Wait democracy doesn't lead to bloodbaths? Remind me again how democracy actually spread around the world in the past 200 years
This varies a fair bit from country to country. For example, in Great Britain, democracy came about from a slow evolution of government (even as there were intermittent revolutions most of the governing system stayed largely intact). In some countries (such as France) the process was decidedly more bloody and went back and forth. In other cases such as the US, there was a war with a goal of independence, and democracy came about as a secondary issue. In many cases, democracy has arisen as the result imposed by a conquering group, but when that has occurred it has generally been a tertiary goal, not the primary goal (e.g. Japan and West Germany after WWII) or at least a secondary goal (Iraq).
Oh sure once everyone is X there won't be any war or much less war than otherwise, but that is a pretty lame reason to adopt X no?
Really? That seems like a pretty strong argument to adopt X, especially as wars become more severe and the weapons involved in wars have more of a chance of creating an existential risk situation. Moreover, it isn't necessarily that zero wars will occur when everyone is a democracy (very few people would argue that the democratic theory of peace is perfect), but that they are substantially less likely than with other systems. See for example Western Europe now as opposed to 150 years ago.
Also what is this collapse you speak of? Collapse of democracy? Civilization? Well sure democracy has the nasty flaw of being an unsafe vehicle to crash in, I mean you could get Hitler or worse Communism, but it will crash eventually.
So I suspect that such crashes are essentially inevitable, but I'm curious why you think they have to happen.
Replace it with something stable and more friendly to liberty like monarchy, its been done before.
I'm confused here and wonder if there are definition issues at work here. What do you mean by "friendly to liberty"?
Lets see if enough people vote their love of democracy with their feet to keep them running if we had a 1000 charter cities trying out alternatives.
I really like this idea. Any volunteers or planned systems to try out? Futurarchy would be an obvious one.
but that they are substantially less likely than with other systems. See for example Western Europe now as opposed to 150 years ago.
We can't be sure to credit democracy for this and not say most of the continent being part of the same military alliance or common market. One could make the case that the creation of the alliance (NATO) happened because the nations invovled where democratic and willing to cooperate, but historically it seems to have arisen from victory of the Western Allies in WW2 and it included countries such as Greece even when not demo...
Related to: Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity, Does My Vote Matter?
And voting adds legitimacy to it.
Thank you.
#annoyedbymotivatedcognition