Democracy

[Santalum]

Winston Churchill had the following things to say about democracy.....

 

"Democracy is the worst kind of government, except for all those that have been tried before."

"The best argument against democracy is a 5 minute coversation with the average voter."

 

I was watching a documentary called "The Code" by Marcus du Sautoy. In it he filled a large jar with jelly beans and got 200 odd people to guess how many jelly beans there were. Even though no individual was close to the actual number, when he averaged all the guesses, the result was almost spot on.

 

That got me to wondering...........can anyone envisage a way to make democratic governments only ever legislate in response to the average opinion on issues and never in response to the extremes of opinion on issues? To some extent they already do legislate according to the average but there are regular occasions where this does not seem to be the case. How can you make governments immune to minority lobby groups?

[CaptainPanic]

How can you prevent advertisements from changing the opinions of people? Advertisements are the lobbyists of the general public, trying to change our minds in a cost-effective way. Politics and elections are for a large part advertisements and lies, so I just wouldn't trust the general public to be immune to that.

 

Take the example of the jar. If you expose the average voters for a few weeks to the idea that it would be beneficial to deliberately give a high estimate of the number of beans (for whatever reason), then I am sure your average answer will be too high. And if your advertisement campaign is more effective (i.e. you have a catchy advertisement that goes viral) then the average will get further and further from the truth.

 

So, whether we have lobby groups that influence the politicians, or advertisements that influence voters, political decisions are always influenced in a non-democratic way.

 

Btw, there is already another thread that is closely related to this one. I have made this same point in the other thread too.

[Santalum]

How can you prevent advertisements from changing the opinions of people? Advertisements are the lobbyists of the general public, trying to change our minds in a cost-effective way. Politics and elections are for a large part advertisements and lies, so I just wouldn't trust the general public to be immune to that.

 

Take the example of the jar. If you expose the average voters for a few weeks to the idea that it would be beneficial to deliberately give a high estimate of the number of beans (for whatever reason), then I am sure your average answer will be too high. And if your advertisement campaign is more effective (i.e. you have a catchy advertisement that goes viral) then the average will get further and further from the truth.

 

So, whether we have lobby groups that influence the politicians, or advertisements that influence voters, political decisions are always influenced in a non-democratic way.

 

Btw, there is already another thread that is closely related to this one. I have made this same point in the other thread too.

 

 

You make a very pertinent point - there is no emotion associated with guessing the number of jelly beans in the jar, it is close to impossible to seperate human decision making and emotions and politics is all about appealing to emotions.

[Vent]

You could get rid of party politics, but personally i wouldn't agree to ignoring minorities as i think each party should have say since otherwise a percentage of the population is being ignored. It would be the worst kind of democracy in my opinion as it would be mob rule. In the UK this would lead to a minority governing the majority for example... which it is already but the other party's have a say on the governance.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Vent