The clock is ticking for USA....

[TorontoNoctis]

Democracy means depending on the intelligence of the masses to select leaders. Therefore, democracy is awful if large amounts of your citizenry is uneducated or in poverty (who has time for books if you're struggling to survive and doing manual labor all day). So long as vast swaths of citizens live at the subsistence level, democracy of any type is an awful idea.

Really, it does not take ten pages to come to that conclusion .

As to whether democracy or authoritarianism is better for innovation and an economy, the form of government, that is a complicated question. The form of government can be isolated from the type of economy. It is clear that a central, planned economy is less innovative and inefficient. But China is no longer a central planned economy. China is obviously capitalist. For that you have to look to North Korea or Cuba. But then again Cuba is not a failure. I suspect the answer will be answered definitively in the next 50-150 years. Nanotechnology, cryonics, androids and robots, sentient AI and mind uploading do not just require highly developed high tech economies but are a threat to an authoritarian regime. But such is science fiction rather than fact .

 

[Chinaownseverything]

Democracy means depending on the intelligence of the masses to select leaders. Therefore, democracy is awful if large amounts of your citizenry is uneducated or in poverty (who has time for books if you're struggling to survive and doing manual labor all day). So long as vast swaths of citizens live at the subsistence level, democracy of any type is an awful idea.

Really, it does not take ten pages to come to that conclusion .

As to whether democracy or authoritarianism is better for innovation and an economy, the form of government, that is a complicated question. The form of government can be isolated from the type of economy. It is clear that a central, planned economy is less innovative and inefficient. But China is no longer a central planned economy. China is obviously capitalist. For that you have to look to North Korea or Cuba. But then again Cuba is not a failure. I suspect the answer will be answered definitively in the next 50-150 years. Nanotechnology, cryonics, androids and robots, sentient AI and mind uploading do not just require highly developed high tech economies but are a threat to an authoritarian regime. But such is science fiction rather than fact .

IN a democracy one does not get to select leaders. The POLITICAL PARTY like in the USA they have Democrats and Republican selects the leaders. The only thing that people vote for are whether the republicans win or the democrats win. Political parties are mainly funded by large corporations, so in democracy the large corporations choose who becomes the president and senators.

 

[TorontoNoctis]

IN a democracy one does not get to select leaders. The POLITICAL PARTY like in the USA they have Democrats and Republican selects the leaders. The only thing that people vote for are whether the republicans win or the democrats win. Political parties are mainly funded by large corporations, so in democracy the large corporations choose who becomes the president and senators.

This is not exactly true; it very much depends on the type of democracy. Direct democracy, electing your leaders directly, is not the only type of democracy. Even then, direct democracy is seen as the next step or movement in most democratic countries (other than the USA of course since their system is designed to be deadlocked). Merely stating that funding comes from corporations and the media does not change the fact that when time comes to the ballot box you pick a political party based on your personal intelligence and therefore either indirectly or directly select a leader. Finally, although there are coward politicians who owe corporations bigtime, once a politician is in control he absolutely does not have to owe anyone. He has the military and the law behind him, so he can give the finger to corporations if he wants especially if he doesn't care if he's just a one term leader.

Your criticism does not change the fact that individuals use their own intelligence to decide who to vote for which is the crux of my argument.

 

[sunny001]

Democracy means depending on the intelligence of the masses to select leaders. Therefore, democracy is awful if large amounts of your citizenry is uneducated or in poverty (who has time for books if you're struggling to survive and doing manual labor all day). So long as vast swaths of citizens live at the subsistence level, democracy of any type is an awful idea.

Really, it does not take ten pages to come to that conclusion .

As to whether democracy or authoritarianism is better for innovation and an economy, the form of government, that is a complicated question. The form of government can be isolated from the type of economy. It is clear that a central, planned economy is less innovative and inefficient. But China is no longer a central planned economy. China is obviously capitalist. For that you have to look to North Korea or Cuba. But then again Cuba is not a failure. I suspect the answer will be answered definitively in the next 50-150 years. Nanotechnology, cryonics, androids and robots, sentient AI and mind uploading do not just require highly developed high tech economies but are a threat to an authoritarian regime. But such is science fiction rather than fact .

I surely hope we invent mind uploading soon. That would be a cool way to learn new things. No longer would we need to worry about inequality in opportunities provided to one's citizens.

 

[CardSharp]

This is not exactly true; it very much depends on the type of democracy. Direct democracy, electing your leaders directly, is not the only type of democracy. Even then, direct democracy is seen as the next step or movement in most democratic countries (other than the USA of course since their system is designed to be deadlocked). Merely stating that funding comes from corporations and the media does not change the fact that when time comes to the ballot box you pick a political party based on your personal intelligence and therefore either indirectly or directly select a leader. Finally, although there are coward politicians who owe corporations bigtime, once a politician is in control he absolutely does not have to owe anyone. He has the military and the law behind him, so he can give the finger to corporations if he wants especially if he doesn't care if he's just a one term leader.

Your criticism does not change the fact that individuals use their own intelligence to decide who to vote for which is the crux of my argument.

The world hasn't seem a direct participatory democracy since the Athenian assembly.

And even that is susceptible to manipulation. In 411 BC, a group of Athenian oligarchs tricked the democratic assembly into voting itself out of existence for the expedience of waging war, only to seize power themselves and tried to keep it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_coup_of_411_BC

The ballot may be yours but the choice may not be and the American power holders are experts in polarizing and manipulating discourse in such a way that intelligent decisions for the good of the country become difficult to make.

 

[TorontoNoctis]

You can neuter the power of corporations, the wealthy and even the media with many local ridings and local politics.

This is why so-called direct democracy can actually be a worse kind of democracy. Suppose you elected the leader of a country like Chinaownseverything wants, with a tickbox for the Supreme Leader. Now you see what happens in countries like the USA where all politics is national and local politics matter little. And if all politics is national, national heavyweights like national news, national media and national corporations can smash their candidate in.

Meanwhile in a country like Canada where the Prime Minister is chosen by the party (a grave sin according to Chinaowns) who makes up that party is always local politicians interested in local issues like pollution and jobs and roads. In a system focused on local issues, outside influence is seen as unwelcome and parachute candidates even worse. Community leaders and citizens will have known the local candidate for months or even years, who could even have grown up in the local constituency. Now tell me how media and corporations can easily corrupt that?

So you see, indirect democracy is better in certain circumstances and can even be much harder to corrupt than a simple yes no vote for a leader.

 

[CardSharp]

You can neuter the power of corporations, the wealthy and even the media with many local ridings and local politics.

This is why so-called direct democracy can actually be a worse kind of democracy. Suppose you elected the leader of a country like Chinaownseverything wants, with a tickbox for the Supreme Leader. Now you see what happens in countries like the USA where all politics is national and local politics matter little. And if all politics is national, national heavyweights like national news, national media and national corporations can smash their candidate in.

Meanwhile in a country like Canada where the Prime Minister is chosen by the party (a grave sin according to Chinaowns) who makes up that party is always local politicians interested in local issues like pollution and jobs and roads. In a system focused on local issues, outside influence is seen as unwelcome and parachute candidates even worse. Community leaders and citizens will have known the local candidate for months or even years, who could even have grown up in the local constituency. Now tell me how media and corporations can easily corrupt that?

So you see, indirect democracy is better in certain circumstances and can even be much harder to corrupt than a simple yes no vote for a leader.

That's true, I am very happy with Canadian democracy (and wish Iggy would get his f'ing act together) but I am still worried over the steadily deteriorating condition of American politics.

In America, there seems to be little intelligent discourse and the dialog is dominated by prominent extremists who can grab the headlines and really brings out the worst aspects of people.

(btw do you visit mapleleafweb?)

 

[Nomenclature]

A few points I feel deserved to be mentioned:

First our Indian friends should understand the success of the Indian democracy is an exception in Asia rather than the norm. I think a lot of Indian posters here may not have realized how exceptional their nation truly is. Most developed economies in Asia first modernized under authoritarian rule (or even Imperial rule, in the case of Japan).

The usual poster-child for Asian democracy, Thailand, is not only constantly under military influence but also failed in maintaining strong economic growth, not to mention the recent political debacle. (I think the democracy-military angle is a fairly interesting one, considering the poster-child for democracy in the Muslim world, Turkey, has also been constantly under strong military influence). The oldest Asian democracy, Philippines, has been in a crisis mode (both economically and politically) for years now.

So democracy's track record in poor Asia countries generally doesn't look that good, although to be fair the track record of authoritarian governments in poor Asia countries ain't uniformly good either. For every South Korea under Park Chung-hee there is a Burma under Than Shwe.

People may still argue Chinese has already passed the stage where an authoritarian government may prove useful. But IMO people should not expect transforming to a democracy, even in China's current stage of development, will necessarily be beneficial to Chinese economy.

Everybody use to assume economic reform will necessarily bring political reform in China, now many of them no longer believe such assumption, but for one reason or another still think political reform will bring more economic reform or at least will not harm the Chinese economy.

The reality is one should not take the pro-market reforms in China for granted. In the world of Chinese politics, people advocating political reform are usually with an anti-market bent and people who are pro-market are usually hostile to political reform. If China is to become a democracy at this stage, there are very real danger that the last 20 years of capitalistic reform could be rolled back in the name of a more even distribution of wealth. Egalitarianism had always been a powerful force in Chinese thinking, long before the Communist came to power.

I also think the supposed disadvantages an non-democratic regime brought to academic/scientific development has been overstated. Take Hong Kong for example, many people (even a lot of Chinese) may not have noticed, but in the last decade Hong Kong has transformed itself into Asia's single greatest city for academic excellence (read any ranking of Asia's research universities will confirm this), DESPITE having a non-democratic government.

Mainland China is facing real challenges in science/innovation, but many of these challenges has more to do with managerial, financial or legal problems rather than the rather absurd notion people in authoritarian states are inherently incapable of independent thinking or innovation.

Take China's Internet sector for example, it suffers from a weak and still underdeveloped financial infrastructure at home, in the sense that a lot of the venture capital are coming from the West and they are not willing to take the risk and fund new business model. It's much easier to make your investor in the U.S to give you money if you tell them you're building a Chinese Facebook-clone or Twitter-clone than if you have this crazy new idea that's uniquely Chinese. Until a new breed of homegrown Chinese venture capitalists emerges, one can only expect more copycats.

As for China vis-a-vis U.S. I think the Chinese government itself is very realistic in its policy goals, their currently stated goal being to become a middle-level developed country by 2050, and Wen remarked earlier this year it will take China at least another 100 years to become a modern nation.

China has came pretty far from the late 1970s, when we had no functioning education system, no legal system (we did not even have a criminal law! Just picture that), no real economy, to where we're now today. But really we've still have a long way to go.

(A footnote: I still remember growing up in Beijing during the 80s, watching variety shows sponsored by Thailand's Charoen Pokphand Group every weekend and thinking Thailand is such prosperous country. Back then having imported Thai rice on the family dinner table was a real symbol of prestige even in Beijing, and wave after wave of illegal Chinese migrants crossed Sino-Thai border to earn a living. And now 20 years later China is almost up there with Thailand in per capita terms, and will probably overtake them in, say, two years time. To me that's a far greater success than overtaking Japan in national GDP.)

 

[Chinaownseverything]

who makes up that party is always local politicians interested in local issues like pollution and jobs and roads.

These political parties get their funding from corporations, the party members that are allowed to run need to get the approval of major corporations. The people chosen by the party will always be a corporate shill not the person who wants to make the community better.

 

[Chinaownseverything]

A good example of CANADIAN FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY

Nobody supports the war in IRAQ yet the government sends soldiers and ships to kill Iraqis.



Canada and the Iraq War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chrétien's decision reflected the view of the general Canadian public: In March 2003 a poll conducted by EKOS Research Associates for the Toronto Star and the Montreal newspaper La Presse found 71% of those questioned did not support the United States-led invasion, with 27% expressing disapproval.[3] As well, the Prime Minister's advice to the viceroy was based on feasibility problems for Canada: on 31 March 2003, Maclean's magazine reported that "Canada has committed about 2,000 troops to Afghanistan this summer, a significant contribution given the stretched state of the Canadian military."

 

[whocares]

whats this weird belief that the authoritarian chinese goverment won't screw up again.

authoritarian screw ups can be very costly (great leap forward).

 

[sunny001]

whats this weird belief that the authoritarian chinese goverment won't screw up again.

authoritarian screw ups can be very costly (great leap forward).

I am happy that they are happy with their present form of governance. Who are we to say anything. Obviously, their leadership is showing great commitment for improvement in their way of life. We should only encourage them. A stronger and responsible China should also be in our interests.

 

[sunny001]

These political parties get their funding from corporations, the party members that are allowed to run need to get the approval of major corporations. The people chosen by the party will always be a corporate shill not the person who wants to make the community better.

Political parties gets funds from corporate sector. True, but they lobby for reform measures that would enable them to succeed in their business. You see US is capitalist country. They believe better business leads to better lives. They believe those private firms would uplift the life of its citizens, Unlike China where all social services are run by Government. There is nothing wrong in it, they are just different forms of governance.

They just believe in people to do the right thing. Where as China, I think, believes only few have the virtue to do the right thing

 

[whocares]

I am happy that they are happy with their present form of governance. Who are we to say anything. Obviously, their leadership is showing great commitment for improvement in their way of life. We should only encourage them. A stronger and responsible China should also be in our interests.

well, i happen to be a principled fan of liberty authoritarian fanboyism despite colossal historical errors of such regimes makes me go grrrrr

 

[Chinaownseverything]

well, i happen to be a principled fan of liberty authoritarian fanboyism despite colossal historical errors of such regimes makes me go grrrrr

Except no regime in history (except Singapore which is also mostly chinese) has China's form of government. In China the people in power get the power by taking IQ tests and studying science.

Most of the regimes that you are thinking of are regimes where the country leader is the general and he uses the army to stay in power, he pays off the army by robbing the citizens and giving it to the army.

There are many types of authoritarian governments. Meritocracies, Technocracies, Monarchy, Military dictatorship etc.....

This article explains how one becomes a CCP member

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