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Crisis of Democracy

Do Our Modern Societies Tend to Suffer from an Excess of Democracy or Too Little Democracy?

  • Excess of Democracy

    Votes: 1 14.3%

  • Too Little Democracy

    Votes: 6 85.7%
  • Total voters
    7
xMathFanx

xMathFanx

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Crisis of Democracy

The Crisis of Democracy was authored by the Tri-Lateral Commission who were elite liberal intellectual internationals from the US, Europe, and Japan in the early 1970's. In it, they argued that there is an excess of Democracy and need to find ways of pushing back against the new wave of public opinion from the lower formerly disenfranchised classes. In their view (very similar to that of Socrates in The Republic) is that these lower classes are unfit to make rational decisions about society that will effect all of us (not just them) and therefore should be politically/socially disenfranchised because they are bound to make all sorts wrong decisions that any sensible person/society understands that the higher classes are best fit to make all of these decisions.

In The Crisis of Democracy, they made an argument that there is becoming a serious problem with over-education amongst the populace that was newly occurring (in the early 1970's onward). Their reasoning was now that more people are getting Undergrad. level degrees, as well as Masters level, ect. that these lower classes that in truth do not possess the same high level intellect/education that the higher classes (i.e. the elite Liberal intellectuals and possibly some elite intellectuals on the right as well but that point is unclear in their writing)) and that the *lower classes* should in no way be given the false impression that they (even though they are becoming notably more educated) are as qualified to make serious decisions (i.e. engage in the political process) that the elites are (i.e. the Elites should be making the rules, so to speak). Thus, the *"Crisis of Democracy" is that political activism is leading to *too many* people being involved in the political process and this needs to be pushed back against in order to maintain a more stable, healthy, productive system.

I would also highly recommend reading the Crisis of Democracy as well as it is in many ways a softer modern day parallel to the type of thinking seen in Plato's Republic. Here is a link to the Crisis of Democracy: http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis ofdemocracy.pdf

What do you think? Do our modern societies tend to suffer from an Excess in Democracy or is there Too Little Democracy?
 
xMaxFanx:

The demos is the people. Therefore democracy is the rule of the people. What the Trilateral Commission was arguing for was not modified democracy but rather oligarchy based on wealth and class/caste. Why? These elites had stuff and they were afraid that a truely representative democracy or worse still a popular direct democracy would take their stuff by taxation or expropriation. Their position against democracy was not rooted in intellectual or moral superiority of the monied classes but rather a desire to protect inter-generational weath and privelege in order to establish a de facto permanent aristocracy over their fellow citizens. They didn't want their children to have to work and gamble their way towards prosperity as they perhaps did but rather to inherit it and if skilled enough to expand that wealth. They assumed that what was best for themselves was also best for the wider society around them, forgetting that such thinking leads to either rebellion or revolution by the disenfranchised against the oligarchs.

Remember that Socrates was forced to commit suicide by his peers in the Athenian demos.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
 
Depends on who won the election. If Hamas won, too much. If Putin wins, too little.
 
xMathFanx said:
Crisis of Democracy

The Crisis of Democracy was authored by the Tri-Lateral Commission who were elite liberal intellectual internationals from the US, Europe, and Japan in the early 1970's. In it, they argued that there is an excess of Democracy and need to find ways of pushing back against the new wave of public opinion from the lower formerly disenfranchised classes. In their view (very similar to that of Socrates in The Republic) is that these lower classes are unfit to make rational decisions about society that will effect all of us (not just them) and therefore should be politically/socially disenfranchised because they are bound to make all sorts wrong decisions that any sensible person/society understands that the higher classes are best fit to make all of these decisions.

In The Crisis of Democracy, they made an argument that there is becoming a serious problem with over-education amongst the populace that was newly occurring (in the early 1970's onward). Their reasoning was now that more people are getting Undergrad. level degrees, as well as Masters level, ect. that these lower classes that in truth do not possess the same high level intellect/education that the higher classes (i.e. the elite Liberal intellectuals and possibly some elite intellectuals on the right as well but that point is unclear in their writing)) and that the *lower classes* should in no way be given the false impression that they (even though they are becoming notably more educated) are as qualified to make serious decisions (i.e. engage in the political process) that the elites are (i.e. the Elites should be making the rules, so to speak). Thus, the *"Crisis of Democracy" is that political activism is leading to *too many* people being involved in the political process and this needs to be pushed back against in order to maintain a more stable, healthy, productive system.

I would also highly recommend reading the Crisis of Democracy as well as it is in many ways a softer modern day parallel to the type of thinking seen in Plato's Republic. Here is a link to the Crisis of Democracy: http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis ofdemocracy.pdf

What do you think? Do our modern societies tend to suffer from an Excess in Democracy or is there Too Little Democracy?
Click to expand...

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xMathFanx said:
Crisis of Democracy

The Crisis of Democracy was authored by the Tri-Lateral Commission who were elite liberal intellectual internationals from the US, Europe, and Japan in the early 1970's. In it, they argued that there is an excess of Democracy and need to find ways of pushing back against the new wave of public opinion from the lower formerly disenfranchised classes. In their view (very similar to that of Socrates in The Republic) is that these lower classes are unfit to make rational decisions about society that will effect all of us (not just them) and therefore should be politically/socially disenfranchised because they are bound to make all sorts wrong decisions that any sensible person/society understands that the higher classes are best fit to make all of these decisions.

In The Crisis of Democracy, they made an argument that there is becoming a serious problem with over-education amongst the populace that was newly occurring (in the early 1970's onward). Their reasoning was now that more people are getting Undergrad. level degrees, as well as Masters level, ect. that these lower classes that in truth do not possess the same high level intellect/education that the higher classes (i.e. the elite Liberal intellectuals and possibly some elite intellectuals on the right as well but that point is unclear in their writing)) and that the *lower classes* should in no way be given the false impression that they (even though they are becoming notably more educated) are as qualified to make serious decisions (i.e. engage in the political process) that the elites are (i.e. the Elites should be making the rules, so to speak). Thus, the *"Crisis of Democracy" is that political activism is leading to *too many* people being involved in the political process and this needs to be pushed back against in order to maintain a more stable, healthy, productive system.

I would also highly recommend reading the Crisis of Democracy as well as it is in many ways a softer modern day parallel to the type of thinking seen in Plato's Republic. Here is a link to the Crisis of Democracy: http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis ofdemocracy.pdf

What do you think? Do our modern societies tend to suffer from an Excess in Democracy or is there Too Little Democracy?
Click to expand...

To tell you the truth, I assume that the problems we are seeing have many farthers. We are in a period of traverse of information technology, demographic variables, huge growth, enormous reallocation of production and consumption to mention only the main ones influencing and often confusing voters and populations.

Just think of information. We were only a few decades ago in a situation of information being the relatively expensive and limiting resource. Now the limiting resource is information analysis and use. As democracy is essentially a societal technology for information processing and was optimised for a totally different information environment, it can malfunction. To work right, it need readjustment and probably new technologies to deal with the information overload.

This is certainly not the only way to encounter the problems we are seeing. But I think that it is more a question of getting the societal instruments to work efficiently, than to punt on gut feeling.
 
Evilroddy said:
xMaxFanx:

The demos is the people. Therefore democracy is the rule of the people. What the Trilateral Commission was arguing for was not modified democracy but rather oligarchy based on wealth and class/caste. Why? These elites had stuff and they were afraid that a truely representative democracy or worse still a popular direct democracy would take their stuff by taxation or expropriation. Their position against democracy was not rooted in intellectual or moral superiority of the monied classes but rather a desire to protect inter-generational weath and privelege in order to establish a de facto permanent aristocracy over their fellow citizens. They didn't want their children to have to work and gamble their way towards prosperity as they perhaps did but rather to inherit it and if skilled enough to expand that wealth. They assumed that what was best for themselves was also best for the wider society around them, forgetting that such thinking leads to either rebellion or revolution by the disenfranchised against the oligarchs.

Remember that Socrates was forced to commit suicide by his peers in the Athenian demos.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.
Click to expand...

@Evilroddy

I generally agree with your analysis of the Author's views. Note, this is not how they framed it in their book, you are reading-between-the-lines (I think rather accurately) what their hidden agenda was (possibly on a subconscious level(?)).

I was actually making a different point about Socrates in this context (although I agree with your statement concerning being penalized by his society simply for challenging the status quo--and admittedly I did not go into any real detail about my point, which I would be happy to do if you were interested)
 
xMathFanx said:
Crisis of Democracy

The Crisis of Democracy was authored by the Tri-Lateral Commission who were elite liberal intellectual internationals from the US, Europe, and Japan in the early 1970's. In it, they argued that there is an excess of Democracy and need to find ways of pushing back against the new wave of public opinion from the lower formerly disenfranchised classes. In their view (very similar to that of Socrates in The Republic) is that these lower classes are unfit to make rational decisions about society that will effect all of us (not just them) and therefore should be politically/socially disenfranchised because they are bound to make all sorts wrong decisions that any sensible person/society understands that the higher classes are best fit to make all of these decisions.

In The Crisis of Democracy, they made an argument that there is becoming a serious problem with over-education amongst the populace that was newly occurring (in the early 1970's onward). Their reasoning was now that more people are getting Undergrad. level degrees, as well as Masters level, ect. that these lower classes that in truth do not possess the same high level intellect/education that the higher classes (i.e. the elite Liberal intellectuals and possibly some elite intellectuals on the right as well but that point is unclear in their writing)) and that the *lower classes* should in no way be given the false impression that they (even though they are becoming notably more educated) are as qualified to make serious decisions (i.e. engage in the political process) that the elites are (i.e. the Elites should be making the rules, so to speak). Thus, the *"Crisis of Democracy" is that political activism is leading to *too many* people being involved in the political process and this needs to be pushed back against in order to maintain a more stable, healthy, productive system.

I would also highly recommend reading the Crisis of Democracy as well as it is in many ways a softer modern day parallel to the type of thinking seen in Plato's Republic. Here is a link to the Crisis of Democracy: http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis ofdemocracy.pdf

What do you think? Do our modern societies tend to suffer from an Excess in Democracy or is there Too Little Democracy?
Click to expand...

You can actually go back 400 years for a better history lesson. Read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.

Interestingly, the word "cracker" goes back nearly that far. Poor whites who cracked corn for every meal. Identifiable by their jaundiced appearance from lack of essential vitamins and minerals.
 
Why even debate this topic? The Genie is out of the bottle. The horse has left the barn. The information age makes it a mute point. The great unwashed masses have access and political power. The can use social media to make a crowd appear in minutes. No one is going to put them "in their place" ever again.

Once upon a time a poor, disenfranchised peasant in some far away country never knew anything different. He didn't know he was poor. He had always lived under oppression, so thought that's how the world worked. Now that peasant knows he's poor, and knows he's oppressed, and that other people live better and even have a vote. And that's what's causing a lot of the trouble in the world.

So, yeah, unless we burn it all down, we're going to have even more democracy, and even more of those undesirables participating.....one way or another.
 
d0gbreath said:
You can actually go back 400 years for a better history lesson. Read White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg.

Interestingly, the word "cracker" goes back nearly that far. Poor whites who cracked corn for every meal. Identifiable by their jaundiced appearance from lack of essential vitamins and minerals.
Click to expand...

I've heard differently about the origin of cracker.
 
poweRob said:
I've heard differently about the origin of cracker.
Click to expand...

I did too. You might have even heard from me that it was for the "whip cracker". That might be part of it, but cracker precedes US slavery by a couple of hundred years.
 
d0gbreath said:
I did too. You might have even heard from me that it was for the "whip cracker". That might be part of it, but cracker precedes US slavery by a couple of hundred years.
Click to expand...

Growing up in South Georgia I heard it originated from whip cracking but not of the slavery kind. Georgia cattle ranchers would drive their cattle to Florida annually cracking whips as they drove the cattle down to Florida and those who lived down there would call these folks from the other side of the border "Georgia Crackers".

Heresay story I grew up with.
 
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The US is a plutocracy, and the ultrarich overwhelmingly shape and decide the fate of its legislation and policy at the federal level; if 'democracy' was ever a problem in America, it's long been solved.
 
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