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Comment by bayesianhorse | Hacker News Reader

These countries are more democratic than most of the rest of the world. But in public opinion, transparency actually hurts the overall perception of democracy, whereas transparency is needed for a democracy to work its magic and deliver the benefits.

I think most western nations got more democratic over the past decades, rather than the opposite. It's just that we have reached a point were current dirt can be discovered in bigger quantities than past dirt.

You won't find a lot of antidemocratic scandals in Russia... No TV Stations is going to point out that the Krim-Referendum was a little hasty and done under russian guns. Does absence of transparency mean Russia is more democratic than the west?

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Sure, they are "more democratic than most of the rest of the world". And maybe it is also true that it "got more democratic over the past decades". But if you want to assess the state of something from a more universal and neutral perspective you should define a clear criteria and then assess how well these are satisfied.

If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want. You can verify this easily by looking at some poll results. As soon as there are lobbyists who influence the elected representatives, there is an inequality in the power between different interest groups. This leads to less democratic societies. In our current societies not every citizen can participate equally, therefore these are not democracies. Compare it to a mathematical definition of equality... You cannot say 0.9 is equal to 1 just because it is almost equal. In a direct democracy everyone has almost equal possibilities to participate... In a representative democracy this "almost" get's a little weaker. In a representative democracy with powerful lobbyist groups this "almost" becomes even more weak so that you cannot even call it equal anymore.

So I completely agree when people look at current democracies from an idealistic point of view and say that they are not really democracies. My personal opinion is that a much more ideal democratic society is actually possible with the advances in IT. Direct democratic participation could be possible using end-to-end auditable voting systems with cryptographic methods.

Meaning no offense, I think you don't have a clue how politics work. Yes it is possible to ask every citizen cryptographically - although currently maybe 5% have the knowledge to participate - about every single issue but then that does not mean the overall system works.

When laws are passed, they are both compromises between major stakeholders (and aggregates of minor ones) and a relatively thought-through propositions. You just don't have a clue how much work it is to get laws in a shape that is technically, legally and politically feasible.

When you hold referendums for minor points of policies, you will get a package of policies that may not be workable, or worse: Because of the combinatorics of opinions, the final policy disagrees with the majority of the voters - just as in the current systems.

"If you define democracy as something where every citizen can participate equally you can easily come to the conclusion that all these countries in fact are not democracies because clearly these governments often do things that the population does not want."

The definition of democracy continues, pretty significantly:

"... either directly or indirectly through elected representatives"

Direct democracy is practised essentially nowhere (about 50,000 Swiss) and every other democracy in the world is representative. Clearly, when someone refers to 'democracy', with no other context, they're referring to a representative strain, and therefore the UK, USA, etc. are functioning democracies. If you want to discuss whether a representative democracy is worse than a direct one, we can have that debate, but don't try to distort things by making outlandish, untrue statements right off the bat.

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