Democracy?Is there another option?

RepublicanEagle

We all see the effects; incompetence,corruption and negligence that the majority (or the total) of governments and administrations across the developed entire planet have shown on a daily basis,wether it be gross misconduct,indecision,incapablities in areas such as law/order and economics,lack of knowledge,disregard for the less well off/enviroment/innovation/human rights.

So.I have a thought.Would it be better to rid ourselves of Democracy and embrace Meritocracy?Or simply shed elements of Democracy and replace them with elements from Meritocracy or perhaps even socialism?

Meritocracy is a system of a government or other organization wherein appointments are made and responsibilities assigned to individuals based upon demonstrated talent and ability (merit).[1] In a meritocracy, society rewards those who show talent and competence as demonstrated by past actions or by competition. Evaluation systems, such as formal education, are closely linked to notions of meritocracy.

Any thoughts on the issue?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy

Eliot Rosewater

Is that not just a dictatorship dressed up with fancy yet deceiving lexicon?

The best "alternative", in my opinion, is to keep democracy but place severe limitations on the power of government to interfere in peoples' lives.

Manach

A few amendments to democracy? : Such as Artistole's idea of non-electing certain officials, instead fill the post by a lottery. The way my luck goes I'd likely get the post of waste-disposal overseer

blinding

Democracy or a lottery.

We should definitely give the lottery a go 1 out of every 4 times.:)

nyarlothothep

A machine superintelligence should run our lives. With significant advances in computing I believe this is possible within the next century and am a strong advocate for such a system. This intelligence wouldn't be subject to primitive emotional responses nor would it be corruptable. Any attempts to tamper with its programming would be useless given that its processing power would exceed that of any human and it could account for a near infinity of possible scenarios in which to disable it. In this respect it would have to be programmed with libertarian socialist axioms if it were not to become a fascist sentience. Libertarian in the respect that it wouldn't dictate peoples lives, socialist in the respect that it would develop solutions whereby poverty could be alleviated to the greatest extent possible with a concomittant reduction in exploitative practices. Humans could either follow these recommendations or not, though the onus on them would be to follow them given that they would be derived from a basis of pure logic and raw processing speed. The AI could release this information into public networks with ease without being disrupted by special interests who would have a problem with this, given that it would be so much more cognitively powerful than the humans.

Denerick

The important question is 'who decides who has merit'? If people cannot see the limitations to liberty there then they are simply deluding themselves.

We don't live in a democracy, thank God. Democracies are terrible things, where the will of the mob decides issues on a case by case basis with no coherent framework of ideas. There is no constitution (as it can just be voted down) and it leaves the path open to charismatic demagogues to break the system and initiate a 'tyranny of the majority'.

We live in a democratic Republic. This is a representative Republic, with a national government formed by the legislative body, with individual members elected by the voters. There are already strict constraints on what a government can do - a little thing called the constitution, and due restraint. Decisions are not made rapidly as it would be in a democracy as there are substantial opposition political parties which represent a variety of vested interests (Whatever you think of that, I don't care, in the real world 'vested interests' are necessary.) Obama took a long time to pass his healthcare bill - there is a very important and positive reason why this is so. Imagine he tried to pass a bill that stripped citizens of their liberties... OK, there is some room for contradiction there (Echoes of Bush, demagoguery and the Patriot Act...)

The democratic Republic is a horribly flawed beast. But as a great Englishman once said, it is the worst kind of government, except for all the others.

Denerick

wether it be gross misconduct,indecision,incapablities in areas such as law/order and economics,lack of knowledge,disregard for the less well off/enviroment/innovation/human rights

You don't see the problem with this kind of thinking? an incapability in 'economics' will not be solved because you appoint a nobel laureate to the finance ministry. There are always 10,000 people who will disagree with you. I'm more concerned about placing restrictions on the power of the government, protecting basic liberty, having the ability to live in a jurisdiction without anarchic murder and mayhem, and I think this whole attitude is blinded by a refusal to accept reality. Just because you think the world sucks, doesn't mean you have a right to impose your own highly flawed opinion on the majority. I don't mean you specifically by the way, I'm trying to point out that everyone is essentially an idiot. (Including me

Its one of the blessings of 'democracy', that the idiosyncracies of the individual do not (Or should not) infringe on the majority. I question the logic of a 'meritocracy' that elevates so called 'experts' to positions of political power, without regard to the possibility that they may be wrong, fascistic, deluded, or simply insane. Even if they are good in their narrow field.

RepublicanEagle

nyarlothothep wrote: »

A machine superintelligence should run our lives. With significant advances in computing I believe this is possible within the next century and am a strong advocate for such a system. This intelligence wouldn't be subject to primitive emotional responses nor would it be corruptable. Any attempts to tamper with its programming would be useless given that its processing power would exceed that of any human and it could account for a near infinity of possible scenarios in which to disable it. In this respect it would have to be programmed with libertarian socialist axioms if it were not to become a fascist sentience. Libertarian in the respect that it wouldn't dictate peoples lives, socialist in the respect that it would develop solutions whereby poverty could be alleviated to the greatest extent possible with a concomittant reduction in exploitative practices. Humans could either follow these recommendations or not, though the onus on them would be to follow them given that they would be derived from a basis of pure logic and raw processing speed. The AI could release this information into public networks with ease without being disrupted by special interests who would have a problem with this, given that it would be so much more cognitively powerful than the humans.

I understand the logic of what you just said,however the problem lies with the fact that people will never accept such an AI,even if it is "benevolent" or indifferent.They would still see it as a threat,no matter what.

Especially with those who are familiar with Terminator.:)

nyarlothothep

RepublicanEagle wrote: »

I understand the logic of what you just said,however the problem lies with the fact that people will never accept such an AI,even if it is "benevolent" or indifferent.They would still see it as a threat,no matter what.

Especially with those who are familiar with Terminator.:)

And those people would be outgunned! The game would be over before they even got started, they would be up against a super intelligence many orders of magnitude greater than theirs.

blinding

nyarlothothep wrote: »

And those people would be outgunned! The game would be over before they even got started, they would be up against a super intelligence many orders of magnitude greater than theirs.

At the moment computers are still really dumb and i could probably just plug it out or overload it when cutting wet grass with my lawn mower.

don't underestimate us dumb humans, cyborg as this must be at least what you are to advocate such a scenario.

Or are you The Bórg.

nyarlothothep

well the borg have the ultimate democractic society, the hive mind which makes the executive decisions is composed of the individual drones. In a way the borg social model is preferable to the current system.

nozzferrahhtoo

In our society we have tests for things as relatively simple as driving a car.

Why not only present the right to vote to those who pass a minimum level of training and demonstrated knowledge first, such as maybe what the roles in our government actually are, what the responsibilities are, and how a democracy and a republic actually work**

One thing that stayed with me was a Today FM (i think it was today FM) report before an election some years back when people were asked first who they were voting for and then asked what that role actually entails, who currently holds it, and why they think their choice would be good for the job(s).

The number of people who confidently answered the first question, and were then reduced to a cacophony of ummms and ehhhhs by the rest was entirely depressing. I came away with the feeling they most of the voting in Ireland was done by people who liked the way the candidate looks in a photo or some such random choice message.

**Note this is not the actual opinion of the author, just throwing something else into the mix there for the fun of it.

PK2008

RepublicanEagle wrote: »

We all see the effects; incompetence,corruption and negligence that the majority (or the total) of governments and administrations across the developed entire planet have shown on a daily basis,wether it be gross misconduct,indecision,incapablities in areas such as law/order and economics,lack of knowledge,disregard for the less well off/enviroment/innovation/human rights.

Im pretty sure the basis for your argument is wrong, democratic countries tend to have the lowest courrption, instances of conflict and best human rights records and justice systems in the world.

Democracy FTW

The Corinthian

RepublicanEagle wrote: »

So.I have a thought.Would it be better to rid ourselves of Democracy and embrace Meritocracy?Or simply shed elements of Democracy and replace them with elements from Meritocracy or perhaps even socialism?

Meritocracy cannot exist in the real world unfortunately, based upon one serious fly in the ointment - luck. Luck plays too large a role in our lives - in the education we receive, our physical and mental health and even in the career opportunities we are presented with - even in a supposed meritocracy, the right person will not always get the right job, because the right person may have been on holiday when the job was advertised or because they got knocked over by a car and are in hospital.

Indeed, luck starts at birth - not only with the genes you inherit, but also your family's economic and social position - true meritocracy would demand that you abolish all parental choice in education and impose 100% inheritance tax, otherwise you may gain an advantage you do not deserve.

Even then it would not compensate for those fortunate enough to be born to good parents, or unfortunate enough to be born to bad ones, as this too shapes our ability in adulthood. The only way of avoiding that is institutionalizing all children from birth - and even that does not deal with the DNA lottery.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Why not only present the right to vote to those who pass a minimum level of training and demonstrated knowledge first, such as maybe what the roles in our government actually are, what the responsibilities are, and how a democracy and a republic actually work**

Service guarantees citizenship, perchance?

What RepublicanEagle is suggesting is not a new idea and was central to corporatism which sought to find an alternative to both socialism and liberal democracy. Due to World War II, corporatism never really went anywhere beyond its Fascist roots, although it has subsequently been used to a limited extent in liberal democracy.

One of the biggest problems with systems other than liberal democracy is, however, that they all have a propensity towards oligarchy - which is both an inefficient and ultimately unstable system - liberal democracy, for all its faults, has been the only system to date that has been able to check against this.

Permabear

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The Corinthian

donegalfella wrote: »

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That's the theory. In practice I suspect that while we are responsible for the government we elect, yet are happy to blame them when it all goes wrong. Then we elect another shower of **** we can later blame.

The unfortunate direction of modern "democracy" is from active citizenship to passive clientelism, whereby the electorate simply votes to maintain or increase its "entitlements," even if that entails plunging a country into fiscal chaos.

Bit of a contradiction, TBH. Passive clientelism would mean that the ruling elite would ultimately only humour the electorate; keep them/us happy with "bread and circuses", but ultimately never offer them/us any kind of choice that could throw the system into jeopardy.

Permabear

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Bottle_of_Smoke

Is the house of lords in the UK a kind of meritocracy?