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paper-machine comments on Politics Discussion Thread February 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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One example I stumbled on today: from a brief reading of Wikipedia, it seems like Ethiopia was doing pretty well under Halle Selassie I, but not so great now.
I'm not sure we can call Ethiopia a democracy but we certainly can't call it a liberal one. The Democracy Index labels them an "authoritarian regime".
That a bad liberal democracy doesn't exist shouldn't surprise us, since, if it was bad, we wouldn't consider it liberal.
I'm not sure why that would be the case. I used the word liberal because sometimes all people mean by "democracy" is that there be voting-- when what we're talking about is copying the institutions of the West which includes more than just voting.
What would that mean?. You're welcome to review their process. In the case of Ethiopia: it's basically a one party state where that one party controls all media and prior to elections arrested opposition leadership en masse, including members of parliament and charged them with treason. If this is the best data point for "liberal democracy is bad" I am unimpressed.
Which isn't to say Ethiopia wouldn't be better off with Fredrick the Great running things-- but given the dearth of people with the ability to rule, rule effectively and then replace themselves, liberal democratic institutions seem like a solid option. I'm aware there are untried alternatives in the ideaspace but a)the fact that they have never been tried says something about the possibility of their ever happening and b)it's a large risk to take when you have a large number of existing successful states which all have similar institutions.
Edit: Authoritarian democracy as in this?
The "liberal" in liberal democracy stands for classical liberalism, not "liberalism" in the US sense. Moldbug's philosophy is consistent with classical liberalism; when he talks about "liberalism" being a bad thing, he means the US modern sense.
IOW, the fact that "authoritarian democracies" exist at all, and are even common in "transitioning", "democratizing" countries without a strong historical legacy, would seem to argue for Moldbug's point. For comparison, consider countries such as Singapore and South Korea; the latter successfully transitioned from a non-democratic regime which did nonetheless uphold liberal principles and individual rights to a modern liberal democracy. Japan is also an interesting case, although its involvement in WWII makes things unclear. Nonetheless, the Tokugawa-Meiji-Taishou periods did involve increasing recognition of individual rights.
Classical liberalism is often identified with libertarianism so I just want to emphasize that the "liberal democracy" refers to liberalism in a generic, John Stuart Mill, sense. From wikipedia:
This generally includes strong private property rights but certainly doesn't prohibit a welfare state.
I don't agree.
Moldbug is basically pro-free market but that doesn't, at all, make him a classical liberal. And he treats the American left as continuous with it's classically liberal ancestors-- who were all women's liberationists and abolitionists and free marketers! John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham were humanists, to the Left of Quakers and Unitarians.
"Liberalism" in the modern US sense he is, of course, particularly critical of. But aside from recognizing the success and power of the free market, I don't see how his philosophy is at all consistent with classical liberalism or the liberal democrats of old.