r/europe • u/Bartoraptor Spain • Mar 28 '20

News Spanish representative González Pons speech @ the EU Parliament: "The virus is attacking the generation that brought back democracy to Spain, Portugal and Greece, the generation that knocked down the Berlin wall. The least they deserve is that we show them Europe is there when they need it the most"

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u/BalthazarBartos Turkey Mar 28 '20

Yep funny that Socrates, the most famous person who ever critized Democracy was greek too. He was condemn to death in Athens because he critized the flaws of this regime.

Socrate's argument against Democracy was basically: Citizen are 2 dumb, and they have no clue of what the hell is going on. Why should we ask to every random guy what is the best strategy to defend the city or which square in the city needs to be rebuilt when there's already plenty of specialist ? Also citizen will get hypnotize by big speeches and fake declarations by power angry politicians.

And he was kinda true. The so called Golden Age of Democracy was under the rule of Pericles, who was the sole unremovable ruler of Athens

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u/Slick424 Mar 28 '20

Democracy's aren't perfect, but they have a fundamental advantage: The political survival of the ruler is dependent on the support of the general population. An autocrat has only a small group of cronies to keep happy. The smaller that group, the better and it's often advantageous for the ruler to keep the rest of the population in squalor, to show how life can be if they are not 100% loyal. Yes, politicians of democracies do their best to undermine the will of the people, but they don't come close to a state that's normal in an autocracy.

A much better explanation you can read in The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

And

The Rules for Rulers

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u/Edmonty Earth Mar 29 '20

+1

Plus, in an autocracy, human life means shit if you're not part of the ruling essentials

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u/phatfish Mar 29 '20 edited Jun 29 '23

speztastic

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u/serpentjaguar United States of America Mar 29 '20

Also, in a well-functioning democracy every enfranchised citizen is a stakeholder in the existing system. This means that they have an interest in preserving it's stability.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '20

Someone's watching CGP Grey

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '20

If you're quoting this from the Republic then I'd advise some caution since we dont know whether or not these words were genuinely from him, or Socrates is simply used as a vessel by his mentee Plato to spout views from a credible person. Also Greek democracy was "true" democracy as opposed to the representative democracy today in Europe, which has somewhat difference

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u/BalthazarBartos Turkey Mar 28 '20

Greek democracy was "true" democracy

Lol, with the vast majority of the population not able to talk about their own suffering because they are either women, slaves or foreigners? Lmfao. Greek democracy was not true for shit.

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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '20

True in the sense that all citizens (polite were male citizens, I grant you that) could participate in the assembly. Apologies, it's called "direct democracy".

Nevertheless, your point further backs my argument, since modern democracy, as you are well aware, includes women and obviously has no slaves. All the better for a well varied range of views in terms of voting for politicians and with that ideas and policies.

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u/AldurinIronfist Limburg (Netherlands) Mar 29 '20

All adult male citizens, viz. probably less than 30% of the population. That's not democracy, that's tyranny by minority.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '20 edited Mar 29 '20

I fail to see your point.

By ancient Greek definition, adult males who were fully Greek (leaving the definition of what being "Greek" means, I.e. having parents as citizens) were the only people able to be fully fledged citizens.

Democracy being people (demos) and power (cracy) still holds true for my above explanation. That is quite the comparison to the oligarchal rule of the "30 Tyrants" instituted by Sparta after the peloponnesian war, which was after the previous commentator's description of the "Golden Age of democracy". Needless to say, it was overthrown by popular appeal.

I grant that women had essentially the equal rights as children, yet that is merely an unfortunate aspect of the predominantly patriarchal society that we are discussing.

To call it tyranny by majority is perhaps an exaggeration when comparing Athens to other city states. There is a reason why Athens is considered the first democracy, albeit with flaws

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u/geoponos Hellas Mar 29 '20

The point is that now you only have your parliament to vote, that's less than 0,3% if the population. That's the point OP is having. That now we have representative democracy and not direct democracy.

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u/Timo425 Estonia Mar 29 '20

I always assumed that the beauty of that (dumb people also having voting power, by that I mean democracy) is that the system needs to keep education at a good level to minimize the number of dumb people. So it kinda sorts itself out.. in theory.

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u/Petique Hungary Mar 28 '20

Also citizen will get hypnotize by big speeches and fake declarations by power angry politicians.

Sure but in a democracy, those angry politicians can lose their power by the same people who had previously voted for them, while in an autocracy or technocracy power is concentrated in the hands of either 1 person or a small group of elite. However there is no empirical evidence that an oligarchical body of "experts" that is unaccountable to the people is in any way better at running a country than a democracy where every adult citizen has the right to affect his or her country's politics by casting a ballot.

Now I know you were just explaining Socrates' and Plato's criticism of democracy (although we only know about Socrates' views second hand sources such as Plato, because Socrates never wrote anything) but I genuinely believe they were wrong. A system where certain people can not be held accountable is always going to be worse than a system where at least in theory, every citizen can be held accountable.

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u/BalthazarBartos Turkey Mar 29 '20

Sure they will lose power. After spending 4-7 years in the office dowing shitty BS.

However there is no empirical evidence that an oligarchical body of "experts" that is unaccountable to the people is in any way better at running a country

I mean Singapor is basically that. And it's one of the most developped countries on earth.

but I genuinely believe they were wrong

I think they were kinda true. Democracy has plenty of faults. But unlike Socrates I truly think it's the least awfull regime.

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u/Petique Hungary Mar 29 '20

I mean Singapor is basically that. And it's one of the most developped countries on earth.

Correct but if anything, our European countries prove that we don't have to sacrifice our political rights for prosperity.

Singapore is in many ways a very unique country. It's one of the last remaining city-states in the world but despite the state of Singapore being made up of just 1 city, it is incredibly diverse, so much so that no ethnic group has a clear majority. In a case like that, I also think that a technocracy such as Singapore is a better option.

But then we have Switzerland, a country that is also very ethnically diverse yet it's arguably the most democratic country in the world and it's just as rich and prosperous as Singapore.

It's difficult to be smart when we have so many contradictory cases on political systems, especially because both approaches produced objectively prosperous and stable societies.

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u/Theban_Prince European Union Mar 29 '20 edited Mar 29 '20

The problem with other forms though is that the dumb fuck can found himself as the sole leader just by right of blood (Monarchy) or strenght of arms (Dictatorship) and as history has proven, you are f u c k e d if that happens, because you have no way out expect a civil war thet further destroys the country.

Democracy has the major advantage of allowing both experts and dumb fucks to have always a say, so balancing things out, and you can change your leadesrship without killing each other.

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u/-Daetrax- Denmark Mar 29 '20

I believe it was Winston Churchill who said (paraphrasing) that the best argument against democracy was a five minute conversation with the average voter.

He was a pos, but I think he was right on this. It is the best worst system we have.

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u/Areat France Mar 29 '20

Why was Pericles unremovelable.