An important question; Does democracy actually exist?

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

I sometimes wonder, is there really democracy in today's world?

Before you answer saying "Of course! We can vote who can be the leader of the country!"

I mean real democracy. Not being given a few random individuals who make false promises before the election, which they turn out to be lying scum bags with their own hidden agenda - as always.

It came to my mind when I was looking back on who I voted for, and hoped he'll deliver the pledge of promise he made.
Did he fulfil them? No, oh well, if I was to really stretch it, maybe a few unnoticeable promises, that don't benefit us as the people.

I then made another question; Where is the democracy we have today?
Did I ever have my say in what direction the government should take? No.
Did I have a chance to vote whether we should and should not be in wars? No.
Did the country ask us whether it was right to go to bomb countries such as Libya? No.

Alright, it may be unreasonable for me to question on such issues, but then, what is the prime motivator for them doing the opposite of what we want?

Let's look at the Libyan war (Or much rather, rebellion) for instance. If the leader of the country went to war without asking us if it's the right thing to do, then what made them attack in the first place?

To spread democracy to the Libyan rebels? Maybe, but that seems more like a way to make ourselves look like we have noble intentions, after the rebellion we see the rebels brutally killing Gaddafi, yeah, I don't buy the fact that the rebellion did anything good for Libya but if we were doing it for good intentions, wouldn't they let us have our say?

Profit for the government and the companies backing it? Sounds realistic. Nearly, if not, all the countries we invaded has some form of valuable resource that foreign companies want to loot and profit from, whilst we're (still) facing constant tax rises due to the supposed oil scarcity.


Countries will claim that Libya was ruled by a tyrant and the protestors had no form of democracy, just by showing us a few clips of the cops (and eventually, the army) using unnecessary force against us

But when I look at the protests that we have in the "Democratic countries" I see police brutality, areas becoming a police state, you will see protesters being arrested for simply being at the protests. That really makes me question about our "Democratic world".

So I might also get a response "But people do have democracy! We can do demonstrations and protests if we don't like what the government are doing!", sure, but anything that they can profit from, they will not listen to you, not even if 75% of the country demonstrated of the wrong doings.

Don't believe me? Look at during the invasion of Iraq, worldwide people have protested against the Iraq war. Did they listen? Nope. They never even attempted to reconsider.
Alright, so there may not be police brutality, but even then, even if there was no force being used against the demonstrators, it would still be clear that democracy nearly absent for the people.

I find out further that, to be elected as a leader of the country, you have to have a lot of funding from a company to get a chance in succeeding, hell you can even become a brand, simply because you've been "funded" to become a leader of the country.


So I ask you the question; Is there really democracy? Did you take part in any programs or anything that we considered beneficial to us, as people? Everything that the government does, seems to always be beneficial for the select few and not for the majority of the people.

[Somone77]

The voting system we have in America was set in stone hundreds of years ago by people who didn't and couldn't conceive or begin to comprehend the technology we have at our disposal today. Thomas Jefferson had the right idea. He supported rewriting the constitution every 19 years so that we are "not slaved to the previous generation." It is unbelievable that people will blindly take our constitution as absolute law even though it was written by people in a VERY different time.

Lets begin with the electoral college, seeing as it's the most likely thing we are going to change in our lifetimes.
The electoral college was made to allow votes to easily be counted across a small population but with no real means of communication. Therefore, when the country was just starting out, no one had to send thousands of ballets all the way to Washington DC, they would simply send the vote for that state to the counters.
This is extremely out of date. We have a infrastructure in which I can send a vote, 'yes' / 'no', in less than 100 milliseconds to anywhere in the entire world, and yet we have this deprecated system made for a time with communication that took weeks. Please tell me any way that the electoral college is still needed.

I mentioned briefly how the internet could be used for voting, well, that's actually an idea that is getting a lot of traction, called Direct Democracy.
Direct Democracy would allow a system in which you would vote on decisions and every vote would count. Let's look at it as if it was built like Reddit. People could submit an idea and wait, if people agreed, it would be up voted, and vice versa. Of course, if it gets enough up votes and is clearly a good idea, it would need to be gone over by the big buffs that look over the laws we have in place, make sure it doesn't conflict with them, but it's an idea that will work, it just needs time.

There was talk about the 2012 election being done without the electoral college and going by the popular vote, which make infinitely more sense, as long as you don't like looking at all the brainless people that do get to vote (I'm looking at your, religious bigots) who want to say what people can and can't do with their lives... But that's a story for another thread.

[Pielolz]

Important question; Why do you make these controversial threads? Do you just want to make mad and stir the shit?

[Technical Abbreviations]

Important question; Why do you make these controversial threads? Do you just want to make mad and stir the shit?
[/quote
Because he can. Youre stirring the shit by posting

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

Important question; Why do you make these controversial threads? Do you just want to make mad and stir the shit?

If you don't like me asking such questions, you're free to leave, no one is forcing you to read the thread.

-Text-

I have learned quite a bit about Thomas Jefferson, he was indeed a very wise man and was more of a visionary for the people, wanting to make sure that the U.S. government and companies not have total control over the country.

Thomas Jefferson, in fact, defied central banks, and rightly so, as central banks can easily enslave the people and destroy markets, as they control the money.

Andrew Jackson too wanted to ensure that the citizens of the U.S were not enslaved by the government or rich people.

However, the 2 men who did support democracy and wanted to ensure the people had just as much say as the rich people had, just went down the sink, it was ignored and was possibly seen as crazy.

The problem is though, like I said, even if you had the freedom of voting, it still gives the "Illusion of freedom".

For instance, one way of putting down people is to have rich companies, funding politicians who serve nothing more as puppets, to just say "Vote me! We will change our system! <Insert false promises>"

It's the same pattern we see, and whenever people vote for the "Most honest politician" they seemed to have this great idea to just simply destroy their reputation and plunge a country to a grave that we will never dig out from.

Whilst I agree, it's good that we have the ability to vote for the government. But do we have the ability to vote for "Big decisions" that the governments would take? I'd be surprised if we get our say about the issue.

But then people would say "We have the media that can broadcast our word!", I seriously doubt it. The media always seems to follow the pattern of annoying the population, twisting/exaggerating stories, and sometimes misinform the people. But that's another thread worthy question.

[The Doctor, RIP Juggernaut]

Important question; Why do you make these controversial threads? Do you just want to make mad and stir the shit?

If you don't like me asking such questions, you're free to leave, no one is forcing you to read the thread.

-Text-

I have learned quite a bit about Thomas Jefferson, he was indeed a very wise man and was more of a visionary for the people, wanting to make sure that the U.S. government and companies not have total control over the country.

Thomas Jefferson, in fact, defied central banks, and rightly so, as central banks can easily enslave the people and destroy markets, as they control the money.

Andrew Jackson too wanted to ensure that the citizens of the U.S were not enslaved by the government or rich people.

However, the 2 men who did support democracy and wanted to ensure the people had just as much say as the rich people had, just went down the sink, it was ignored and was possibly seen as crazy.

The problem is though, like I said, even if you had the freedom of voting, it still gives the "Illusion of freedom".

For instance, one way of putting down people is to have rich companies, funding politicians who serve nothing more as puppets, to just say "Vote me! We will change our system! <Insert false promises>"

It's the same pattern we see, and whenever people vote for the "Most honest politician" they seemed to have this great idea to just simply destroy their reputation and plunge a country to a grave that we will never dig out from.

Whilst I agree, it's good that we have the ability to vote for the government. But do we have the ability to vote for "Big decisions" that the governments would take? I'd be surprised if we get our say about the issue.

Agreed. My main issue with the government as it stands is that some seats in congress(Or a lot of them for that matter) are impossible to change hands due to how the District lines are cut out.

And the idea that the people vote for the president is Bullshit and it needs to change.

Congress right now is a cluster fuck of corruption, neither is willing to fully compromise and its becoming a massive fucking flame war.
 

[cookiesofamerica]

True democracy never really exists, however hybrids like democratic-republics (or federal republics) do actually exist for countries like Canada and Mexico (even though the Mexican government is controlled by the drug lords, but that is another story) so yes there is a form of democracy in it, but the government is only the democracy while the people are the republic. However there is still corruption in democracy because in mob rule, the minority is not safe and can be killed by the mob. So a constitution can protect the minority from the majority, now if the founders of the nation made amendments for the original document of the constitution that cannot be changed which then lessens the corruption and the limitations of the government (leaving the people alone). However, I think this video explains a bit more of these basic forms of governments actually:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDS1OHk7Lf8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDS1OHk7Lf8</a>

[Journeyman H. [UK]]

True democracy never really exists, however hybrids like democratic-republics (or federal republics) do actually exist for countries like Canada and Mexico (even though the Mexican government is controlled by the drug lords, but that is another story) so yes there is a form of democracy in it, but the government is only the democracy while the people are the republic. However there is still corruption in democracy because in mob rule, the minority is not safe and can be killed by the mob. So a constitution can protect the minority from the majority, now if the founders of the nation made amendments for the original document of the constitution that cannot be changed which then lessens the corruption and the limitations of the government (leaving the people alone). However, I think this video explains a bit more of these basic forms of governments actually:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDS1OHk7Lf8" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDS1OHk7Lf8</a>

I'm sorry, but there's 2 major problems with your statement.

First; Politicians use "politics" to solve problems, that does not work, for instance, if your computer broke down, would you want a politician to go to your house and use politics in order to fix the computer? No, you'd get a technician to take a look. (Somewhat unrelated, but ties in what I am trying to say.

Second, true democracy won't exist, of course, but it seems to be the fact that, anyone with financial backing seems to be that they get their say more than the people who don't, even if people are experts in such fields.


So, how do we solve this? We use experts who are not funded by corrupt privatised institutions. I actually wonder if any of the politicians in the U.S are actually educated in each field that is required.

For instance, if you have a disaster such as an earthquake in part of the U.S. having the president saying "Oh dear, that's a disaster", you have experts coming over and using their brains and technology to build houses that won't topple over if the area is likely to suffer another disaster.

Your video is near meaningless when it comes to the real problem of the government just listening to the financially backed people (bankers and oil companies.), this video is explaining how the current government works, but does not observe the major faults it suffers.
Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson have constantly said, over, and over (Well not literally said) were strongly against privatising the central bank, for that very reason, people would work under servitude and inevitable debt and exploitation of people in debt. (Also partly irrelevant, but top 1% people have more democracy and it only benefits the select few.)

In order to receive the closest thing to democracy, you need to not privatise institutions that people need to use, because once things get privatised, indirectly, democracy will be severely damaged, for the obvious reason that presidents are funded if they act as a puppet for a company, we need to rely on computers in transmitting and gathering information, therefore we can vote and bring in results at the speed of light.

The problem is cookie, to me, you seem to doubt the ability of what human beings can do. We can communicate at the speed of light, we have machines doing maths, estimations, hypothesis, transmit information faster than every single human brain combined.
But there is indeed 1 important thing to mention, no solution will be perfect, but it would always be improved.

Now I feel we're left with 2 answers;
1. Our way of "Democracy" is completely out of date and a new system is needed.
2. The "Democratic" system we have, is so corrupted and damaged beyond recognition, and we're in desperate need of replacing in order to prevent, or fully stop the corruption that lingers in the system.

[Penguin]

inb4 the communists come in and shitpost everything about how great communism is.