Do you care about the form of a government, or only its results?

[Jacobtm]

Let's look at Honduras.

A democracy, by most definitions. They have an elected President and an elected congress. Wonderful.

The country is terrible, has an insanely high murder rate, terrible rate of poverty. You certainly wouldn't want to be the average Honduran.

But its government is a democracy. That's good, isn't it?

Imagine there were a military coup and the new military government stamped out crime. The cartels operating in Honduras were destroyed, bought off, or otherwise pacified. Honduras went form a place with more than 10X the murder rate of the United States to a place with about the same murder rate as the U.S. The resulting peace helped all aspects of Honduran society flourish. Yet they are not a democracy.

Do you care? Do you think Honduras should go back to democracy just because you like democracy? Or would you accept a positive result from a non-democratic government, and even prefer it to a democratic government, just based on positive results?

Cuba for instance, is not a democracy. They have eliminated a lot of the extreme poverty that is endemic throughout Latin America. They have the lowest AIDS rate in the Caribbean. They have an incredibly low homicide rate for Latin America. Sure they are not rich or flourishing, but their non-democratic government was able to deal with many problems that all their democratic contemporaries have not.

Chile is another case, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet left Chile as the most economically succesful country in South America, with a very low murder rate, etc. Child returned to democracy but continues to operate under Pinochet's constitution, and his influence on the country certainly was foundational in their modern success.

Can you accept success from non-democratic systems as legitimate? Maybe only leftist non-democratic systems, but not rightist?

[mencken]

I see no reason why providers of security should be structured differently than other services I subscribe to. I do not demand that I be granted a say in who gets to lead the cable company, for instance. I would think such decisions are best left to the shareholders, who would analagously be property holders.

Military dictatorships are a thoroughly primitive form of government, but I suppose such a form is appropriate for underdeveloped countries. I am not convinced that democracy is superior for any people, except the demagogues who exploit it for their own self-aggrandizement.

EDIT: In case it was not clear, liberal autocracy is vastly preferable to illiberal democracy, and arguably even liberal democracy.

[SNJ1985]

Its results, for the most part.

[muon2]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

[RI]

Results. Process inherently means nothing to me. I would support anything from a totalitarian dictatorship to anarchism if it got the best results, though the word "results" is almost vague enough to be worthless.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh great, here come the edgy "benevolent dictatorship" fanboys again.

[OSR stands with Israel]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

[Clark Kent]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

[Murica!]

>2015
>Still implying that bourgeoisie States are democratic

[TNF]

>2015
>Still implying that bourgeoisie States are democratic

you'd think they'd give up on that canard after 'democratic' Germany forced Greece to negate the results of a popular referendum via economic blackmail but I guess not

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Oh great, here come the edgy "benevolent dictatorship" fanboys again.

But what if the dictator was a really nice person??!!

[ingemann]

The biggest problems with dictatorship even if the dictator, to use SACs words, is a "really nice person", are the succession and the lack of feedback to the centre of power. Two of democracy's primary purposes are these two elements.

[politicus]

Very much so, I also believe democracy should be the universal mode of government (although not necessarily the Western form of liberal democracy)

In short:

"I am a fanatical democrat" - Naser Khader

[Simfan34]

Democracy is at best a means to an end.

Ideally leadership and program selection would be the responsibility of stakeholders.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Ideally leadership and program selection would be the responsibility of stakeholders.

That is precisely the point of democracy. Every citizen as a stake in major social decisions.

[DavidB.]

liberal autocracy is vastly preferable to illiberal democracy

This. Sure, liberal democracy is the least bad option, but I'd rather have liberal autocracy than illiberal democracy (or something worse). So yes, I care about the form of a government, but the results are more important.

[TNF]

The form of government has a very big impact on the kind of results you're going to get.

[Jacobtm]

We can compare here Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, three countries with a very similar climate, history, culture, and people.

Belarus is "Europe's last dictatorship". According to some Russia is a dictatorship. Ukraine has had the most legitimate democracy, with different parties vying for power and exchanging it more-or-less peacefully until the recent coup installed a western-backed leader without any elections.

So if democracy produces the best results, and Ukraine is the most democratic, Russia somewhere in the middle, and Belarus the least democratic, we would expect any reasonable measure of quality of life to show that same rank. Ukraine is the best, Belarus is the worst.

Let's look at data from 2013 to exclude civil-war related nastiness. You can use Gapminder World for this.

If you look, you see Ukraine actually has the worst Human Development Index, with Belarus ever so slightly in the lead of Russia.

Now if you ever have known anyone who visited Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the differences they report are striking.

In Belarus the streets are clean, there is no petty crime to speak of. They run a tight ship there. People don't want to talk about politics, of course, because of the still-extant KGB, but the end result is a place that is safer and better run than its more democratic neighbor Ukraine.

What other somewhat comparable countries are there?

Sinapore used to actually be part of Malaysia. They have a famously "unfree" system that is nominally democratic but really is a one-party state. And of course Singapore is a world-class city on par with London, Tokyo, Paris, and New York. While Malaysia, even Malaysia's capital, is not.

You also have the evidence from the Arab world, where the nicest places to live are formally monarchies.

But even besides monarchies, we have seen that toppling Morsi, Saddam, Assad, and Gaddafi led to only chaos and strife in those countries. Egypt abandoned its democratic experiment after only a year to go back to a military strongman in SISI. Syria, Libya, and Iraq wish they still had strongmen in charge.

Latin America provides many other arguments against democracy having good results. Look at the region in general. Look at Venezuela. They voted for this every step of the way, and now they're more violent than Mexico by many measures and people are fleeing the country in droves. Look at the general level of corruption and low standards of living throughout democratic Latin America.

[Antonio the Sixth]

^ There is so much wrong with that post that I just don't have the physical strength to point it out. I'd be grateful if someone more tenacious than me takes care of it.

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

Gaddafi literally abducted and raped schoolgirls.

The man was cartoonishly evil, and Libya is without a doubt better off without him.

[Murica!]

Gaddafi literally abducted and raped schoolgirls.

The man was cartoonishly evil, and Libya is without a doubt better off without him.

*Citation needed*

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

Gaddafi literally abducted and raped schoolgirls.

The man was cartoonishly evil, and Libya is without a doubt better off without him.

*Citation needed*

http://www.amazon.com/Gaddafis-Harem-Annick-Cojean/dp/0802122825

There's an entire book and countless reports about the Guide's little side habit. You have no excuse trying to deny it.

[Jacobtm]

Gaddafi literally abducted and raped schoolgirls.

The man was cartoonishly evil, and Libya is without a doubt better off without him.

The country has been plunged into a civil war, ongoing since Qaddafi was toppled. ISIS has waged numerous attacks throughout there and in fact claims it as part of their caliphate. Libya still has no effective government that controls it and rival militias continue to fight for its control.

Qaddafi may have been a bad person as an individual but the country was much better stable and with one actual government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2014%E2%80%93present)

A country thrown into civil war is not justified because of the leader being a mean person. His rule was better than most throughout the Arab world.

[Jacobtm]

^ There is so much wrong with that post that I just don't have the physical strength to point it out. I'd be grateful if someone more tenacious than me takes care of it.

This is a pretty lousy post, I have tried to write detailed posts here citing my claims and fleshing out arguments, and I have seen basically one-sentence rebuttals that amount to little more than "no" or the mindless repetition of some creed. If it's too much for you to type out something intellectual, why are you even here, just to write "Lol wut? No way man!"?

[Illuminati Blood Drinker]

The US/NATO/rebel forces didn't just stroll up and shoot Qaddafi. There was an entire f-ing civil war to get him out. "Civil wars not starting on your watch" is the lowest possible bar for good governance...and Qaddafi (and Assad) failed, miserably.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan Civil War (2011)