| > What has been shown to work in the long run, is Western democracy. How "long" has "Western democracy" been around for? In any case, I don't think it matters which -cracy/-archy/-ism it is. What ulitimately works is that the people be allowed to do what they want to do. ...within universal moral standards (:Murder is Bad.) As long as people are allowed to buy what they want, watch, read and play what they want, build what they want, go where they want, work where they want — if they have enough money — and say what they want and have relationships with whomever they want, then on the whole they will be complacent if not content or happy. They won't care what type of government it is or who is running it. Take a contemporary issue for example. Do you think you can even vote out the NSA and dismantle all domestic surveillance mechanisms at this point in America? But the majority of people don't care because they're more or less content. I reside in a third-world country that isn't exactly a bastion of Western Democracy, yet the people here more-or-less live their daily lives out as one might in a Western country, so they don't really pay their government much mind. In the end, what works is consumerism. |