From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Sun Aug 04 2002 - 06:36:48 MDT
On Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 12:38:36PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> Yes, but you're in danger of defining democracies right out of existence.
> Randall's list was:
>
> A. Is the vote fixed?
> B. Are the citizens coerced?
> C. Can but few inhabitants vote?
>
> and while the answer, pleasantly, is "No" for our democracies, they
> indeed differ as to how representative they are.
I've got a headache with this list: it takes no account of majoritarian
tyrrany. A majoritarian tyrrany is what you get where ethnic group A
has >50% of the votes and therefore uses them to make life generally
unpleasant for ethnic group B, who are allowed to keep their <50% of
the votes (group A: "we're a democracy, everything we do is perfectly
fair!") but nevertheless get the short end of the stick.
The classic example of this situation was Northern Ireland prior to 1968,
where Catholics had the vote and used it ... and nevertheless were
on the receiving end of civil rights violations, discrimination in
employment, and the whole nine yards of near-apartheid. A secondary
example was post- independence Zimbabwe, prior to Mugabe's attempt at
instituting a one-party state; there were two main parties, Zanu-PF and
Zapu, each representing one tribal group that had been involved in the
civil war, and due to demographic boundaries created back when Cecil
Rhodes was busy building the Cape-to-Cairo railway, Zanu-PF _always_
got an absolute majority.
Such a situation is technically a democracy -- by Randall's definition --
but it's not a healthy one because the votes are rigged along tribal or
ethnic lines. To avoid legitimizing it you need a fourth question in Randall's
list:
D. Do the citizens vote across hereditary lines?
(You _might_ call this a subset of "B", but it's hard to see how it can be
if they vote voluntarily for "their" tribe's party out of prejudice or
fear of the other guy's attitude.)
> > Nor are other democracies better. France: yeah, as long as you go to the
> > right school you can get into politics. The UK has its share of politics
> > wonks who did degrees in politics, served as an MP's researcher, then
> > got all the way up to the top by making a career of it. The Japanese
> > political system is legendary for being hidebound. And so on.
>
> Right. But I think it makes sense both to *call* these democracies and
> to defend them as such (compared to the baleful alternatives).
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is a bloody awful form of
government -- it's just not as bad as the alternatives. I'd rather look
for a better alternative than accept that this is the best we're getting,
thanks.
> Vice presidents and others in American administrations are always
> denouncing their opponents, and their opponents always talk about
> the "chilling" effect on free speech, and I'm often annoyed by
> such chilling. But nobody ever seems to go to jail for it, and it
> doesn't seem any more or less likely than throughout the 20th century
> that anyone will.
In this instance, people are being interned. In some cases, democratic
governments that are theoretically bound by laws on habeas corpus aren't
even admitting the names of the people they're holding, much less the
reasons, let alone charging them with crimes. In other countries, soldiers
are killing and injuring people, many of them civilians, while the
governments that ordered these actions are attempting to chip away the
freedom of information regimes that enforce civil accountability.
The situation can get worse; from where I'm standing, it looks as if
the Shrub has decided to start a war of aggression specifically to
get rid of a guy who he hates for family reasons. Lots more people will
die if this goes ahead (and Saddam Hussein, who is not a nice guy,
will be at most only one of them).
There's a long way to go down from here, but a state of war excuses
restrictions that would be unthinkable in peacetime -- and it looks to
me as if that's exactly what's being done. (Clue: read "A Deepness in
the Sky" by Vernor Vinge, with particular reference to the Emergents
and the discussion of ways a high-tech pre-singularity civilization can
fail.)
> P.S. (sorry to be a bit provocative there, but it helps keep awake
> those who read this for entertainment)
Oh, no problem. Consider this riposte offered in the same spirit.
-- Charlie
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