Can we do better than Democracy?

[GroovyGuru]

I'm currently reading a book titled "The Story of Philosophy" and I have recently finished reading the main ideas of Plato and Aristotle. As with most philosophers I found their political philosophy to be some of their most interesting ideas. Both of them, for one reason or another, disliked democracy. 

Plato hated it because it had directly lead to the death of his teacher Socrates, and thought that in general people were dumb and incapable of choosing the right leaders and making the right decisions. He instead favored an aristocracy ruled by "philosopher kings" in which the most capable and wise men proved themselves through decades of rigorous schooling. It is definitely an unrealistic and Utopian view, but still an interesting idea.

Aristotle seemed to have similar views about distrusting the common man's vision on leadership and thought electing decisions should be left to those who are most wise and considered experts. He seemed to favor something in-between democracy and aristocracy, but the way it was described it basically seemed like an aristocracy that granted more private ownership and capitalistic elements than Plato's communist-like Utopia.

I personally haven't thought about this in depth yet, it just seems like western civilization takes democracy for granted and we don't seem to openly discuss alternatives to government. I'm sure democracy is better than most alternatives, but perhaps there are even better systems of government which have never been invented yet.

Any thoughts?

[Leo Gura]

First, we must achieve true democracy. What we have now is a mockery of democracy. America is a plutocracy for all practical purposes.

The reason those philosophers didn't like democracy was because most people in their age were illiterate dumb farmers.

[Yog]

Jordan Peterson had this cool idea, not sure how accurate, but still its cool.

Demo = Daemon = Higer Self

Demo-cracy = Rule of the Higher Self, or the conscience.

In a way he says, true democracy can only work if people were to listen to the voice of their higher self and not the ego, or the super ego. If they are too much in the game, its not democracy, its mob rule.

[Bodigger]

Best would be High Conscious Oligarchy.

 

WC.pdf

[Bodigger]

[Leo Gura]

We need a Loveocracy

[LarryW]

A subset of this question is to understand the different types of democracy. For example in the UK since the Brexit referendum, we've had an ongoing debate about direct democracy (referendums to make decisions) vs indirect (electing representatives to make the decisions on our behalf). Well of course it's not black and white, but what balance do we prefer. At the moment, it seems the right wing prefer referendums (let the people speak}, and the centrist/left wing prefer representation (choose your experts who know better than us). But I suspect this is all rife with bias - which technique will create the result I want.

[Parththakkar12]

My only argument against democracy is that it is fundamentally based on a zero-sum game, which is the 'majority wins' system. It is a peaceful way of the majority dominating the minority. It is a pragmatic adaptation to the issue of genocide and war over what different groups want. But it still doesn't resolve the conflicts between the groups.

How do we solve this? We go through a peaceful libertarian phase where everyone is so evolved that we've woken up to the reality that we are all one, so we realize that it isn't in our natural best interests to hurt each other. Then, we come together and consciously create our society.

Our current society has not been consciously created, it has unconsciously evolved. We've never consciously created our society in history. That has yet to happen.

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

But it still doesn't resolve the conflicts between the groups.

There are parliamentary democracies.

Quote

How do we solve this? We go through a peaceful libertarian phase where everyone is so evolved that we've woken up to the reality that we are all one

Nope, that won't work. If only it were so easy. People are not going to wake up in large numbers in a libertarian society. Waking up large numbers of people will require serious infrastructure and communal effort.

In a libertarian society, devils and egos will run amok and prevent most people from waking up because they will have to be constantly working to protect themselves from the machinations of the devils. Exactly what we have in America today.

Waking up lots of people requires infrastructure for consciousness.

[LarryW]

Libertarianism usually means liberty for the individual, ie individualism. But why? True liberty should also apply to the collective mind too, meaning that we (the democracy) are collectively free to apply restrictions to individuals, as much as to the government itself. That's the apparent paradox, created by our thinking that free will exists within the individual person. I suspect it's both: the collective is a creation of the group of individuals and the individual is a creation of the collective culture. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by LarryW

[Leo Gura]

@LarryW Of course reality is a strange loop.

[LarryW]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@LarryW Of course reality is a strange loop.

Strange loops - that's on my list of videos to catch up on 

[Parththakkar12]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Nope, that won't work. If only it were so easy. People are not going to wake up in large numbers in a libertarian society. Waking up large numbers of people will require serious infrastructure and communal effort.

In a libertarian society, devils and egos will run amok and prevent most people from waking up because they will have to be constantly working to protect themselves from the machinations of the devils. Exactly what we have in America today.

Waking up lots of people requires infrastructure for consciousness.

The whole point of real libertarianism is it can't be enforced. If our systems fail, we will naturally evolve into libertarianism.

The question was 'Can we do better than democracy?'. This question is relevant if democracy inherently starts to fail because of the 'majority wins' zero-sum game. The whole idea is if a zero-sum game style of living becomes naturally untenable, aka evolution starts to weed out those humans who rely on zero-sum games for survival, then democracy collapses and we naturally evolve into a peaceful, loving libertarian society.

If zero-sum games work, then yeah, democracy is the most efficient we've got. Then I agree with everything you've said in your video on libertarianism.

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

evolution starts to weed out those humans who rely on zero-sum games for survival, then democracy collapses and we naturally evolve into a peaceful, loving libertarian society.

Lol

No! Libertarianism is more zero-sum survival than democracy.

If you want to see how libertarianism works, look at the animal kingdom. It's every man for himself, raping and killing to survive. It's not peaceful at all. Peace requires monopoly of force and strong regulations.

[Parththakkar12]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Lol

No! Libertarianism is more zero-sum survival than democracy.

If you want to see how libertarianism works, look at the animal kingdom. It's every man for himself, raping and killing to survive.

Humans are capable of better. When I say 'zero-sum games', I mean the ones humans play with each other and maybe the ones humans play with animals. Of course, a lion must play zero-sum games to survive.

You can say this is a very self-serving potential consideration, that nature won't do this for you. Well, we're still talking in the realm of theory here!

Humans have been wanting a peaceful and loving society. This isn't technically the case for animals. So humans could potentially be motivated to create it!

[Leo Gura]

17 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Humans have been wanting a peaceful and loving society. This isn't technically the case for animals. So humans could potentially be motivated to create it!

But libertarians are not such humans because they don't believe in the collective responsibility necessary to create such a society.

You cannot have a healthy peaceful society of 7 billion people who all act like individualists.

That kind of attitude will result in a bloodbath.

It is like you are trying to form a worldclass soccer team with people who are ideologically opposed to team cooperation. Effective teams require individual sacrifice for the collective.

A libertarian doesn't even want to pay taxes, for fuck's sake.

[Parththakkar12]

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But libertarians are not such humans because they don't believe in the collective responsibility necessary to create such a society.

You cannot have a healthy peaceful society of 7 billion people who all act like individualists.

That kind of attitude will result in a bloodbath.

My bad. I probably used the wrong word then. I meant anarchists, people who don't believe in enforced government, people who believe in no enforced government. They can have collective responsibility. They believe in privatizing all services, in people voluntarily coming together and creating the kind of society they want. My point is that this can work in a world where zero-sum games don't work as a survival strategy within human society, aka individual humans see that 'It's bad for me to play zero-sum games with another human.'

You're saying it can't work in a world where zero-sum games do work as a survival strategy. I agree with you on this.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Parththakkar12

[Leo Gura]

@Parththakkar12 Anarchism utterly fails in an advanced society of 7 billion people. No way.

You can't manage nuclear technology and genetic engineering via anarchy.

[Parththakkar12]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

@Parththakkar12 Anarchism utterly fails in an advanced society of 7 billion people. No way.

You can't manage a nuclear arsenal via anarchy.

Except for one possibility - if humans have evolved past zero-sum games! In that potential situation, we will voluntarily de-nuclearize.

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Except for one possibility - if humans have evolved past zero-sum games! In that potential situation, we will voluntarily de-nuclearize.

You can't ever denuclearize because nuclear technology is used in power plants, space travel, chemistry, mining, and many other places.

A rogue actor could always weaponize that technology.

You are assuming people are well-behaved angels. But they aren't.