Your opinion of this person?

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

A liar or a pompous dickhead.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

i think its just symptomatic of the bogus 'american exceptionalist/greatest nation ever' meme. thats why i think we're going to really burn, impossible to address problems if you get shouted down. the only people that understand the problem are really the fringes.

     Oh, the country will burn. I have a couple of ideas for how to stop it, but they would never work. Such is life.

democracy doesn't work

What is your suggestion for government then, wise one? Surely, an element of popular sovereignty is necessary for the state to be just.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

i think its just symptomatic of the bogus 'american exceptionalist/greatest nation ever' meme. thats why i think we're going to really burn, impossible to address problems if you get shouted down. the only people that understand the problem are really the fringes.

     Oh, the country will burn. I have a couple of ideas for how to stop it, but they would never work. Such is life.

democracy doesn't work

What is your suggestion for government then, wise one? Surely, an element of popular sovereignty is necessary for the state to be just.

why does popularity = morality? i don't see how something like venezuela or zimbabwe or various majority shia areas would be desirable to have a democracies. indeed democracy is the last thing you would want for a lot of places. as for government it depends on circumstances. i have some sympathies for monarchy/benign aristocracy for pragmatic reasons that i've elaborated on but obviously such a thing is very hard to sell and not culturally relevant. restricting the franchise to people that can pass a civics test and making voting much more localized is one possible reform i've suggested. although i suspect straha and some of the formalists have a point in terms of their  (relatively) undemocratic, corporate state model. a state that strives to actually produce things of value and offers services to citizen-shareholders while avoiding the invasiveness of both modern democracy and totalitarianism could be an improvement over now.

Sup Aristotle. (or Hobbes, I guess)

Really though, an element of popular sovereignty is necessary for the state to be moral: it's dealing with important questions intrinsic to the well being of its citizens. They deserve to have a formalized say and agency over their lives. They deserve to have a decision making body that isn't determined by power alone, which ultimately is what gets to call the shots in any elitist system. At the very least, the public deserves to decide what the structure of their government will be at the start and the ability for initiatives and the like if that constitution is to be changed. These questions of government are too important and all-encompassing to be left to a few people who have no real consequences for their actions.

I don't understand how you could read your suggestions and not see the fallacies in inherent in them. Restricting it to a certain class of people will only serve to have them entrench their interests and nothing more.

edit: what I'm really trying to say is that you probably have a twisted view of human nature for you to hold these archaic views. That sounds mean but it isn't really, I can sympathize at times with your ideas but the fact that they only work when *certain* people are in power shows how tailored there are.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

my main problem with democracy is mostly economic. that is, a) people don't have a rational reason to be informed about decisions they are making for other people (see bryan caplan's work although I'm not a huge fan of him ideological) and b) people have that natural tendency to want to vote themselves benefits beyond the capacity of the state to provide. that doesn't mean i believe in some laissez faire bootstraps ideology but we've all seen how this can and has played out.

it is interesting you are making the argument of 'elitism' though. do you object to the current system on the grounds it isn't direct? i would think that you would be not a fan of referenda and all that given how things have played out in a lot of the western states...

1. Wouldn't that apply to free market economies as well then?
2. Aren't there mechanisms to prevent this?
3. Surely you'd agree that some decisions do need to be made by some sort of third-party arbiter with regards to economics and some framework should be made?

In lots of aspects, yes. One class has far more ability to influence the decisions of the government than the others based off of their disproportionate voice that is enhanced by income. This even plays a role in countries with strict electoral financing rules: the elite just does it wants when it is in office and is shielded from consequences due to their already high stature and their insulation from the rest of society. I am not in favor of initiatives that target people's rights or make specific laws but when it comes to the broad framework of governance in this country, I'm very much in favor of them.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

@ mint I agree with your post "certain" values. My idealized form of liberal democracy is an ideology specifically tailored for western countries. Most other cultural centers will have to find a version of it that works for them but still manages to protect certain freedoms and rights. We've seen how that process works and I think the trends are generally positive. However my posts are in relation to a specific framework that tries to maximize popular sovereignty, equality of economic opportunity/a mitigation of the lottery of birth and individual agency. This can be achieved in a variety of ways through many different kinds of systems. I happen to prefer the one that works for my own cultural sphere (which really isn't America if you haven't noticed). I also support hate speech laws and the like because I find those views to be abhorrent and against the spirit of free speech as long as those laws are reasonable.

As for the rest of your post, I tend to agree which is why I support built in mechanisms like a central bank and automatic programs that act counter-cyclically. I'd even support some sort of balanced budget amendment if it was balanced with strong economic law and some flexibility in times of crisis.