The Western model is broken (long read).....he went in :wow:

[rantanamo]

Whatever works for local people.

Democracy works in Western Europe and it's offspring (US, Canada, Australia etc) because they arrived at that system via hundreds of years worth of religious, political, ideological and economic wars. They formed at the state level..... consolidated then disintegrated empires...now back to closely cooperating states. They basically arrived at a consensus.

The same cannot be said for people all over the world.

E.g Dictatorship seems to work for Singaporeans. The Chinese are doing well with their model. Most Saudis are against democracy because of the inevitable instability of tribal and sectarian rivalry for power. They have arrived at their own consensus...they might tinker aound with it in the future..who knows?..but liberal democracy is not the panacea to everyone's problems.

lol, Sorry, but you criticize the leadership in the west and make it about the leadership in the west, but these systems are ok because their stability was created by cruelty in each case? i get that democracy is not the end all, be all but we dappin up the Saudis now which is probably the ultimate example of fukk what works, we got money so you do what the fukk we say.

democracy doesn't work in these places because of a few zealots. You, nor I have no idea what the people truly want in these places when they aren't afraid of getting lashes or being thrown under a jail, and don't act like you know.

 

[JahFocus CS]

but who shaped the institutions?

the people.

Sure, but "the people" is a collective. Of course "the people" can change institutions... but that means it isn't about individuals. It is about a mass or group of people having and not having power/control.

 

[Trajan]

lol, Sorry, but you criticize the leadership in the west and make it about the leadership in the west, but these systems are ok because their stability was created by cruelty in each case?

I don't understand what you're trying to say fam.

we dappin up the Saudis now which is probably the ultimate example of fukk what works, we got money so you do what the fukk we say.

democracy doesn't work in these places because of a few zealots. You, nor I have no idea what the people truly want in these places when they aren't afraid of getting lashes or being thrown under a jail, and don't act like you know.

I'm not ''dapping'' anyone up. I don't even believe in monarchies personally. But it works for them.

Democracy doesn't work in these places because of a few zealots? ....they have NO history of democracy EVER. How on earth are a ''few zealots'' preventing it from taking root? You're doing exactly what the article is about...assuming Western systems are universal.


And we do know what the people want because papers have been done researching this.

The first reality is that there is a significantly large youth population that is disinterested in politics and displays a conspicuous lack of concern about acquiring political rights.

Several saw no need for changes. “If you ask me, personally, I like it the way it is,” said a 22-year-old engineering major at Riyadh’s King Saud University. “Everyone is satisfied.… So far so good. Maybe there are minor problems, such as women driving and poverty, but these” can be resolved. He has no desire for more say in his government and does not
believe that an elected parliament “would work” in the kingdom “because we have a powerful royal family and [it] satisfies people. They give money, they provide things.”

Young Saudis like him are against or ambivalent about elections, believing they will lead to incompetent leadership, civil strife or worse.

A 26-year-old who got his master’s degree in information systems abroad also said he was “happy with the way we are managed now, having a royal
family.” He is leery of national elections because people will vote along tribal lines. “I might elect a person because he is a doctor from my tribe. This is going to create a lot of problems. He might not be the best qualified person, but his tribe has the largest number in the country, so he will win.”

A 25-year-old teaching assistant getting his master’s in Florida said he “would highly support [elections] in the long run when people understand who to elect, not because he is from his tribe, not because he is from his school of religion. But now, I’d rather King Abdullah and any prince hire the person he wants instead of giving me the right to vote, because I know that the perspectives that Saudis have now are very bad and very unprofessional.”

As a result, the general population appears willing to accept a loss of some of its political and civil liberties to a non-democratic regime if it provides them with security against this violence.

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/d...rabia_through_the_eyes_twentysomethings_0.pdf

 

[Oville]

I'm not about imposing democracy by force like the U.S. has done but I think its the most just system and hope that any country can find a way to make it work. The problem with our democracy and the democracy we've imposed on the world is that we've promoted democracy throught privately financed campaigns that lead to corruption and corporate interests. You could never trust the objectivity of a people's satisfaction with their government if the government doesn't allow for alternatives or free debates.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

I think this is fundamentally mistaken, considering that people are shaped by institutions from birth. Institutions shape incentives and constraints.



Democracy is great. It is a nice idea and one that we need to have implemented. 99.999999999999% of the world doesn't have it.

Whats funny is that like half of europe technically still has kings and queens

 

[OsO]

Sure, but "the people" is a collective. Of course "the people" can change institutions... but that means it isn't about individuals. It is about a mass or group of people having and not having power/control.

my point is, if we have greedy, incompetent, malicious leadership it won't matter if we have a democracy, a republic, a dictatorship, socialism, communism, oligarchy, etc... because the leadership will use the mechanisms of these systems for selfish ends regardless.

do you think there's any "sociopolitical system" we could put in place where people like the Bushs and Clintons wouldn't abuse their political power?

we as the general population have to make sure the right people are in positions of power. and if politicians start acting up it's our responsibility to pressure them back in line.

think about whoever you would consider a wise person... if we had 500 of that person in congress instead of who we have now, do you think things in our society would be different?

forget trying to reorganize a system... we need to "re-moralize" the people.

 

[JahFocus CS]

my point is, if we have greedy, incompetent, malicious leadership it won't matter if we have a democracy, a republic, a dictatorship, socialism, communism, oligarchy, etc... because the leadership will use the mechanisms of these systems for selfish ends regardless.

do you think there's any "sociopolitical system" we could put in place where people like the Bushs and Clintons wouldn't abuse their political power?

we as the general population have to make sure the right people are in positions of power. and if politicians start acting up it's our responsibility to pressure them back in line.

think about whoever you would consider a wise person... if we had 500 of that person in congress instead of who we have now, do you think things in our society would be different?

forget trying to reorganize a system... we need to "re-moralize" the people.

Communism is a stateless, classless society in which power is equalized on a communal basis. So there would be no greedy, incompetent, malicious leadership, because there wouldn't be any "leaders" as such - the people themselves would be the leaders. Sure, there may be elections in workplaces, to associations, etc., but you could have instant recalls to remove people not carrying out what they are supposed to. It would be hard to seize power under an equalized system, and most people seek power to secure resources anyway - if everyone had what they needed, I figure that most of these people would fall out of that type of behavior, and the small megalomaniacal bunch would form a very small issue. Same reason why the vast majority of "crime" would disappear under a system that doesn't have imposed scarcity and has a fair distribution of resources.

I don't think a congress of 500 "wise people" would make any difference under capitalism and the logic of how American society is organized. A few things may be moderated but the system would continue apace because of the constraints and incentives it imposes.

 

[ThatTruth777]

This essay was good, thanks for posting it

In the 21st century that old spell of universal progress through western ideologies – socialism and capitalism – has been decisively broken. If we are appalled and dumbfounded by a world in flames it is because we have been living – in the east and south as well as west and north – with vanities and illusions: that Asian and African societies would become, like Europe, more secular and instrumentally rational as economic growth accelerated; that with socialism dead and buried, free markets would guarantee rapid economic growth and worldwide prosperity. What these fantasies of inverted Hegelianism always disguised was a sobering fact: that the dynamics and specific features of western “progress” were not and could not be replicated or correctly sequenced in the non-west.

The implications are sobering: the non-west not only finds itself replicating the west’s violence and trauma on an infinitely larger scale. While helping inflict the profoundest damage yet on the environment – manifest today in rising sea levels, erratic rainfall, drought, declining harvests, and devastating floods – the non-west also has no real prospect of catching up with the west.

And some western countries had also, however brutally, got the sequencing broadly right: they had managed to build resilient states before trying to turn peasants into citizens. (“We have made Italy; now we must make the Italians,” the Italian nationalist Massimo d’Azeglio famously proclaimed in 1860.)