Has democracy had its time ?

[SlickMouse]

I accept that this iss a democracy forum and people generally are in favour of it. But, it seems that some have a slightly distorted view of what democracy is and even more so when it started in this fair land. . To suggest that we had anything recognizable as democracy before we had universal suffrage is to have a very lose view of the definition. So that's 1928 then ? Every thing before that just being a voting mechanism to allow the privileged to maintain there own interests ( some may say that never actually changed)

So, created in 1928 and then suspended again in 1931 till 1945 and then only in 1948 was the right of the privileged to vote more than once removed

So by any modern definition of Democracy we have had it a miserly 64 years, almost exactly the same as the NHS. the other european democracies are much the same, France didnt have universal suffrage till after the war, Germany had it early but then scrapped it in the 1930 as we did. Greece often quoted as the cradle of democracy, only since 1952

The current complaint that the EU is over turning centuries of democratic government is rather weak in the light of day. The complain that its been suspended in Greece even more so, as it was fine to scrap democracy here in the 1930s, because of economic factors but not apparent OK to do the same in the midst of the current problems ?

The rise of democracy in Weston Europe ran parallel to the post war Boom and its easy to conclude that deocratic governments give the most financial prosperity to the people of that country, but the rise of China in particular makes a lie of that as does the mockery of elections in Russia and a good few other pretend democracies

SO if the operations of a democracy is not the best model to feed and care for the population, is there really a moral case to make for operating one to the detriment of the people ? Particularly if the people are determined to make really bad financial choices out of a misplaced nationalism, as would no doubt occur if we had a referendum on EU membership

[ChrisV]

A thoughtful post. My personal opinion on democracy in the UK is that it does not work. The problem with democracy is that it assumes several things:

- the media is unbaised
- the popullation are educated enough to understand the facts
- the popullation are motivated enough to vote
- the popullation doesn't vote for their own individual interests

I would say that most of the above are completely false. The problems that the world faces today cannot be fixed through democracy as nobody will vote in the party that proposes the hard measures. To fix the planet we need to do the following things:

- completely restructure the current world financial system so that wealth is redistributed
- reduce world popullations
- stop capatalism as we are running out of resources so the whole world is sustainable

I cannot see any of the above happening so the only logical conclusion is war. We have already gone into Iraq for oil. We bombed libya to get contracts there. The rare earths in China are running out. How long till the world starts squabbling over everything else?

[flamingreen]

Its not great, but for all its faults its still better than the alteratives.

[SlickMouse]

Its not great, but for all its faults its still better than the alteratives.

is it, if the alternative is financial ruin whilst not democratic peoples prosper

[ChrisV]

....but is it? Democracy pushes the uncomfortable things just of of visual distance. It kicks the can just far enough down the road but at the end of the road there is pile of rubbish. Democracy has allowed our ruling class to avoid any hard decisions. I imagine we would be in a better position if we had a good dictator 50 years ago. Most of our current prosperity was through an empire than exploited the world and through decimating the rest of the world during world war 2.

I like the film Starship troopers where to be a citizen you have to earn the right and only then do you get the chance to vote.

[brianm]

I like the film Starship troopers where to be a citizen you have to earn the right and only then do you get the chance to vote.

That's odd.

From your earlier post I assumed to were against the Iraq & Libyan operations, now you want a system that inherently supports a strong military and which would likely seek opportunities such opportunities to justify its existence...

[SlickMouse]

That's odd.

From your earlier post I assumed to were against the Iraq & Libyan operations, now you want a system that inherently supports a strong military and which would likely seek opportunities such opportunities to justify its existence...

I think he was suggesting a level of civic duty needed to be demonstrable before you could earn the right to vote, rather than literal shoot people

[flamingreen]

I imagine we would be in a better position if we had a good dictator 50 years ago.

A contradiction in tertms. The kind of people who wish to be dictators are never 'good', and even if they start off with apparently good ideals, then power corrupts.

[Tim the plumber]

- completely restructure the current world financial system so that wealth is redistributed
- reduce world popullations
- stop capatalism as we are running out of resources so the whole world is sustainable

We have more resources now than ever. We have 64 years of oil supplies (see wiki) for instance.

Reducing world populations could start with megelomaniacs, any suggestions where to find such individuals?

Redistributing wealth sounds like comunisim. That's been tried, the megelomaniac at the top liked it but nobody else did.

[ChrisV]

China seemed to do it reasonably well. If its not oil it will be water or some other resource. Even if oil lasts us 70 years we're just back to kicking that can.

Communism vs capitalism isn't an easy one side being bette than the other when you look at what is happening now. Capitalism won 30 years ago but If we still had the ussr it might not be so One sided considering the west is collapsing and lets not forget china is a communist country