Hobo
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2008
- Messages
- 274
Our system certainly has its dysfunctions, but it can move quickly when there is strong consensus. What we lack isn't a system with adequate speed and adaptability, but an electorate with a clear idea of what it wants done and how it wants it accomplished (i.e. 'reduce the deficit but don't raise taxes and don't cut any Federal programs but foreign aid').
One real advantage to a Representative Republic (ie, Democracy) is that everyone tends to buy into the system without needing a revolt to fix a bad situation. The trouble with Democracy is you have a lot of uninformed, don't care, kind of people who vote based on what they hear on political advertisements presented during a commercial break on TV. These people go to the polls because it is their "civic duty".
I grew up in Chicago in a time when the Precinct captain made sure you voted for Mayor Daley and his friends or you didn't get police protection. The point is Democracy never can have a majority of educated and informed voters. This problem is really magnified in third world countries who have so-called democracy, but many voters will sell their vote for a new tee shirt.
We have long recognized the problems with central planning and other faults of Communism and autocracies. They often make stupid decisions. But when your electorate is even more stupid, then at least someone is steering the ship.
This is a long preface to what I think will be the next evolution of democracy. That would be to have some program which would screen out the lethargic citizen who has no desire to follow politics from the interested, informed voter. I am not talking about excluding opposing opinions like the Communist Party does in China. Rather, the voters should be like the members of this forum. That is, well informed with very different opinions. People who would vote on issues, rather than how much pork their Congressman can bring home. How this can fairly be accomplished is a deeper conversation.
However, as China develops a sizable middle and upper class, the pressure is going to strong to change the very exclusionary Communist Party. It is hard to see China going through the equivalent of the Arab Spring - where populist revolutions, assisted by foreign governments, spring to life to overthrow an authoritarian regime. The Chinese seem to have a strong national spirit and will not tear their country apart. Instead, they may choose to evolve their system into some, new form of government where the Party consists of informed, intellectual voters - and the peasant is left to live the simple life.