind. Nevermind the fact that both red and blue are part of the same wealth and social class, who benefit from the same laws.

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Democracy is very successful in preventing political violence. Violence is incredibly destructive to people’s real daily welfare.

It's also incredibly successful in destroying social mobility, causing people to be stuck in ever-increasing levels of poverty - which is pretty destructive to peoples welfare too.

Not to mention it prevents political violence at the expense of causing extreme violence in foreign nations. As long as its not us, right?

I would say with this that unfortunately democracy = capitalism in the world we live in. And its really capitalism that causes those things, rather than democracy itself. I dont want to give the impression I hate democracy as an idea, just how we've implemented it.

> It's also incredibly successful in destroying social mobility.

I find it difficult to agree with this sentiment. Social mobility might have decreased in the last four decades. But in the longer perspective there has never been a more egalitarian and meritocratic social structure than in our time. And that structure exists mainly in the democratic states of the world.

The idea that there are "ever-increasing levels of poverty" in western democracies is transparently false. Would you like to try to provide some evidence for that?

> "ever-increasing levels of poverty"

people who say this are actually not saying the literal meaning of that sentence. I believe they mean that they observe ever increasing levels of wealth amongst some people, but not themselves or their friends/peers. Therefore, they equate the fact that they are not at the same relative level of wealth as some wealthy people, and thus, conclude that it must be that poverty is increasing.

And people who say this in response think that just because overall quality of life is increasing on average the people on the lower end of the spectrum cant be in relative poverty

OP was talking about representative democracy specifically, not democracy in general. There are other ways to go about it. In fact, there are ways to go about representative democracy that are drastically different from the status quo, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegate_model_of_representati....

And there are democracies out there today that aren't capitalist, in the true meaning of that word:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Mun...

https://pdfhost.io/v/Hrr2IgtuS_SocialContractoftheDemocratic...

> "Representative democracies" train people to be apathetic.

Is there any evidence that there is any system of government that does so less?

Not yet but i'm hopeful about ideas like liquid democracy https://liquidfeedback.com/en/

So what's better?

Personally I think Democracy could be nice. I think there are systems of governance that can allow everyone to have agency on their life without necessarily having to be rich enough to passport-shop.

Calling our democratic Republics simply "Democracy" is another cool helplessness-inducing newspeak trick. That language implicitly positions the system on the extreme-end of citizen-agency, so logically everything else must be more authoritarian.

In fact, assuming you live in one of these so-called "Democracies", think about how much your country's laws and policies impact you, and then think how much effort and input you provide to deciding those laws and policies. The ratio is most likely ridiculous.

We always say "direct democracy doesn't work because people don't care about every issue", but there's an universe of possibilities between Democratic Republic ("chose between red and blue every five years") and simplistic direct democracy ("country-wide majority vote on every government decision").

I'm open for alternatives and improvements on what we currently have. I still don't feel very clear after reading what you just wrote. I don't think the US has a pure representative democracy (citizens vote directly on many issues) and I also don't think representative democracy inherently leads to a binary red/blue decision, as I think number of political parties is often determined by the particular rules of the election process.

Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the system?

Liquid democracy in 60 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xln9CTzPbck

Not the original poster, but whenever the topics comes up I tell one of the following semi-jokes ( semi, because I am more and more convinced we should try at least one ):

1. Automatic jail time for anyone, who held public office after they leave on the assumption that must have done something. Side benefit: prisons would improve drastically.

2. Absolutely random election for every office in the land. This should spice things up. Side benefit: we would quickly find out what exactly they higher ups want to do about overpopulation of the planet.

3. Term limits for congress. It will never happen, but it is nice to dream.

Haha, I'm not sure about #1, however I like #2 and #3. I think sortition (#2) could provide new perspectives and help us know whether we like our current system or not.

I think overall I would prefer more short-term legislative experiments—the impression I get is that people (especially at the US federal level) try to write law or create programs ostensibly for the long-term, and I'm curious what a short-term experiment with reflection and re-evaluation would look like. E.g., trying sortition for one two elections, or a law that establishes term limits but has an expiration date.

Liquid democracy is designed with the idea that people don't want to worry about every issue, but should be allowed to change their 'proxy' for whatever issue at any time they please not only election cycles. My representative should be registered to me and if I want another one I just pick one. https://liquidfeedback.com/en/

I see some potential upsides to this—flexibility, localized decision making, etc.—and am curious, what downsides do you see coming from it?

Switzerland

Why Switzerland?

We have (semi-)direct democracy :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland#Direct...

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