Weakening democracy lol

[Tigers!]

In the olden days, citizens were influenced by eloquent and educated opinion-makers, and usually chose representatives to lead the government rather than making decisions with popular referenda. Brexit is an obvious example of the 51% probably making a bad decision which well-informed representatives would not have made.

Brexit is the perfect example of why voting should be compulsory. 1/3 of the eligible English populace could not be fagged voting. Such an abrogation of their responsibility. Fools like that do not deserve democracy.

The left in Sweden are now in shock over the big win for the far right party there. They are also talking about weakening democracy. NO. The democracy is fine. This is democracy working as it should. What has changed are people's values and opinions.

But surely we can agree that it is NOT democratic for 51% to select a government whose announced intention is to exterminate some religious group within the 49%.

Hitler came to power as a result of processes of a representative democracy. Is there some point where we will agree that democracy did NOT work "as it should" ?

As others have noted we should not confuse 'democratic' with not getting whom we wish nor give it magical powers.

 

[steve_bank]

Just watched a report on Isreal. Israel is teering on becomming authorterian.

Possible changes to weaken the judicial system, probably to protect Netanyahu. There is a movement to expel Arab Israelis.

The British meltdown.

Western liberal democracy has yet to show it can work and last.

 

[lpetrich]

Just watched a report on Isreal. Israel is teering on becomming authorterian.

Possible changes to weaken the judicial system, probably to protect Netanyahu. There is a movement to expel Arab Israelis.

Israel is only one nation, and not a very big one. Look more broadly. Like what this organization does: V-Dem

Also  Democracy Index and  Freedom in the World - Israel is fairly good by world standards, but far from the best.

 

[lpetrich]

Opinion | How to Strangle Democracy While Pretending to Engage in It - The New York Times

Published in 1991, Hirschman’s “The Rhetoric of Reaction” may have once read like thoughtful musings on conservative responses to the French Revolution, the Great Society and much in between. (A Times reviewer called it a “handbook for bemused liberals.”) Today it is a siren blast for a U.S. political system that has lost the ability to reconcile differences and the desire to even try. Long before America was cleaved into red versus blue, deplorable versus woke or MAGA versus everybody else, Hirschman argued that political factions were cementing into extreme, unyielding stances and that their arguments, with a nod toward Clausewitz, had become little more than “the continuation of civil war with other means.”

Noting that the Right likes to object to reforms from the Left with:

• Perversity - having the opposite effect
• Futility
• Jeopardy - causing a lot of trouble

"That the three theses can be deployed in illogical combinations — your antipoverty program won’t reach those most in need, and it will also destroy their incentive to work! — does little to lessen their appeal."

Then arguments on the Left:

• Mutual support - new reforms work well with old ones
• Imminent danger - what reforms are necessary for
• Right side of history

Being on the right side of history is a big part of Marxism -- Marxists believe that there is a law of development of human society that will ultimately produce their ideal kind of society. "Get onto the steamroller of history before it comes and flattens you" I recall from somewhere.

Back in the mid to late 1980's, "At the time, he saw the perversity thesis as the most common argument on the right and the imminent danger thesis as the most powerful on the left."

But today, "On virtually any debate, every side now proclaims dire jeopardy from their opponents while basking in history’s certain vindication."

When one group feels it can dominate by disregarding the terms of that democratic bargain, as many Republicans do today, what will compel them to remain a party to it? When those on the left see their opponents becoming incoherent and dangerous, what prevents them from developing the self-enclosed self-assurance that their way is the only way, that any complicating critique is simply bad faith and therefore easily disregarded, that they are not just history’s participants but ultimately its masters?

In conclusion,

Democracy’s legitimacy and durability depend on dialogue and deliberation — on process as much as on outcomes — but the arguments commonly invoked on various sides “are in effect contraptions specifically designed to make dialogue and deliberation impossible.” He did not despair of this fact, though he foresaw a “long and difficult road” to a less facile public debate.

 

[steve_bank]

Kshama Sawant? Kshama Sawant maintains lead as many challenged ballots are resolved | The Seattle Times

Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant was still narrowly staving off a ballot measure to recall her from office Monday, maintaining about 50.4% of the votes.

In updated results update from King County Elections, the recall effort to remove the three-term council member for a finance infraction and her involvement in 2020 racial justice protests trailed behind votes in support.

The two sides are working to resolve 436 contested ballots, but today, KS is ahead by 309 votes, her largest number so far. She was originally behind, but when more votes were counted, she came out ahead.

Ballots will be counted through 4:30 p.m. Thursday, and votes are set to be certified Friday. After that, both sides will have until Dec. 21 to request a recount, but they’ll have to foot the bill.

Tat happened a while ago. Her district is said to be the most progressive in the city. She had iedentified as a communist.

Kshama Sawant recall, Seattle, Washington (2020-2021)

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

ballotpedia.org

A recall election for District 3 City Councilmember Kshama Sawant took place on December 7, 2021, in Seattle, Washington.[1] Sawant defeated the recall attempt. The election results were certified on December 17.[2]

 

[DrZoidberg]

What does "democracy" even mean? I had thought that it meant MORE than just rule by the majority, that it implied social equality. I checked several dictionaries, but only three of them partly agreed with this, and then only in a secondary definition of "democratic":

Dictionary.com: "pertaining to or characterized by the principle of political or social equality for all."

Cambridge Dictionary: "A person or a group that is democratic believes in, encourages, or supports freedom and equality between people and groups."

Collins Dictionary: "Something that is democratic is based on the idea that everyone should have equal rights and should be involved in making important decisions. Education is the basis of a democratic society."


I like Collins' mention of education. However this was NOT part of the (secondary) definition; it was just the example sentence.

I'm a pragramtic at heart. Whatever political system that generates the greatest wealth and power to it's leader (or leaders) will inevitably dominate other countries and their political systems. So either we organise society to generate maximum wealth to power for ourselves or we're preparing to hand our wealth over to someone else.

The reason why the democratic nations beat the fascist nations in WW2 wasn't our superior moral values. It was our wealth and power.

Democracy and free market capitalism have a similar social mechanics underpining them. It's two systems that maximises the work humans are willing to invest for the good of mankind. It's just the most motivating systems. They're inspiring rather than extractative and exploitative.

Democracy doesn't mean social equality. It doesn't mean everybody gets to have a say. I don't think these are even desirable. Representative democracy is the political systems of all the rich countries because that's the system that makes us the most wealthy. We can debate all day why that is.

The UK doesn't have much of natural resources, they still managed to create the biggest empire in human history, simply by deciding that we're all better off if we let people sort themselves out as much possible. The less we tell other people who to run their lives, in general, the better. That's what the basic human rights are about. It's not about elevating humans to something sacred for their sake. It's elevating humans to something sacred, because that leads to maximum wealth and power for society as a whole.

In the olden days, citizens were influenced by eloquent and educated opinion-makers, and usually chose representatives to lead the government rather than making decisions with popular referenda. Brexit is an obvious example of the 51% probably making a bad decision which well-informed representatives would not have made.

Lol. Take off your rose tinted spectacles. The further back in time we go the more dysfunctional was democracy, the worse informed they were and the dumber people voted. We are today more educated and wiser than at any time prior in history. Just because you think people are dumb now, doesn't mean they were smarter before.

The left in Sweden are now in shock over the big win for the far right party there. They are also talking about weakening democracy. NO. The democracy is fine. This is democracy working as it should. What has changed are people's values and opinions.

But surely we can agree that it is NOT democratic for 51% to select a government whose announced intention is to exterminate some religious group within the 49%.

I think it is. Democracy isn't just about everybody getting a fair hearing, it's also about getting things done. If we agree that whoever won the election can just get on with it, no matter how slim the margin, it's better for society as a whole.

Hitler came to power as a result of processes of a representative democracy. Is there some point where we will agree that democracy did NOT work "as it should" ?

In the U.S., many voters today, in this post-rational era, are influenced by lies about a stolen election, lies about Hillary Clinton, etc. I refuse to believe that this "is democracy working as it should."

Because the world has changed. People are now worrying about different things. We can debate why that is. But my favourite candidate not winning is not the same thing as democracy failing. Perhaps it's me who isn't keeping up with the times?

I'm an upper middle class, well educated well off man with a good job. I'm fairly well insulated from economic issues. I have very little worry about in life. That informs my political choices. Caring about other people and being generous is what people who feel safe do. People who feel threatened act defensively. That is what I think is happening. I think the IT economy has been awesome for the world at large. Great wealth has been created. But it hasn't been spread around evenly. While IT advances have benefitted the uneducated rural working class as well. The urban middle class are today, by comparison, fabulously wealthy.

My current lifestyle was unatainable for 99% of Scandinavians in the 1970'ies. Today it's fairly normal. For IT professionals.

I have no idea what the relevance of these final paragraphs is. YOU may be charitable and happy to be taxed to support the less fortunate in the pursuit of utilitarianism. This does not mean that ALL voters, or even 51%, are just as charitable.

The relevance is that all people have a tendency to be myopic. We take ourselves and the problems around us and treat them as universals. I have a friend who is poor and who has had a poor boyfriend for many years. They have lived in a poor suburb of Stockholm for many years. It's an area of Stockholm with a lot of gang violence and drugs. It's mostly immigrants living there. She voted for the Swedish far right political party. To her the problems of her community clearly has to do with high immigration. I disagree. But I don't live her life. I only see things from my perspecitive.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Something not in the US Constitution is political parties, and none of its creators seemed to want them. Several of them went on record as deploring parties as leading to strife from rival factions. The Founding Fathers on Party Strife (Quotes) | Satyagraha and What Our Founding Fathers Said About Political Parties - Bill King Blog and The Founding Fathers Feared Political Factions Would Tear the Nation Apart - HISTORY

But their hope of a partyless political system was not to be. In the first term of the first President, George Washington, the politicians started dividing themselves into parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.

The Federalists wanted an industrialized nation with a strong government and a lot of international influence, while the D-R's wanted an isolationist, agrarian nation with a wimpy national government. Though many Americans continue to claim the D-R vision of the US as an ideal, the nation has become everything the Federalists wanted. The first D-R President, Thomas Jefferson, ended up acting Federalist-like with his Louisiana Purchase and his sending military expeditions to North Africa to punish raiders of American shipping.

 Party divisions of United States Congresses and  Political parties in the United States and  Political eras of the United States

Era	Years	Congresses	Party I	Party II
1st Party System	1789 - 1795	1 - 3	Anti-Admin	Pro-Admin
	1795 - 1825	4 - 18	Dem-Rep	Federalist
2nd Party System	1825 - 1837	19 - 24	Jacksonian	Anti-Jackson
	1837 - 1855	25 - 33	Democratic	Whig
	1855 - 1857	34	Democratic	Opposition
3rd Party System	1857 - 1897	35 - 54	Democratic	Republican
4th Party System	1897 - 1933	55 - 72	Democratic	Republican
5th Party System	1933 - 1981	73 - 96	Democratic	Republican
6th Party System	1981 - present	97 - present	Democratic	Republican

We are at the 117th Congress.

Political parties is unavoilable in a modern democracy. Its just too much shit to keep track of for one person. Ruling has to be a team effort.

I also don't give much weight to the pipe dreams of the founding fathers. In 1776 democracy was a wild and fanciful thought experiment. No, shit they got some details wrong.

Also, colonial countries that break free from the mother country, if they opted for a parliamentary system based on the UK system they were much more stable. The ex-colonies that opted for basing their constituation of the US constitution (or French) mostly ended up falling apart. The US constitutation worked for USA. But simply by track record it's a bad constitution. We can debate all day what the secret sauce is, but Washington was made king by his troops, which he turned down. The fact that he was even given the possiblity to make himself king is not a great sign.

The lesson from history is that democracy is a collection of institutions, all that need to be working or democracy as a whole won't work.

 

[lpetrich]

I'd posted earlier on how parliamentary systems seem to be the best at governing.

Opinion | Moderate Republicans No Longer Have a Home, and It Started With My Defeat - The New York Times

By Peter Smith

Mr. Smith, a Republican, represented Vermont in the House of Representatives from 1989 to 1991.

He was the sort of Republican who was common a half a century ago.

Over the last 30 years, the Republican Party has effectively eliminated its moderate and liberal voices — as well as the conservative voices that put country over party. The consequences of this takeover by an increasingly right-wing faction include the threats to democracy that have become increasingly prominent since the Jan. 6 riots.

Then about how he was unseated. Back in 1990, the National Rifle Association and conservative Republicans combined against him, first supporting a right-wing challenger, then Bernie Sanders in the general election. Bernie Sanders? They hoped that they could defeat BS the next time around, but they failed, and BS stayed in office.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but my defeat was an early step in the elimination of the moderate and liberal wing of the Republican Party. That process, aimed at members of Congress and state-level officials, began with the ascent of Newt Gingrich’s style of full-throated partisanship and has continued to this day.

As moderates retired, their successors became more and more right wing.

When Mr. Gingrich was elected Republican minority whip by a single vote in 1989, he and his supporters seemingly had one goal: not to govern, but to control, stifle and stymie Congress. They got less actual governing done as they frustrated Congress’s work, and in many ways their strategy worked.

In effect, to kill one's parents and then to beg for mercy because one is an orphan.

 

[lpetrich]

Here's what Newt Gingrich was like.

About three weeks after his election as whip, Mr. Gingrich called me into his office. He asked whether I was having dinner with Democrats. I was, I said: A colleague from Tennessee and I were hosting fellow freshman members for dinner regularly to share experiences. Mr. Gingrich demanded that I stop; he didn’t want Republicans consorting with Democrats.

I responded — not overly politely — that I was from Vermont and nobody told me what people I could eat with. But his demand was a harbinger of the decline of moderate and liberal Republicans. (Mr. Gingrich told The Times he did not recall the meeting, but noted that he was working to unify the Republican caucus at the time.)

What followed over the next few years was the deliberate quarantining of Republicans from Democrats: separate orientations for new members, a sharp curtailing of bipartisan activities and an increasing insistence that members toe the party line. The very idea of “voting your district” — which was alive and well when I was elected — became anathema within the Republican caucus. Simultaneously, the weaponization of the evangelical religious right and the organization of wealthy conservative donors was going on, largely behind the scenes, with money and organizing often used against moderate Republicans as well as Democrats.

Then the Republican Party started promising their base lots of things that they could not deliver or else would not want to deliver, things like cutting taxes, eliminating the deficit, reducing federal regulations, banning abortion, and cracking down on LGBTQ rights.

"As Republican voters and nominees adopted an increasingly extreme agenda, even a Republican Congress could not produce the results they had promised." and "These failures drove a further rightward shift that resulted in the rise of the Tea Party."

Some Northeastern Republicans were still moderate, like Sen. Jim Jeffords of VT, who became an Independent, and Sen. Olympia Snowe of ME. She favored "governing" over "controlling".

"But even in New England, long a bastion of liberal and moderate Republicanism, moderates are now losing in Republican primaries." and "There have been a few moderate and liberal Republican success stories, but they are anomalies, peculiar to the person or the situation." - like former Republican governors Larry Hogan of MD and Charlie Baker of MA, leaving only Phil Scott of VT and Chris Sununu of NH.

I believe that the current attempts to overthrow our democratic traditions will fail, but we must understand the successes produced by the right wing’s focus on control at all costs over governing.

Beyond Mr. Trump’s election, those successes include the numerous right-wing ideologues confirmed to federal judgeships, a major effort to restrict voting rights, the increasing presence of dark money in politics, the elimination of abortion rights and a lack of critical progress in combating the global climate crisis.

 

[lpetrich]

In 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a moderate Republican from Maine, attacked McCarthyism and its “four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.” Republicans today seem to use Smith’s warning as an inspiration, projecting their own worst excesses upon their opponents. There is little room left in the G.O.P. for any disagreement — indeed, of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, only one appears very likely to be in Congress next January.

The rise of the far right could be dated as far back as 1958, the year that the John Birch Society was founded by businessman Robert Welch, someone who believed that then-President Dwight Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent” of the Communist conspiracy in the US. The far right supported Barry Goldwater in 1964, though he lost, but in 1970, Richard Nixon and the Republican Party started appealing to disaffected Southerners with their "Southern Strategy". The far right continued to rise, even though their candidates often failed to deliver on such things as banning abortion.

 

[crazyfingers]

Here's what Newt Gingrich was like.

About three weeks after his election as whip, Mr. Gingrich called me into his office. He asked whether I was having dinner with Democrats. I was, I said: A colleague from Tennessee and I were hosting fellow freshman members for dinner regularly to share experiences. Mr. Gingrich demanded that I stop; he didn’t want Republicans consorting with Democrats.

I responded — not overly politely — that I was from Vermont and nobody told me what people I could eat with. But his demand was a harbinger of the decline of moderate and liberal Republicans. (Mr. Gingrich told The Times he did not recall the meeting, but noted that he was working to unify the Republican caucus at the time.)

What followed over the next few years was the deliberate quarantining of Republicans from Democrats: separate orientations for new members, a sharp curtailing of bipartisan activities and an increasing insistence that members toe the party line. The very idea of “voting your district” — which was alive and well when I was elected — became anathema within the Republican caucus. Simultaneously, the weaponization of the evangelical religious right and the organization of wealthy conservative donors was going on, largely behind the scenes, with money and organizing often used against moderate Republicans as well as Democrats.

Then the Republican Party started promising their base lots of things that they could not deliver or else would not want to deliver, things like cutting taxes, eliminating the deficit, reducing federal regulations, banning abortion, and cracking down on LGBTQ rights.

"As Republican voters and nominees adopted an increasingly extreme agenda, even a Republican Congress could not produce the results they had promised." and "These failures drove a further rightward shift that resulted in the rise of the Tea Party."

Some Northeastern Republicans were still moderate, like Sen. Jim Jeffords of VT, who became an Independent, and Sen. Olympia Snowe of ME. She favored "governing" over "controlling".

"But even in New England, long a bastion of liberal and moderate Republicanism, moderates are now losing in Republican primaries." and "There have been a few moderate and liberal Republican success stories, but they are anomalies, peculiar to the person or the situation." - like former Republican governors Larry Hogan of MD and Charlie Baker of MA, leaving only Phil Scott of VT and Chris Sununu of NH.

I believe that the current attempts to overthrow our democratic traditions will fail, but we must understand the successes produced by the right wing’s focus on control at all costs over governing.

Beyond Mr. Trump’s election, those successes include the numerous right-wing ideologues confirmed to federal judgeships, a major effort to restrict voting rights, the increasing presence of dark money in politics, the elimination of abortion rights and a lack of critical progress in combating the global climate crisis.

Similar story in the Boston Globe about Massachusetts republicans. Behind the pay wall. The main point is that current republican leadership in Massachusetts is so extreme right that they are making themselves irrelevant.

In the last four years, the deeply divided Massachusetts Republican Party has lost races for governor, lieutenant governor, more than a dozen legislative seats, and every statewide office and congressional seat, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars from its campaign account and about 30,000 registered voters.

Yet the man who presided over the series of defeats as the chairman of the state Republican Party, Jim Lyons, is not only likely to pursue reelection in January, party operatives said, but could prevail.

On the heels of a midterm election that rebuked former president Donald Trump and the extremist candidates who follow his lead, the state GOP finds itself at a crossroads, gripped by an identity crisis. For years, the party has been split between conservatives who back Lyons and Trump, and more moderate Republicans in the mold of departing Governor Charlie Baker.

The chairman’s election will force the party to decide: opt for new leadership and a new approach, or continue its hard-line tactics that risk losing more races, money, and membership?

Some in the party fear that Republicans, already endangered in Massachusetts politics, could become completely irrelevant if party leaders don’t recalibrate.

The story goes on but that's the main point. They are extreming themselves to death

After disastrous election, the state GOP faces a choice: Fresh leadership or more of the same? - The Boston Globe

Beaten down by catastrophic election losses and looking ahead to a chairman’s race in January, the Massachusetts Republican Party finds itself at a crossroads.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[lpetrich]

End Times by Peter Turchin: 9780593490501 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books - "End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration" by Peter Turchin

From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the ground-breaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America’s civil strife and its possible endgames

Then mentioning his prediction in 2010 that the US would be entering a period of dangerous strife around 2020. A prediction that has proven correct.

The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: when the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. Since the start of the industrial era, this imbalance has been caused not by excessive population growth but by phase shifts of technological innovation and globalization.

As income inequality surges, and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the “common people” suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral from which it’s very hard to pull out.

In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.

Peter Turchin Home - Peter Turchin
Peter Turchin latest posts - Peter Turchin - his blog

 

[lpetrich]

He described that book in Peter Turchin What I am working on: Update - Peter Turchin - Sep 04

First, I finished writing my trade book, previously titled A History of the Near Future. As expected, the publisher didn’t like it, so the new title is The Wealth Pump: Ruling Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration. I finished the complete draft in June (right on schedule), but then there was a bunch of lose ends to take care of. As a result, the book went into production in August. The tentative publication date is June of next year. There is still a lot of work to do on it, but it will be largely done by other people. The biggest job for me will be to go over the copy-editor’s suggestions, and then approve the galleys, which will not take a lot of time. This leaves me time to switch to other projects, on which below.

Peter Turchin What I am working on - Peter Turchin - Mar 14

The other book is a trade book (meaning it’s popular, not academic). It is tentatively titled A History of the Near Future, HNF (a title that is almost certainly going to change).

The genesis of this book is an interesting story. After I have acquired not a small amount of notoriety in 2020, when my prediction of the “Turbulent Twenties” had, rather disastrously, turned out to be right, I was approached by several publishers and literary agents.

He is also working on "The Great Holocene Transformation", on the rise of large-scale human societies since the end of the last ice age.

 

[lpetrich]

Crisis and Recovery Database | Seshat: Global History Databank - still a work in progress

Has Exploring Polycrises | Seshat: Global History Databank

The numerous existential threats that modern societies face have earned the label Polycrisis – a recognition that there exist multiple, simultaneous, and interacting hazards which occur frequently enough to diminish or degrade institutional response capacity and societal resilience. Most approaches to the polycrisis highlight the ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unprecedented’ nature of current threats. While we face certain unique challenges, the perils of changing and unpredictable climate, emergent diseases, the destabilizing nature of rampant inequality, as well as the looming threat of polarization and warfare have been part of the human experience for millennia. There have been polycrises in the past just as today.

Also Consequences of Crisis | Seshat: Global History Databank

Utilizing the innovative longitudinal dynamic analyses pioneered by Seshat: Global History Databank, we aim to pinpoint the leverage points that can tip the scales from the more devastating to the less disruptive consequences. Our data-driven approach reveals not only common patterns in societal dynamics, but highlights also the critical differences between societies and the unique challenges they each face.

With lots of references that I'll be discussing.

 

[lpetrich]

Peter Turchin's 2010 prediction: Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade | Nature

Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent — and predictable — waves of political instability (P. Turchin and S. A. Nefedov Secular Cycles Princeton Univ. Press; 2009).

That book discussed ancient Rome, late medieval and early modern Britain, France, and Russia, and Imperial China. The cycle -  Social cycle theory

• Integrative
  • Expansion
  • Stagflation
• Disintegrative
  • Crisis
  • Depression / Intercycle

From Wikipedia:

Feature	Expansion	Stagflation	Crisis	Depression
Population	Increases	Slow increase	Decreases	Slow decrease
Elites	Low population and consumption	Increasing population and competition and consumption	High population, conflicts, high inequality	Reduction of population, downward mobility, reduced consumption
State strength and collective solidarity	Increasing	High but decreasing	Collapse	Attempts at rebuilding
Sociopolitical instability	Low	Increasing	High	Decreasing

Though this theory of history may seem a lot like Marxism, with its identification of working and exploiting classes, of makers and takers, it differs from Marxism in some crucial ways, like featuring rival factions of elites fighting each other, and some of them going populist, recruiting common people to fight on their side. This reminds me of Bertrand Russell noting that during the Great War (WWI), the socialist parties were split on it by whichever nation they were in, and I recall BR saying about that that however deplorable that might be, it is not due to capitalist lies.

 

[steve_bank]

Was democracy ever strong?

It does not seem so.

 

[lpetrich]

In the rest of his 2010 Nature article, Peter Turchin described the effects of Gilded Age II, as I call it.

In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically. They all experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability.

Very long 'secular cycles' interact with shorter-term processes. In the United States, 50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020. We are also entering a dip in the so-called Kondratiev wave, which traces 40-60-year economic-growth cycles. This could mean that future recessions will be severe. In addition, the next decade will see a rapid growth in the number of people in their twenties, like the youth bulge that accompanied the turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s. All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020.

But we are not doomed to societal collapse and civil war.

Records show that societies can avert disaster. We need to find ways to ameliorate the negative effects of globalization on people's well-being. Economic inequality, accompanied by burgeoning public debt, can be addressed by making tax rates more progressive. And we should not expand our system of higher education beyond the ability of the economy to absorb university graduates. An excess of young people with advanced degrees has been one of the chief causes of instability in the past.

 

[Swammerdami]

The reason why the democratic nations beat the fascist nations in WW2 wasn't our superior moral values. It was our wealth and power.

OK.

The UK doesn't have much of natural resources, they still managed to create the biggest empire in human history, simply by deciding that we're all better off if we let people sort themselves out as much possible.

Yesterday I noted an article (at Al-Jazeera?) claiming excess deaths in India were 100 million over the time-span of the Raj, besting the combined homicide tolls of Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin AND Hitler. GINI soared under the Raj with half of Indians getting only the barest minimum to sustain life.

In the olden days, citizens were influenced by eloquent and educated opinion-makers, and usually chose representatives to lead the government rather than making decisions with popular referenda. Brexit is an obvious example of the 51% probably making a bad decision which well-informed representatives would not have made.

Lol. Take off your rose tinted spectacles. The further back in time we go the more dysfunctional was democracy, the worse informed they were and the dumber people voted.

Early citizens were focused on LOCAL politics or their own PERSONAL situation. (For much of the 20th century, most Americans got their news from LOCAL newspapers.) When the choices are so tangible, Stupidism has less scope. Germany between the World Wars is the one example where Stupidism had great strength in a pre-Internet democracy.

We are today more educated and wiser than at any time prior in history. Just because you think people are dumb now, doesn't mean they were smarter before.

Science and education have advanced, yet Stupidism and other symptoms are still rampant, even among the "educated." Brexit and Trump are obvious examples where today's democracies seem not particularly "wise." Stupidism feeds on lies, and it is with modern communication that lies travel at breakneck speed.

 

[lpetrich]

The UK doesn't have much of natural resources, they still managed to create the biggest empire in human history, simply by deciding that we're all better off if we let people sort themselves out as much possible.

Yesterday I noted an article (at Al-Jazeera?) claiming excess deaths in India were 100 million over the time-span of the Raj, besting the combined homicide tolls of Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin AND Hitler. GINI soared under the Raj with half of Indians getting only the barest minimum to sustain life.

So much for the British Empire being some anarchist utopia, which is what DrZoidberg implied that it was.

 

[Elixir]

So much for the British Empire being some anarchist utopia, which is what DrZoidberg implied that it was.

It was, if you were well off, British and in India. So if anyone at home asked, yeah - piece of heaven. People on the short end of the stick in India (ie everyone else) certainly never attained any voice in England or anywhere else, so why would anyone think otherwise? 100,000,000 dead voices are still less than one.
/thread drift