Democracy is Dead...What Next?

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

The Islamics,Soros outfits and other left wing outfits can and have organised simultaneous worldwide protests at the drop of a hat,but I agree mainstream society hasnt done this as yet.

OP, you may be interested in Jason Brennan’s new book 'Against Democracy' in which he describes an epistocratic system of governance. My impression is that he advocates a franchised electorate based on political knowledge as he believes that people who have power over other people's lives ie voters, should have political competence. It is quite radical.

Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us--it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong.

In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results--and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse--more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government--epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable--may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.

A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines.

Against Democracy

Washington Post review link:

Democracy vs. Epistocracy

a reply to: Morrad

Thank you I confess I've never even heard of epistocratic ! But from the piece quoted is that not the same as a technocracy?

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

The rise of Nationalism is, in reality, something of a canard. What we will see and are, in some circles already seeing is a huge backlash against Nationalism. You speak of closing the borders and your immediately slandered as a racist and a xenophobe. The backlash is so strong, there's every reason to believe Brexit will be delayed to the point it will never happen.

See........the thing is that there's this tipping point thing. You have sufficient inundation of immigrants and you get an override of the "born here" population's vote. Then you fragment that vote with identity politics in a minority majority population and the only ultimate winner is that of a coalition of immigrants and aggrieved minorities. Its a scheme working quite well for the Democrats who won the popular vote because the immigrants in the big cities align themselves with the Democrats as do those who self-identify as aggrieved minorities.

What we're seeing in Europe is an anomaly which wouldn't have happened if Frau Merkel hadn't made the huge mistake of over welcoming millions of refugees into Germany and by extension, Europe. It was a classical "over reach"; she overloaded the domestic population's ability to cope and worse, she miscalculated the degree of violence latent in the immigrant refugee population she so willingly welcomed into Germany.

The result? My guess is a weird sort of backlash in which the German government will turn on its own citizenry and criminalize any type expression of anti-immigrant language or action.

Its a very twisty thing, this. At the end of the day, rather than so much as a collapse of Democracy, what we're watching is the collapse of the entire Nation-State type governance because of the ineptitude and raw incompetence of the national governments to effectively deal with the problems they create. So, for example, the US has ceded sovereign control over the borders for so long, it would be near impossible for them to effectively close the borders at this point. By allowing sanctuary cities to exist, the Federal Government has effectively lost sovereign control of many of the largest cities in the US.

There was an analyst type on CNN's Fareed Zakaria's "Global Public Square" this past Sunday who pointed out this very phenomenon and he asserts that as national governments continue their implosion into total impotence, what is replacing them are new, near independent "City States" who are more ideologically aligned with the UN than they are of their respective National Governments. Think about that for a moment, and you see how you get to One World Government! He cited some book that posits "What if the World were run by Cities Mayors".

Interesting times indeed...........if you're not living in one of these "City States" as they trample citizens rights in the furtherance of the UN Agenda 21/20-30.

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

And if you read that article, you'll note the last paragraph wherein the author posits that we can limit the damage done by political ignorance by limiting and decentralizing the power of government, i.e., severely reducing the power held at the Federal level and dramatically increasing the power and autonomy of the developing City States.

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

I thought the same initially but I think it differs. To me it reads as taking the 'techno' out of technocracy and giving that part to the people (or 'selected people'). elysiumfire seems very knowledgable and may be able to clarify.

He favours epistocracy, a ‘rule of the knowers’, in which suffrage would either be limited or diluted by giving more say to those who prove themselves worthy. Towards the end of Against Democracy, he briefly sketches out a few ways we might formally achieve this, including: restricting suffrage to those who can pass a competence exam; plural votes for the educated; an ‘enfranchisement lottery’, where voters are selected at random then trained in political ‘competence’; a nominally democratic government with an emboldened epistocratic council, able to step in when things go too far; and, most dystopian of all, a ‘simulated oracle’, where experts would draw on survey data to determine ‘what the voting public would want if it were fully informed’.

The link is a very critical review of Brennan's book (which I agree with). I posted it as I thought it was relevant to your OP and that you may find it of interest. I personally favour the Swiss style of governance: part direct democracy and part representative democracy.

Link

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

I hate the idea of forcing democracy on other countries.

I hate the idea of waging war in other countries for things that do not directly affect the borders of the U.S.

I hate the idea of playing the regime-change game in other countries--it ALWAYS bites us in the ass.

I hate apathy of all types, but especially voter apathy. So many people don't vote, or do so because of a letter next to a name, and it's infuriating that these same people bitch and moan and complain for the next 4 years, and then rinse and repeat again and again.

Government is a necessary evil, but damn, it's like we're self-sabotaging ourselves with the way that we waste our ability to ensure that it has our best interest at heart.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

I second your statements.

I still believe the rise of social media is partially to blame for the apathy. Most think they are doing something just by posting on Facebook or starting a petition on Change.Org....they don't feel the need to take it to the streets and quite honestly many are just far too lazy. The convenience of the internet means people can vent their spleens but don't actually need to do anything about the topic in question. Many Governments have managed to quietly sedate the people with constant television debt & poverty and the internet hasn't helped. I know of families that don't even sit in the same room anymore, never eat a meal together let alone talk. They are happy in their monged out state and with the status quo and stick their fingers in their ears if they hear something they don't like.

Now the question is...is it the elected or the electorate to blame? And if the electorate, what can be done without total anarchy?

PublicOpinion:

So you're proud about the recent record of worst surveillance laws ever?

My being proud to be British has nothing whatsoever to do with any government or even to do with the monarchy. My allegiance lies with my fellow compatriots who believe in the same Britain as I do. I am talking about my neighbour, my community, and the nation of people I belong to. We each give each other the identity of nation-hood, and we live similarly to the same over-arching societal creed. The differences in socio-economic status are not barriers to this aspect of nation-hood, because nation-hood is the first of the many societal bondings.

My neighbour is not just a neighbour, he is a British neighbour (regardless of colour). My community is not just a community, it is a British community. It is this identification that bonds us, and when one is attacked, the whole is attacked, and when one succeeds, the whole succeeds. Nation-hood is worth all its idealogical weight in psychological gold.

Governments of today do not govern for the people, although we as an electorate still elect them by the same traditional method, and because of this we believe the democratic process is alive and well...which it is. We do still vote democratically, but once we have voted, the illusion kicks in, as those we elect are quickly swallowed up by the globalist agenda, and govern wholly antithetical to the electorate's expectations. This is why apathy kicks in, we feel disenfranchised and disconnected from the government we elect, it is why we don't trust politicians.

The advancement of technology is not a bad thing, it is the way it is used that identifies it as good or bad. To the common man or woman, how one identifies him or herself to the nation in which he or she lives is totally irrelevant to the issue of surveillance laws. The surveillance apparatus is about knowledge and control. It is quite obvious that when a government embeds its workings behind a wall of secrecy and erects a surveillance apparatus all under the term 'national security', it has something to hide, and it indicates that it has also drawn too much power unto itself for reasons that go against the electorate. Governments today have become the very thing they profess to the electorate we should guard against.

Not by any stretch of the imagination can the surveillance apparatus be considered a good thing. It is morally wrong for the government to use such technology against its own people, and the people of its allies. Of course, they can rationalize any excuse under the term national security, but it is still wrong. The British government haven't passed these surveillance laws for the good of the electorate, they have passed them for the government's own benefit, and for the benefit of the globalist agenda. That has nothing whatsoever to do with my pride in being an Englishman, or being a part of the British Isles, along with my Welsh, Scottish, and Irish compatriots.

a reply to: PhyllidaDavenport

I am a monarchist personally. IMO, an organic monarchy, that is, an absolute leader CHOSEN by those this ruler would lead. A person from the common population that is exceptional and above all loyal to the idea of THEIR people.

Democracy is currently obsolete since it can be anything but democratic in our global civilization.

I say lets choose a king and have him serve a term of years. When we want another we choose another. All titles and powers transfered to the new king or queen.

The former king is returned to society with no title or claim to rule.

This is not a title that can be extended to family.

Only a chosen king can rule.

I want a king or Queen commoner that is as exceptional as they are noble to lead me.

ok.... so people have affected change through a democratic process and you think that translates to democracy is dead? what are you talking about? the european union is dog Sh!t. they do nothing for anyone they just siphon money and power out of sovereign states. anyone who thinks that brexit was a mistake cant actually answer a simple question. whats so great about the EU..

PhyllidaDavenport:

Could we do a better job without a Government structure?

Read 'Common Sense' by Thomas Paine.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Thomas Paine 1776.

Unfortunately, we need the 'necessary evil' of a government. We need a structure in place that acts like the beating heart and the intellectual head of the nation, for and on behalf of the nation. When both the electorate and the elected government share the same creed, the nation is happy, because the electorate can see -by its actions, not its words - that the government is truly governing for the people. When you look at the actions of government today, you can clearly perceive that this is not the case, and hasn't been so for last thirty or so years.

Each successive government administration has effectively put in place laws and legislature that has allowed them to draw ever greater powers unto government, and has socially engineered society towards the globalist agenda in collusion with the so-called financial elite, and erected the necessary apparatus to ensure it succeeds. At the same time, they have hit the electorate with crisis after crisis to ensure the relationship between government and the electorate is a dialectical one. One in which the electorate relies heavily on the government to protect them. This helps each successive government administration to impose the globalist agenda upon the electorate through proxy corporate wars (which helps to generate a genuine threat of terrorism), which then necessitates all the unwelcomed and added apparatus they employ.

They have actually successfully implemented the debate between freedom and security, that we have to trade off the former in order to employ the latter. It is such dishonest intellectual idiocy like this that large portions of the electorate have fallen for. They actually believe that it is an honest debate and a transparent bartering system. Let us not forget, that they diluted the former for the latter behind closed doors and secrecy, and they put in place the surveillance apparatus without first informing the electorate that they were going to do so. What they did was illegal, that is, up until they secretly legislated the laws to make it legal, and only then did they do that when the surveillance became public knowledge. They created the modern-day terrorist for this very reason. They have militarised domestic law enforcement agencies, which you can now consider as paramilitary bodyguards of the government.

The simple fact is...if you trade your cherished notions of freedom for a bogus sense of security, you deserve neither. You in fact deserve the government which governs, not for your interests, but for its own, and for the financial elite.

Morrad:

Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government--epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable--may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.

This sounds very much like Plato's 'philosopher kings' concept. Where the philosopher becomes a king, or a king becomes a philosopher, and by the dint of this knowledge and experience (epistocratic-like) the republic gains a benign individual, or group polis that governs dictatorially. For me it holds shades of globalism, but I do not know enough of Brennan's idea yet to be able to give an informed opinion.

Where does the word 'democracy' come from? It comes from the Greek 'demos' which pertains to the ordinary man and woman of the ancient Greek republic. It infers that the Greek people take an active part in their governance by and through elections to elect people to oversee the republic on their behalf.

One of the key issues in the forming of a society is not who governs, but the application of true justice, which has to be applied to the whole aspect of society to protect the whole of society, whether as an individual, or some large group or institution. Through the equal application of justice citizens can feel confident that society proceeds in a good way. When creating a society, justice is the first criteria to put in place, because no station or title in society should ever be able to circumnavigate justice. Governing by conscience is no excuse to escape justice, you have to govern by reason, and seek to implement the greatest freedoms and liberties to the citizens, because that is why they come together as a society, as a republic, or in some other form. It is justice, not rights given, that ensures freedoms and liberties. Rights given can be taken away for and on whatever reason the government sees fit.

When the American Constitution was formulated they needed to set down freedoms and liberties outside of government control, because government does not have the authority to give freedoms or liberties, it can only take them based on the proper criteria, and then only on an individual basis. So the founders of the constitution wrote that 'freedoms and liberties and the pursuit of happiness' was a God-given right, because it moved those virtues of society to a higher power, one that they were confident would never take them away. Therefore, it is a mandated remit that government upholds the highest expression and implementation of the individual's God-given right to be free, and at liberty to pursue his or her own happiness in their own way. Isn't this a good ideological creed upon which to lay the foundation of a society? Do you not think that this sort of ideology is what could bond such a society together? So, why have successive government administrations diminished this noble concept, and put it up for barter for security?

No matter what an enemy tries to do to you, you do not barter your God-given right to freedom for the little bit of security the government could offer you. On that issue there can be no compromise. Always remember and never give it up...individual privacy IS freedom.

The republic has failed not due to a failing in the Constitution, but due to a failure to follow the Constitution. Corruption has been allowed to run rampant and the globalist cabal now controls our strings like a puppetmaster. They did not want Trump, but Trump will likely not fix very much, so that in four years TPTB will simply proceed as planned. Democracy is dead. What next? A tyrannical global oligarchy, coming soon to a planet near you!

a reply to: elysiumfire

Thank you for an informative response. Yes I agree with your questions. I mentioned my preference for the Swiss model which is a federal constitutional republic.