Question

What problems may arise in a democratic society?

Answer 1

Democracy in it’s current form in most places is massively flawed, and with the development of modern information and media age I fear the flaws would simply be ever more apparent and we could run into some really serious trouble in the next few decades.

Here’s the issue, the same reason why general market economy works is why democracy doesn’t, and that is, INCENTIVES.

Market economy works because the incentives of each individuals / companies to better themselves in general end up closest to the most ideal labor and capital distribution . and that in turn betters the most people.

So what is the incentives of politics / governance suppose to be here? I think most would not disagree that no matter to system, the GOAL of politics and governance is to RUN THE COUNTRY FOR THE GOOD OF THE MOST CITIZENS POSSIBLE.

The problem is, does democracy actually fit that line of logic? in theory it should right? because if you run a country well…. you get rewarded and stay in power… that’s how it’s SUPPOSE to work, right? except that really isn’t how it’s shaping up now.

There’s two major problem.

governance quality is hard to really quantify, and most involve continuous policies that take shape over a long period of time, well beyond most political office’s term in democracies, a financial disaster happening on your watch is very very likely to be the result of a lot of policies that happened long before you took office, likewise if your current period is good it is often due to many things well out of your control. So it’s easy to both discredit a government that’s have a good time and it’s easy to shift blames. thus accountability is very difficult.
On the other hand, the other side of “If you run the country well you stay in power” is “If enough people are angry at you you lose power” and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here, because modern politics and governance is extremely complex and long term, #1 is very hard to properly assign blame and credit to, and thus almost all the major democracies in the world have devolved into “DEMONIZING THE OTHER SIDE”

I can talk about a complex series of policies that may have an effect decades from now, or I can say if you vote for Marie Le Pen your voting for Nazis . which one is more likely to be the path of least resistance here? that’s basically what it’s come down to, and coming back to incentives, this means the incentives for anyone NOT in power is to SABOTAGE the government. how’s that suppose to be good for your country if nearly half of your political establishment is trying it’s best to ruin it? because ruining the country = they suck = I win, that’s how the incentives is lining up right now.

So if I get a massive protest going, incite to make it violent, the rioters say… kill or badly injure some police, and the police are forced to fire back. BOOM, GOVERNMENT VIOLENCE! DICTATORSHIP! TOTALLY SHOULD BE TRIED FOR WARCRIME! COUNTRY IN CHAOS CLEARLY SHOWS THE RULING PARTY LOST IT!! that’ll get all the headlines, meanwhile, if I spent a lot of times writing this really great policy paper , probably 5 person in the country would read it without falling asleep and might actually understand it. no reporters do more than make a side note remark on it in their papers.

That’s kind of the incentives we’re looking at here, democracies now almost always reward guys who start riots more than people who actually think about policies. how in the world is that suppose to work for the greater good in the longer run?

This isn’t even getting into that once this cycle of demonizing began, it’s a most vicious downward spiral where everyone will try to one up each other and the rational people quickly gets eliminated because they’ll get crushed in elections, pretty soon we’ll end up with people that actually send all the Jews ( or insert other minority groups here) to the gas chamber.

Look, it’s easy to say… here in Taiwan, for one party to tear down decades of stable energy policy of steady diversification by just screaming at the top of their lungs that NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS BLOWS UP IN MUSHROOM CLOUDS and CREATE MUTANTS ( I really wish I was joking.) and then… after they forced the nuclear power plants to close (wasting billions of dollars in the process)….. oh right they replace it with a bunch of coal and fire power plants. great job there.