[aydyn]

> I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.

I think that is a pretty hardline interpretation, but there's another way of thinking about it:

democracy has worked pretty well up to now and there hasn't been a better replacement.

That doesn't mean it will continue being a good solution as technology and society change.

[lossolo]

Democracy is not a new concept, just current implementation is different. Democracy, in some form, dates back over 2500 years to ancient Athens (circa 5th century BCE). Around 1500 years ago (~500 CE), formal democracy as it existed in Athens had largely faded, particularly with the decline of the Roman Republic (509 BCE – 27 BCE), which had elements of representative governance. It struggled with corruption, inequality and power struggles, so all the problems that are getting stronger with time in our democratic systems. The idea of democracy reemerged during the Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries) and became formalized in modern political systems - United States (1776) and revolutionary France. We live in cycles, democracy probably will fade again, and again it will be considered anarchic and unstable until the cycle repeats itself.

[pantalaimon]

> That doesn't mean it will continue being a good solution as technology and society change.

Yea neo-feudalism seems to be all the rage these days.

Democracy is not a given, people with power want more power and less checks - historically that’s what things converged to typically.

[ben_w]

Not sure about what's really "typical", nor which name would best describe what direction the USA (let alone anyone else) is even heading in.

The ancient Greeks had ideas about the κύκλος (cycles) of government: Plato's cycle went [aristocracy > timocracy oligarchy > democracy > tyranny]; Polybius' cycle was [ochlocracy -> monarchy -> tyranny -> aristocracy -> oligarchy -> democracy -> ochlocracy] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory