is democracy an illusion?

guy2231

Do the people really decide on anything?

As long as you have “wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, you cannot have real democracy. But this concentration of power has always been there, so real democracy cannot exist and has never existed. So, this shadow-of-a-thing we call democracy, which does exist, which we do have, poses no real threat to the TOTALITARIAN system. If it did, democracy wouldn’t be so popular. So, democracy is more like a cartoon the kids watch to keep them busy and ignorant of the true workings behind the scenes.

When concentration of wealth is controlled by a few it is very easy to control how people vote and to discredit any real threat to the system and without the support of the "few" you have no chance of ever bringing change apart from revolutionary circumstances.

oceanman

thats about how it works in a nutshell, and thus has it always been.

mikhail

Democracy isn't all that important week to week. But if FF weren't elected, there'd have been a bloodbath here in 2008/9 as they were deposed. Those are the situations where it's useful.

Its the least worst option

It’s mostly fake but better than the alternative.

Strumms

Democracy is about choice, it’s a good thing. It’s not a perfect system but it’s the best of anything that’s been tried.

Ireland is a democracy. We choose who to elect. If they fail us after being elected that’s not a failure of democracy, the democratic process, that’s a failure of individuals who were elected. Them personally.

ancapailldorcha

Democracy relies on a well-informed, rational populace making informed decisions and seeking out good quality information and opinions. It also requires constant debate and voter participation. One need only look at the US to see how the absence of these things has warped their politics. Thankfully, European nations look to be more resilient.

Calahonda52

Read or listen to a book called Skin in the Game

Allinall

guy2231 wrote: »

Do the people really decide on anything?

As long as you have “wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, you cannot have real democracy. But this concentration of power has always been there, so real democracy cannot exist and has never existed. So, this shadow-of-a-thing we call democracy, which does exist, which we do have, poses no real threat to the TOTALITARIAN system. If it did, democracy wouldn’t be so popular. So, democracy is more like a cartoon the kids watch to keep them busy and ignorant of the true workings behind the scenes.

When concentration of wealth is controlled by a few it is very easy to control how people vote and to discredit any real threat to the system and without the support of the "few" you have no chance of ever bringing change apart from revolutionary circumstances.

Don't know about anyone else, but nobody ever controlled how I vote.

endacl

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Democracy relies on a well-informed, rational populace making informed decisions and seeking out good quality information and opinions. It also requires constant debate and voter participation. One need only look at the US to see how the absence of these things has warped their politics. Thankfully, European nations look to be more resilient.

I see your well-informed, rational populace making informed decisions, and raise you a Paul Murphy.

silliussoddius

endacl wrote: »

I see your well-informed, rational populace making informed decisions, and raise you a Paul Murphy.

John Waters, Gemma O'Doherty, Mick Wallace and the other muppet

TheValeyard

Took a vote on it. Result think Democracy is not an illusion.

biko

Like Stain said;
"It's not the people who vote that counts.
It's the people who count the votes."

timmyntc

Allinall wrote: »

Don't know about anyone else, but nobody ever controlled how I vote.

Yes we did.

guy2231

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Democracy relies on a well-informed, rational populace making informed decisions and seeking out good quality information and opinions. It also requires constant debate and voter participation. One need only look at the US to see how the absence of these things has warped their politics. Thankfully, European nations look to be more resilient.

"seeking out good quality information and opinions" see there lies the problem, most people don't bother with any of that they don't have the time they go to work come home take care of the kids and maybe some days watch the 6 o'clock news and read the odd newspaper you might have the odd few percent of people who do put the time in to make well informed decicions but that small percentage does not really make much of a difference.

When the wealth is so tightly controlled by a few it is easy to control how people vote, they usually massive influence over the media and pretty much everything else, it's not hard to influence peoples opinions it's quite easy actually.

Same parties usually stay in power until a revolution comes and the people in the background who hold real influence over the political parties decisions (MI5 in the UK for example) are always there and no one votes for them, and even if they did it would be easy for MI5 to control how people vote.

ancapailldorcha

guy2231 wrote: »

"seeking out good quality information and opinions" see there lies the problem.

When the wealth is so tightly controlled by a few it is easy to control how people vote, they usually massive influence over the media and pretty much everything else, it's not hard to influence peoples opinions it's quite easy actually.

Same parties usually stay in power until a revolution comes and the people in the background who hold real influence over the political parties decisions (MI5 in the UK for example) are always there and no one votes for them, and even if they did it would be easy for MI5 to control how people vote.

Good quality media is there but it needs to be paid for and that's the issue. Traditional newspapers are dying and while much of that's very much for the better, unaccountable cranks on social media are no improvement.

I don't think that there's a shadowy cabal which holds the real power. I think in many countries that corporate media just blows up meaningless cultural issues to distract people from the fact that corporations are raking it in while paying virtually nothing in tax. People could end this tomorrow but they'd rather not bother voting and then wonder why they get ignored.

Ubbquittious

You vote for a crowd of shysters who promise the world and once they're in they just kind of proceed to do their own thing for 5 years. Then you have the EU who also just pursue their own agenda regardless of who is voted in.

If people decide they have a problem with something the EU is bringing out, tis nearly impossible to stop them.

guy2231

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Good quality media is there but it needs to be paid for and that's the issue. Traditional newspapers are dying and while much of that's very much for the better, unaccountable cranks on social media are no improvement.

I don't think that there's a shadowy cabal which holds the real power. I think in many countries that corporate media just blows up meaningless cultural issues to distract people from the fact that corporations are raking it in while paying virtually nothing in tax. People could end this tomorrow but they'd rather not bother voting and then wonder why they get ignored.

I don't think there is either, definitely not in the way you described it as a "shadowy cabal" in this country and most western countries it's more along the lines of the wealthy and powerful like media owners, the political parties and intelligence services as an example, all connected to each other through their wealth and power (I'll scratch your back you scratch mine) with the mutual interest of everyone keeping their positions of power.

silliussoddius

silliussoddius wrote: »

John Waters, Gemma O'Doherty, Mick Wallace and the other muppet

These guys are part of democracy. The op was wondering about whether the whole thing is fake because of the influence of the rich.

Capt'n Midnight

biko wrote: »

Like Stain said;
"It's not the people who vote that counts.
It's the people who count the votes."

Meanwhile here in Ireland we have the tradition of tallymen.

Paper ballots watched over by hawks.

guy2231

biko wrote: »

Like Stain said;
"It's not the people who vote that counts.
It's the people who count the votes."

Or the people with the power to influence the votes

KungPao

It's a load of bollocks.

McGinniesta

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Democracy relies on a well-informed, rational populace making informed decisions and seeking out good quality information and opinions. It also requires constant debate and voter participation. One need only look at the US to see how the absence of these things has warped their politics. Thankfully, European nations look to be more resilient.

I tend to disagree. Certain sections of the European population are almost equally as poorly informed as their U.S counterparts.

I understand that this is a very simple example but it serves its purpose. I'm a nerdy quizzer and I went to a pub quiz in a well known Dublin pub just before lockdown.

I go with three other lads and while none of us would proclaim ourselves as geniuses we're not complete dunces either.

We got a very simple round one night where we were given the outline of 10 E.U Countries on their own and were asked to identify them.

For four guys in their 40's this should have been a breeze. We got half of them wrong. To our shame.

To make matters worse, no team got all 10.

Now, I maintain that even less people are well informed about the workings of the system that governs their lives and makes decisions on their behalf and I include myself in that.

Instead of knowing what's actually going on, most of us will simply react without devoting any real time to what we are reacting to.

If we took the time to analyse what really happens in this country there is no doubt that the current incumbents would be out on their arse so fast you wouldn't believe.

When I see the likes of Michael Martin in the the Taoiseachs off it burns my arse cheeks.

McGinniesta

Here's a question\suspicion that I've always had.

This isn't intended as a "bash the us" post but simply a thought I've had. I've absolutely no evidence to back this up.

The U.S government have had several "forays" into other countries under the guise of introducing "democracy".

Has any candidate that they have recommended been beaten in an open election?

Mac_Lad71

Democracy is derived from the Greek words 'demos' and 'cratis' which roughly translated means mob rule.

Ireland is only one of two countries in the world (Malta being the other) to use the PRSTV electoral system which is acknowledged as giving the truest representation of votes in a parliament.

The problem with PRSTV is that it nearly always results in coalition government, in essence we vote for candidates and mandate them to form a government.

FF got 22.2% of first preference votes in the last election and MM is Taoiseach, SD is Health Minister etc. in a coalition where FG won 20.9 % and the Greens got 7.1%

SF got 24.5%, which was the largest share of first preference votes in 2020 and they are in opposition.

In that sense democracy is an illusion (btw I have no affiliation to any political party).

ancapailldorcha

McGinniesta wrote: »

I tend to disagree. Certain sections of the European population are almost equally as poorly informed as their U.S counterparts.

I understand that this is a very simple example but it serves its purpose. I'm a nerdy quizzer and I went to a pub quiz in a well known Dublin pub just before lockdown.

I go with three other lads and while none of us would proclaim ourselves as geniuses we're not complete dunces either.

We got a very simple round one night where we were given the outline of 10 E.U Countries on their own and were asked to identify them.

For four guys in their 40's this should have been a breeze. We got half of them wrong. To our shame.

To make matters worse, no team got all 10.

Now, I maintain that even less people are well informed about the workings of the system that governs their lives and makes decisions on their behalf and I include myself in that.

Instead of knowing what's actually going on, most of us will simply react without devoting any real time to what we are reacting to.

If we took the time to analyse what really happens in this country there is no doubt that the current incumbents would be out on their arse so fast you wouldn't believe.

When I see the likes of Michael Martin in the the Taoiseachs off it burns my arse cheeks.

That's rather the problem though. Democracies reflect the electorate. If swathes of the electorate concern themselves more with things like entertainment and not at all with Politics then there's a lack of scrutiny which will be exploited because power abhors a vacuum.

To be honest, while I'd have had no bother identifying your 10 EU countries, give me a similar map of Munster and I'd have no idea where Cork, Tipperary and Kerry should be.

guy2231

McGinniesta wrote: »

I tend to disagree. Certain sections of the European population are almost equally as poorly informed as their U.S counterparts.

I understand that this is a very simple example but it serves its purpose. I'm a nerdy quizzer and I went to a pub quiz in a well known Dublin pub just before lockdown.

I go with three other lads and while none of us would proclaim ourselves as geniuses we're not complete dunces either.

We got a very simple round one night where we were given the outline of 10 E.U Countries on their own and were asked to identify them.

For four guys in their 40's this should have been a breeze. We got half of them wrong. To our shame.

To make matters worse, no team got all 10.

Now, I maintain that even less people are well informed about the workings of the system that governs their lives and makes decisions on their behalf and I include myself in that.

Instead of knowing what's actually going on, most of us will simply react without devoting any real time to what we are reacting to.

If we took the time to analyse what really happens in this country there is no doubt that the current incumbents would be out on their arse so fast you wouldn't believe.

When I see the likes of Michael Martin in the the Taoiseachs off it burns my arse cheeks.

Completely true, there lies the problem without the backing from the "few" (media, political parties, intelligence services etc.) who are all connected to each other through their power and wealth and work together with mutual interests of keeping their positions of power there is no chance of bringing change or ousting any of these institutions except in extraordinary circumstamces or when all the established institutions come together to oust a single one of the institutions.

Former Former Former

Democracy isn't perfect.

We should therefore have:
a) A monarchy?
b) A military junta?
c) A good old-fashioned dictatorship?
d) Total anarchy?

ClosedAccountFuzzy

There are also many forms of democracy. You’ve quite basic first past the post systems, where you will tend to end up with a two party system and very little choice. That’s where both the US and UK tend to be.

Or, you’ve various flavours of proportional representation, ours bring one of the most open forms. At least in a system like that you can express a lot more than a choice between A and B or Blue and Red.

The reality of a UK Westminster election is that a candidate can win a seat, yet only hold day 36% of the vote.

Democracy is a broad concept. The mechanisms and culture and it vary a lot.

Many democracies are also deeply flawed, and you can see that in systems that have overly powerful executive presidencies. The US clearly demonstrated how it was unable to hold a presidency to account, despite all the self aggrandising rhetoric and worshiping of the fathers, the system showed itself as deeply flawed and dysfunctional because it’s largely from the 1700s.

The UK is also demonstrating that with a sizeable technical majority and a split opposition, the government effectively has no accountability either.

Systems that tend to share power and never leave it all in one group or individual’s hands seem to function better.

victor8600

I think that democracy is not an illusion, no more than any other abstract concepts like freedom. Perfect democracy may not exist, same as the absolute freedom for everyone, but it is still better than any alternative. You may get a good life under a rule of some benevolent monarch or a dictator, but that life may be shattered in a moment. Democratic countries with their constant change of people in power, checks and balances are more stable.

mariaalice

It is an illusion and we sustaine it became we want to believe it, we fill in the gaps and skip over the conderdiction, it's not so much a political elite telling us what to think.

Slavoj Zidek is interesting on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek

Thing about talking about "the people" is that the person talking about "the people" always- always!- means "me".

Democracy is the system by which nobody gets what they want, in a reasonably predictable and sometimes fair manner.

Dr. Bre

Democracy is an illusion . Only 2 parties in the greatest democracy in the world in the USA. In the UK apart from Tony Blair’s Labour there has only been a conservative government in the last 30 years. In Ireland FF and FG only parties that get majority votes. Democracy is choose A or B . Not many options

Dr. Bre

Dr. Bre wrote: »

Democracy is an illusion . Only 2 parties in the greatest democracy in the world in the USA. In the UK apart from Tony Blair’s Labour there has only been a conservative government in the last 30 years. In Ireland FF and FG only parties that get majority votes. Democracy is choose A or B . Not many options

What dyou mean "apart from Tony Blair's Labour!"

Man is a Thatcherite to his bones, and the party is still riven between his tory lite faction and an actual labour presence

ClosedAccountFuzzy

That’s why we’ve a 3 way coalition with the greens and a rotating Taoiseach?

Definitely a case of a two party system here…

FF and FG’s popularity has been fading since the 1970s and the Irish political landscape is much, much more complex.

You couldn’t really argue that the public here had no choices in the past either. It was a conservative population that was still emerging from a civil war mentality and FF and FG (to a lesser extent) were very popular with the electorate.

The system only came into its own as a multiparty democracy as those public opinions shifted. It’s very much not a case of the structure here creating a two party system, but rather it was despite of it and that’s just a reflection of public attitudes if that era.

Dr. Bre

[Deleted User] wrote: »

What dyou mean "apart from Tony Blair's Labour!"

Man is a Thatcherite to his bones, and the party is still riven between his tory lite faction and an actual labour presence

Haha true . I wasn’t a fan either

ClosedAccountFuzzy

Mac_Lad71 wrote: »

Democracy is derived from the Greek words 'demos' and 'cratis' which roughly translated means mob rule.

Ireland is only one of two countries in the world (Malta being the other) to use the PRSTV electoral system which is acknowledged as giving the truest representation of votes in a parliament.

The problem with PRSTV is that it nearly always results in coalition government, in essence we vote for candidates and mandate them to form a government.

FF got 22.2% of first preference votes in the last election and MM is Taoiseach, SD is Health Minister etc. in a coalition where FG won 20.9 % and the Greens got 7.1%

SF got 24.5%, which was the largest share of first preference votes in 2020 and they are in opposition.

In that sense democracy is an illusion (btw I have no affiliation to any political party).

They got 24.5% of the vote. The right to form a government is open to them if they can assemble a majority in parliament as a coalition. They couldn’t because the majority of voters didn’t vote for SF’s political point of view and there’s a large centre / centre right vote.

We don’t operate a first past the post system so having 24.5% is just that.

The other thing that’s changing here is because the parties are less dominant, the Oireachtas is becoming much more dynamic and you’re seeing much more activity and interaction with the legislative process from non government parties.

It’s basically becoming what it was designed to be. The days of FF dominance were very much an anomaly that was only possible because of a very homogeneous and conservative 20th century electorate.

The structure of the electoral system wasn’t facilitating that. It was quite the opposite and it makes their majorities rather remarkable.

SF will, regrettably, be in govt at some stage in the next decade

Their followers not knowing why just getting 24% of the vote isnt actually a golden ticket to doing what you like is why that's regrettable

Ten years from now 10% of that 24% will have written SF of as yet another party that didn't fix all their problems for them when they were actually in the hot seat.

Wonder where they will go next. They'll hardly have learned anything, I predict that much. They'll take their vote to the next loudspeaker promise merchants.

But hey- that's democracy

FactsANDLogic

Democracy always seems to be fine as long as your side is winning.

Brexit happened despite the most powerful pushback by those opposed and pretty much the whole establishment. For Brexiters, Democracy worked...eventually.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

Well PR-STV is all about finding consensus positions. It’s never going to be about having a golden ticket to do what you like.

It’s remarkable commentators don’t understand that, a full century after it was introduced.

We don’t operate the Westminster electoral model and never have.

The strength in the system here is that it has to consensus, agreement and compromises.

One party riding roughshod is usually just hegemony of a technical majority, often far less than half the electorate. That’s what our system was designed to avoid as the concept behind it was always to encourage minority representation and cross community government. It was designed to prevent conflicts and envisaged for a pre partition Ireland that had communities that didn’t necessarily see eye to eye.

I think sometimes we could do with actually standing back and appreciating how different our PR approach actually is.

guy2231

FuzzyThinking wrote: »

That’s why we’ve a 3 way coalition with the greens and a rotating Taoiseach?

Definitely a case of a two party system here…

FF and FG’s popularity has been fading since the 1970s and the Irish political landscape is much, much more complex.

You couldn’t really argue that the public here had no choices in the past either. It was a conservative population that was still emerging from a civil war mentality and FF and FG (to a lesser extent) were very popular with the electorate.

The system only came into its own as a multiparty democracy as those public opinions shifted. It’s very much not a case of the structure here creating a two party system, but rather it was despite of it and that’s just a reflection of public attitudes if that era.

Sinn Fein only emerged here in Ireland due to a glitch in the system (the troubles) otherwise it would just be the usual two party system.

The two party systems in most democracies are no coincidence the whole democracy system is made in a way that make it almost impossible for the elite to lose control.

Also in bigger democracies like the US and UK the intelligence services (no one votes for them) very much control the thinking of the politcal parties especially when it comes to things like war and invasion as the political parties mostly rely on those agencies to provide them with the information and advice to make their decisions, it would be easy for them to withhold information or spread misinformation to influence the parties and the general population into going along with whatever they want to happen.

Anyway most people rely on mainstream media to make their decisions on voting so whoever has the influence on them can get pretty much whatever results they want the vast majority of the time although maybe not all the time.

Democracy is more like a reality TV show to make us feel like the general population are in control especially in the big democracies like the US and UK where we more or less just choose what faces represent us and even at that we don't even really decide as one or two parties almost alway remain in control it's no coincidence that they do either.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

Why would you think a two party system would emerge in PR STV? It doesn’t tend to facilitate that in its structures.

Most European PR systems don’t produce two party systems. In many ways ours is the most open form of PR as we don’t even have list systems.

The more likely scenario here is probably a Scandinavian style grand coalition type arrangement becoming the norm. That’s basically where we’ve been for some time now.

Our structures are most unlike the UK, US or most anglophone countries.

We also rank very highly on the democracy index and it’s about structures and political culture. We’re one of the oldest examples of a continuous PR democracy - a century of the STV system.

FuzzyThinking

FuzzyThinking wrote: »

Well PR-STV is all about finding consensus positions. It’s never going to be about having a golden ticket to do what you like.

It’s remarkable commentators don’t understand that, a full century after it was introduced.

We don’t operate the Westminster electoral model and never have.

The strength in the system here is that it has to consensus, agreement and compromises.

One party riding roughshod is usually just hegemony of a technical majority, often far less than half the electorate. That’s what our system was designed to avoid as the concept behind it was always to encourage minority representation and cross community government. It was designed to prevent conflicts and envisaged for a pre partition Ireland that had communities that didn’t necessarily see eye to eye.

I think sometimes we could do with actually standing back and appreciating how different our PR approach actually is.

Its a great strength, definitely

the purple tin

Democracy is a swizz. Joe Soap has very little say in what happens.
Like the war in Iraq for eg, millions of people were against it but Bush and Blair just gave them the finger and lorried on regardless.

YFlyer

guy2231 wrote: »

Do the people really decide on anything?

As long as you have “wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, you cannot have real democracy. But this concentration of power has always been there, so real democracy cannot exist and has never existed. So, this shadow-of-a-thing we call democracy, which does exist, which we do have, poses no real threat to the TOTALITARIAN system. If it did, democracy wouldn’t be so popular. So, democracy is more like a cartoon the kids watch to keep them busy and ignorant of the true workings behind the scenes.

When concentration of wealth is controlled by a few it is very easy to control how people vote and to discredit any real threat to the system and without the support of the "few" you have no chance of ever bringing change apart from revolutionary circumstances.

It is the trickle down of wealth, I can't understand.

Mac_Lad71

the purple tin wrote: »

Democracy is a swizz. Joe Soap has very little say in what happens.
Like the war in Iraq for eg, millions of people were against it but Bush and Blair just gave them the finger and lorried on regardless.

Not true as there are checks and balances.


Blair had to have the consent of parliament (House of Commons voted in favour) before he could declare war on Iraq.

Bush sought congressional approval which was granted.

begbysback

There are better alternatives, one such would be meritocracy

dickdasr1234

Strumms wrote: »

Democracy is about choice, it’s a good thing. It’s not a perfect system but it’s the best of anything that’s been tried.

Ireland is a democracy. We choose who to elect. If they fail us after being elected that’s not a failure of democracy, the democratic process, that’s a failure of individuals who were elected. Them personally.

You choose who you elect after the parties first choose those who go forward.
Aha, you say, we can elect independent candidates!
Good luck with that.

ClosedAccountFuzzy

begbysback wrote: »

There are better alternatives, one such would be meritocracy

And how would you measure merit?

A grand council of professors? Perhaps a league of sports stars? Best army generals? Most holy priest/nun? Best at chess? Dictatorship by the Rose of Tralee? Most loyal to the Dear Leader … Or, maybe the person with the largest bank balance.

One person’s idea of a meritorious person is often someone else’s oligarch or zealot.

the purple tin

Mac_Lad71 wrote: »

Not true as there are checks and balances.


Blair had to have the consent of parliament (House of Commons voted in favour) before he could declare war on Iraq.

Bush sought congressional approval which was granted.

The UN told them to hold their horses. They told the UN to feck off.

YFlyer

[Deleted User] wrote: »

It’s mostly fake but better than the alternative.

Agree. However in the system(maybe within law). You financially punish a wealthy person same as one less so.