Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hajile 1759 days ago
Most of the early Federalist papers deal with this problem of democracy in very damning terms. It leads to failures of the state -- usually within a hundred or so years. That is why the US decided to be a Republic instead.

Outside the US, countries after WW1/2 opted for democracies instead of republics with strong foundations. We're witnessing the point of failure due to the exact issues outlined in those papers.
1 comments
majormajor 1759 days ago
If there is such a convincing answer, why don't you actually state it, instead of just saying that others have talked about it?

It's very non-obvious to me why there's a natural "coalition of the bottom" versus that just being one possible way for things to shake out.

(It's also worth noting that the original American system already suffered a MASSIVE failure of the state - coincidentally also around the hundred year mark - which makes me think maybe they didn't have things perfectly figured out anyway. It hurts the credibility of the appeal to tradition/authority.)

link
hajile 1759 days ago
It took them almost a dozen papers to cover all the points and explain them. Asking me to cover all that in a short post is rather unfair (and your various counterpoints no doubt appear in the anti-federalist papers which are also great reading).

What crisis are you talking about specifically? The closest they came to failure was definitely the civil war. Most people would put that as a crisis of absolutely irreconcilable moral differences rather than of normal politics. No political system ever devised could solve that problem without violence or complete separation.

link
majormajor 1759 days ago
Well then why should I believe the set of arguments from the federalist papers over the counterpoints in the anti-federalist ones, then? The reason I ask you to summarize is because you're the one claiming their existence should change my views, and that they show that democracy has to fail.

The civil war sure seems like a bigger failure of a state than anything we've seen in Western Europe since the world wars. The "irreconcilable moral difference" was known when the constitution was being created, so punting on it is a pretty giant red flag to me about the ultimate wisdom of the founders, and about the constitution as something we should revere - we should change it constantly as situations change.

link