ArisKatsaris comments on Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity - Less Wrong
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"You know, given human nature, if you lived in a country in which there was democracy, pretty soon someone would try to sound deep by inventing reasons that voting was a good thing. But if you lived in a universe in which democracy wasn't the high-status mode of governance, and asked them if they wanted it, with all its attendant consequences, they would say no. It would never occur to them to invent all the clever rationalizations that someone resigned to democracy would devise."
Democracy (in the sense of electing your leaders) seems to be actually be a Schelling Point instead; it seems to occur independently across lots and lots of cultures. It doesn't always last long as a democracy, sometimes devolving into tyranny/hereditary rule/whatever -- but it nonetheless occurs frequently.
So I think you're just wrong on this.