Comics

I've got a gut feeling you might be mistaken.

People often pull out the supposed quote from Churchill that "democracy is the worst system, except all the others". But, they omit an important bit from the actual quote:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

IMO, a critical part of that quote is "that have been tried". The US is especially dumb here. A bunch of 25-year-old aristocrats from 250 years ago tried to design a government system. They did a pretty good job. But, they weren't political geniuses, or if they were, they were heavily biased by the times they lived in. They came along nearly 200 years before the development of game theory, let alone centuries of work in political science. The constitution should be a living document, learning from the mistakes those 25 year olds made.

They didn't understand the degree to which parties would take over. They didn't know about game theory showing that a FPTP system inevitably devolves into a 2-party system. They thought about the threat of a demagogue in the president's chair, but they were blind to the idea that he'd be the head of a party, and his party would prevent impeachment.

Unless it's too late, the US should start amending the constitution and fixing these bugs. But, instead it's seen as a holy document that should no longer be changed.

The last few centuries have been a process of taking power away from a hereditary class and distributing it to the people. But, the name "aristocrat" actually suggests why that form of government was supposed to be good. "Aristos" -> the best. "Kratos" -> rule. Aristocracy was supposed to be the "best" people ruling the country. It was the people who were educated from birth about how to govern ruling over peasants who had no education or knowledge of the world. Of course, the fact it was hereditary meant that the kratos were no longer really aristos.

But, maybe, there's a germ of an idea there. For example, it makes no sense that education policy be decided by a cabinet member / minister who is elected by being the least bad option in some random district, then joining the inner circle of the leader, then being appointed in charge of education. The people making decisions on educational policy should be educators: teachers, professors, scientists who study learning, etc. Of course, you need checks and balances, and maybe popular voting should be part of that, but not in the current way. Maybe professional organizations and unions should have a formal role in government, instead of simply having to spend money to lobby the education minister.

I don't know the solution either. But, what I know is that we should still be searching. Maybe the US is too far gone, but other countries should be coming up with new tweaks to their systems. Maybe (hopefully) that will mean less direct voting, and more decisions made by subject-matter experts.

A benevolent machine. It doesn't even need to be AI. Let's worship a clockwork automaton.

When you think about it, it's pretty unreasonable to expect the entire population to become educated and engaged about everything involving running a modern society. Modern government is incredibly complicated. It's no wonder that tribalism wins over nuance. Who has time for nuance when they're worried about their jobs and families?

That's why I'd like to see some form of sortition tried. Draft a jury to do nothing but learn about a single topic for a period of time. Make all of their contact with the outside world public record to ensure nothing shady is going on. Let representatives from all sides of the issue address them. Then let them make their decisions and go back to their normal lives. No campaign donors or political careers to worry about.

People are too dumb, blind, and easily manipulated for a democracy.

I hear this claim made routinely, but I rarely see the folks saying it believe that they personally are too dumb, blind, and easily manipulated.

I might argue that people are routinely very clever, observant, and stubborn. And this is why simplistic, generalized political systems are so prone to failure. People worm their way into every crack and flaw in the system, seeking out every vulnerability as a potential personal advantage. And once they've found profit more people pour through the cracks until the system crumbles.

This isn't a problem unique to democracy.

But obviously a benevolent, kind, and uncoercible king with the interests of the people at heart is not realistic.

It has happened. It's certainly not the typical outcome.

Casually laying out biblical punishment after insulting some hypocrisy or another. In want that God

I could see an AI being up to the task. At least with such an artificial system, you can hard-code guardrails and a constitution that a parliament can agree upon.

Of course, I wouldn't want current LLM-based AI anywhere near the reigns of power. Such a system would need to have proven itself secure and incorruptible over decades before we put it in power.

Greece had democracy too, and it ran into the exact same basket of problems we experience today.

Candidates would smear each other through rumor campaigns, foreigners would be scapegoated for domestic problems, religious organizations would lobby for special privileges by promising their constituents' support during election season, wealthy men would bribe whomever won to guarantee them favorable treatment, and large portions of the population were disenfranchised in order to maintain a patriarchal nationalist system built on the back of slave labor.

Consequentially, people lost faith in democracy as a mechanism for selecting popular rulers and became increasingly enamored with the military as a source of domestic income, social advancement, and national pride. The Greek system ultimately failed in the face of oligarchy during the Peloponnesian Wars, reemerged in a reformed state for almost a century, and then collapsed entirely following the conquest of the Macedonians.

Plato's idealism not withstanding, his criticism is worth reading because it demonstrates a repeated pattern of human behaviors that modern political groups can learn from and respond to.

Not owning anything? Like Diogenes?

Fun fact, when he was losing in a debate, he interrupted his opponent by flexing

Nayib Bukele, current president of El Salvador, describes himself as a philosopher king on his Twitter/X account.

Nope. Platos system had the philosophers owning nothing. Our politicians would hate it

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/559

Anytime philosophers are arguing in a semi detailed way it's prob existential comics

Well, this comic goes against what Plato wrote in the "Republic". In it, Plato advocated for a city/country/polis which had three classes: the ruling class, the guardian class (military) and the ordinary folk. The ruling class would be made out of philosophers (multiple, so not just one or a few), but by "philosopher" it is meant someone who spent many decades studying philosophy since they were a child. I can't remember the cut off age, but if someone were older than 13 or something like that, and they haven't began their philosophical education (which, besides things we would traditionally consider philosophy, includes things like astronomy and mathematics), they weren't eligible. So, by his own writing, Plato wouldn't be fit for the ruling class.