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by vouaobrasil 539 days ago
> If it were true wouldn't all democratic societies be in danger.

All democratic societies are in danger -- because the wisdom of the crowd does not have the capability to handle scenarios where the crowd has sufficiently great power.

1 comments

All political systems are in danger because the wisdom of whoever influence decisions imposed on the collectivity does not encompasses such a capability of handling actual reality in its whole complexity.

Nevertheless at the end of the day we will have political systems anyway.

An entirely meaningless response. They key is not to point out similarities, but to talk about the differences. Democracy does have its unique weaknesses, which is the drift towards efficiency over all else through capitalism, which tends to favour very dangerous and powerful technologies over time. Such a drift is simply not the case with a dictatorship or group run by elders, for example.
The lake of meaning is in our mind when we can't find any meaning to attach to what is exposed.

In that case, the text was specifically pointing to how so general statements can hardly lead to any robust conclusion.

All systems have their unique weaknesses, which can lead to dangerous situations.

On a pure retorical level, we can pick any system that can be conceptually exposed and discuss its theoretical virtues all day through. Or expose all the danger we can envision from mechanisms it implies on conceptual level.

In theory, an enlightened dictator is the best system, just as well as democracy with enlightened crowd, or gerontocracy with enlightened elders that don't fall in illusion that everything was better before and new generations are a bunch of lazy arrogant ignorants that will doom the civilization, or whatever gouvernement form we can theorize about.

It's easy to blame the ruler when you are not put with the duty to actively participate in the policy creation that should content all stake holders, and it's easy to blame the ruled ones when you don't have to obey the same rules as everyone because of course your exceptional contributions to society necessarily implies exceptional privilegies and you are the one that makes the laws anyway.

Except of course in a system where everyone is imposed the duty and means to contribute to maintain and evolve the laws that everyone have to follow, self included.