I'm blasé about the future of humanity, but not our country. I want to preserve however much democracy as we can for me and my children. But, if we're doomed to screw it up because of the frailty of the human condition as related in the OP and as we've seen evidenced in the historical record, I can't do anything about that. I'll enjoy the bubble until its gone.
I don't think any example you cite would qualify as a "well-established democracy" sliding back under some sort of authoritarian rule. Most of the examples you cite are actually examples of representative governments failing relatively shortly after having been established in places that have historically lacked representative governance. The United States is fairly unique in having 245 years of uninterrupted democracy. Our Republic failing would be remarkable and certainly something I don't think will happen in our lifetimes. I don't worry about that at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_socialism Lemon socialism Lemon socialism is a pejorative term for a form of government intervention in which government subsidies go to weak or failing firms (lemons; see Lemon law), with the effective result that the government (and thus the taxpayer) absorbs part or all of the recipient's losses. The term derives from the conception that in socialism the government may nationalize a company's profits while leaving the company to pay its own losses, while in lemon socialism the company is allowed to keep its profits but its losses are shifted to the taxpayer.[1][2]
More like Limp Dick Wall Street Capitalism Rise up to become a shark among sharks, then complain you're a keystone species that's too big to fail.
I never said anything about democracies being well-established. Besides which, it's a bit of a No True Scotsman argument. If Argentina goes 70 years with some kind of republic and then falls to a coup, you can just discount it and say 'well it never really got well-established -- you can tell because it fell to a coup.' I agree with you though that the democracies in North America and Western Europe and a bit of a different animal because they have matured so much and it would be more of a surprise to see one fall now. But large-scale democratic republics are also a pretty modern innovation and we might simply have not seen the whole life cycle. If your supposition is that American democracy will last forever, I think that's pretty hard to expect. I think the point of looking at the fall of less established democracies is that you can imagine if our country's democratic institutions can weaken to a certain point, it'll be pretty easy to knock over. Not saying it's going to happen tomorrow, but it can happen one day.
Well... you quoted and responded to this.... "Also, I'm curious as to which well-established democracy did you have in mind as an example of it sliding into authoritarian regime." With this: Most famously, the Weimar Republic collapsed into the Third Reich. France returned to despotism from the republic for Napoleon and then later a couple more kings, had the Second Republic from 1848-1852, then had Napoleon III, then a republic ever since aside from a brief interlude of Nazi occupation and Vichy France. Venezuela has had a democracy since 1958, but after the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999 it has been a populist government with some sham elections. Argentina established a republic in the mid-19th century that lasted (with some crazy stuff along the way) until a military coup in 1930, and later Peron the famous populist general. But we're starting to see it again in modern times. Turkey has gotten much more authoritarian under Erdogan (the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has, in general, caused vestiges of liberalism to decline in the Mideast). Eastern European countries like Poland have been making some rather autocratic changes. Hong Kong will go kicking and screaming into dictatorship. Here is a Democracy Report from V-Dem. See Figure 1.2 for how their democracy scores are starting to bend down in the new millennium. As to how people cope, it looks like populism is usually the magic formula to make the pill go down easier. They surrender their democratic institutions to a strong and charismatic leader (Hitler, Napoleon, Chavez, Peron, Erdogan, etc) who can demonstrate tangible immediate benefits to the country and people, so there is no strong resistance. Then once they're entrenched in power you can't get them out when things start to go badly. You have to wait for them to completely crash. The Weimar Republic and First French Republic were not "well-established" governments. Most representative governments over the last couple hundred years, mostly in Europe and the Americas, but with a few others, have been very fragile institutions with countries seeing representative government come and go not terribly infrequently. Even when representative government has been able to keep control, there has still be wild instability in many cases. If you examine the political history of most every "developed Western nation" over the last couple hundred years you will see that. Only the United States and a handful of others have had a well-established and stable representative government pretty much continuously since its establishment. Sure, I don't think that our Republic is immune from ever falling, forever is a long time, obviously but I've seen a lot of, especially since Trump was elected, asinine and reactionary opinions about the stability of our Republic.
This is a great thread, while I thought the initial premise was a bit sensational it has sparked some interesting debate. Kudos. it's amazing the discussion you can have when the bomb throwers stay out of it.
Yeah, "well-established" was @foh's embroidery on my point and not anything I ever committed to. He was annoyed about my flip attitude about the future of democracy, so he wanted to challenge me on where do we ever see this backsliding happen. But, to hem me in rhetorically, he tried to subtly move the goal-posts by adding "well-established" even though I never said anything about democracies being well-established -- my point was not about how robust a democracy might be but about how we as a species do flip from one form of government to another (and we don't all die as a result). But, you know, I like to talk, so I offered some historical examples I'm familiar with to be discussed. They don't necessarily reflect robust, mature democracies, they are backsliding democracies. This thread, unless there was some inference I was supposed to draw about Trump from the OP, is not about the modern American experience but about the future of democracy in general and the capacity for humanity to maintain it. I feel like folks are bringing their Trump baggage and loading it on me. For once, I wasn't thinking about that dude at all.
I feel like what events in the UK and the US are demonstrating, in particular: For any representative, cooperative system of government, it takes some minimal amount of good will and trust for those with differing views. There's no system, in other words, that's foolproof against people acting in bad faith, or acting as if everyone else is acting in bad faith. People complain about updating, say, our system in the US, and I think there are some fair points. But I've come to think that the ground rules aren't the main thing that need fixing.
I feel the Capitalistic economic system undermines the democracy I think there can be a democratic government system with a more socialist/communist economic system People often conflagrate communistic government system with communistic economic system or merge them as one You can have one without the other Rocket River
Reading the op's article in full, I'm surprised no one mentioned Idiocracy. I don't think we're all idiots, rather specialization has made us more tools than human. Sex and vanity is being pumped non-stop and it's been useful peddling a Brave New World to consumers equally isolated and discriminating. Thinking about this has been my own personal and morbid hobby. I don't think our monkey brains was intended to scale over a billion. We've become more virus, more of a dataset, than individual actors. Of course statisticians can make something out if a cohort of 10k-10M. Oh well, the kettle is already boiling. The alarmism is there for the elites to react. How can libs declare Trump as the end of democracy when he had been the surprise candidate every round? That should be the silver lining in our awfully torturous oligarchy. Do we collectively take our ball and go home after a disappointment? Pretty soon, They will take your balls and your keys if this fatalism and apathy keeps happening over and over again.
For the most part, Trump is not that dangerous because he is so inept for the most part. However, imagine a populist candidate that is more like Hitler(put all Muslims in concentration camp for starter), but highly calculating and have a brilliant mind (not just declaring he is a genius). I could easily see a scenario where the US go down the path of pre-WWII Germany.
For the countries that turned autocratic, I knew Hungary was on the list, but was surprised that Poland was too. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/05/hungary-and-poland-arent-democratic-theyre-authoritarian/ Niall Ferguson had a pretty interesting documentary about Germany where he used his then-popular style of counterfactual history to paint Germany as a progressive multicultural country that didn't collapse from the sheer weight of their war debt, rather the populist sentiments driven from their rustic rural classes. It's was an interesting "this could happen to you" interpretation but I've forgotten most of the details of his 15-17yr old work. So it's possible if populism from both sides continue to surge as we pit neighbors as undesirables and intolerables. I recently read a paper about liberal democracy and populism and it does a good job drawing lines against populism as the "will of the people" and liberal democracy is the will of the many groups. The former is a steam roller and the latter is an uncomfortable crucible that drives the collective needs of all. That said, we still got some ways to go. I think the younger generations are far more tolerant (and less risk taking) than Old Millennials like me. Every day is Christmas when it comes to new inventions and discoveries, and the stuff that's already out will impact society in the years to come.
I am less optimistic. The reason for the rise of Trump and Brexit etc is that a large group of people fee they are not benefiting from the society. I am afraid it is going to get much worse for the next generation due to robotics automation and AI. Imagine a society where 50-80% of the population is surviving on UBI as there are no jobs for them. The discontentment we feel today will be nothing compared to what is coming in the future. On top of all this, we might face global warming that could threaten the existence of human race in the not too distant future. I am glad I won't have to face these most likely, unless i live well beyond the expected life expectancy.
Personally, I don't believe I moved the goal posts on you. I skimmed that article and the way I understood its thesis/claims, I felt that they were most applicable to US. We invented the social media and popularized it across the world. I didn't note the article referring to other countries or "the world", but I admit that I didn't read it closely. I assumed that the OP applied the "end of democracy" to us specifically and not a general concept of a democracy. Maybe I was egoistical Also, in my understanding of "well developed" democracy, such democracy goes hand in hand with ingrained religion of capitalism. In fact the industrious mindset of populace to me is the more important aspect than the political democratic embroidery on top of it. That's why I was more interested in Germany than say in Poland as I thought Germany has Protestant roots in there somewhere more so than Poland (also I assume they still have nominal democracy and Russia meddling in their politics as it does with all it's NATO neighbors. Their rank is ~50 whereas US is 25 and Russia is ~150). Protestantism supposedly laid the foundation to our industrious "hard work wins the day" nature that exists to this day (despite the election of nepotist-in-chief) if one is to trust the polls.
I've not been careful in my posting. I don't mean I took it badly or you weren't debating fairly or anything, just that you were delving into a different aspect of the subject than I was. You wanted to frame it as "do mature democracies fail" which wasn't what I was getting at. Didn't mean to defame you.
