bitcoin as a global medium of exchange (was Re: Interesting take on Sanjuro's Assassination Market)

[Cathal Garvey (Phone)]

Methinks you are conflating "elected representation" with "democracy". Election of tenured representatives is only one (failure) mode of democracy, one so terrible the old Athenians likened to oligarchy.

Other modes exist: some have been extensively stress tested, such as sortition (Athens). Others haven't seen as much testing because they aren't really possible to implement without modern networking, and even so require very careful implementation, such as liquid/direct democracy without tenure.

Saying "democracy doesn't work" is meaningless. Democracy means, in ideal, "rule by the governed". If your examples don't fit that criteria, they're not really democracies, just as the USSR wasn't really socialism, England isn't really monarchism, and The Republic of Ireland (not currently concerning itself with matters of the res publica/ public interest) isn't really a Republic.

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> wrote:
>On 2013-11-27 10:26, Al Billings wrote:
>> If democracy doesn’t work, what are people suggesting? Is this when
>the
>> Libertarian masks come off?
>
>Monarchy, anarcho capitalism, anarcho piratism, military dictatorship. 
>Or perhaps a republic with the franchise limited to property owning 
>heads of households with good credit records.
>
>Observe that police in wealthy neighborhoods are much better than
>police 
>in poor neighborhoods.  Do you think that is the result of voting?
>
>You presumably agree that the people's popular democracies were not all
>
>that democratic, because they made sure that everyone voted communist, 
>and a party member always got elected, and it did not matter who got 
>elected anyway since actual decisions were made elsewhere.
>
>Well that is pretty much the system we have in the western democracies.
>
>  The actual decisions are made by the permanent and fireproof 
>bureaucracy. If the elections come out wrong, they ignore the result
>and 
>work to make sure the next elections come out right.
>Brainwashing in school, population replacement, and if that does not 
>work, the permanent and unelected government just ignores the outcome
>of 
>the vote, as for example the various votes on affirmative action and 
>immigration.
>
>One demotic regime, turns out in practice to be remarkably similar to 
>another demotic regime.

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 2963 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20131127/f0492f13/attachment-0001.txt>