What does democracy actually mean?

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justeccentricnotinsane

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In the UK, the government has set up e-petitions - petitions people can do online where if 100,000 support it, it will be debated in parliament. This doesn't mean that it will be passed as a bill or anything, just that they have to talk about it.

The top three results when it was launched recently were 1) Capital punishment 2) Leaving the EU 3) Scrapping some parts of human rights legislation.

This was exactly what most people expected and why there was anger from the left wing when the e-petitions were announced. I'm not in favour of any of these ideas and would be massively disappointed if any of them were brought in. I mean, scraping human rights legislation?! There's a big thing in England that you see a lot of people saying that "too many people have human rights" - I mean, it sounds like a joke, doesn't it?

Talking to my friends about this will all had the same view. The people cannot be trusted. We all agreed that we were being snobbish but were not able to change our minds. My argument was that we don't listen to the people on the street, the people on the street vote in someone to represent them. That is democracy. The big problem with asking the people is that a) they change their minds depending on what's going on in their personal lives; b) They often are not aware of the knock-on effects of policy and the economic impact and c) They will not necessarily look at information. They will simply make up their minds and then ignore anything that goes against their view. I'm including myself in this. I don't know enough about the economy to know exactly what economic effects something will have. This is one of the only cases where I will definitely say - let's leave it to the experts. You know, macroeconomics, medicine, engineering - I actually think you do need to learn some skills rather than going off your own theories there.

So what do you think? What is democracy? Do you think everything should be decided by referendum like this? How would you be feeling if it was your country? Does it matter if a large number of people disagree? This is a big problem, to me. At the moment, thankfully, the petition for "do not reinstate the death penalty" is winning. I don't think it would come back because so many people are against it. But there are other issues, like immigration, that I could see coming up that might be listened to. The problem with that is that immigration has a lot of background economic effects - I mean, when you think it through - and a good number of them are not bad, in fact, they are essential. This is what worries me. I don't think democracy can work if you listen to the people too much.

Here's a link to the story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-e-petitions-launched.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
 
Democracy is majority rule. So if the majority is a majority of fools then that's what you get. That's why I like a representative republic. In a republic the individuals rights come first. The majority cannot force the person to do anything. Because the individual has rights. In a democracy the majority make all the rules so if the majority wants you to do as they wish they pass a law and make it illegal. They then claim that your rights were upheld because you could have voted. And there is the problem with democracy. If the people have been duped to believe that the majority is right then anything is possible. It only takes the media to tell you what to believe. And if your getting misinformation then how can you make an informed decision? So in the end you cannot trust a democracy. It's too easy to mess with the population. They are like sheep. And easily changed.
 
Without some sort of pluralism, I don't think a democracy can survive/be successful.
 
How are human rights decided upon anyway?
 
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What you're describing, where you vote for politicians, who then vote for you, is a REPUBLIC. Not a DEMOCRACY.

Maybe, before you get all uppity about the simple plebes voting in ways you dislike, you should learn the difference between these two basic concepts?
 
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bronson_ said:
What you're describing, where you vote for politicians, who then vote for you, is a REPUBLIC. Not a DEMOCRACY.

Maybe, before you get all uppity about the simple plebes voting in ways you dislike, you should learn the difference between these two basic concepts?
Click to expand...

Then I must live in a Republic. Because that's how it works here. But they're calling it a democracy. In that case, I prefer a Republic. And it isn't about simple plebes. Plenty of these people are intelligent. It's just that they don't have the information. It doesn't help when the government release statistics that can be easily used against multiculturalism (the PM has said multiculturalism can't work anyway). These people are just believing what they've read in the paper rather than looking at the source of information and making up their own minds - it has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just that saddos like me check sources :-)

By the way, it has been suggested by several columnists that the government may have done this to show that the public can't be trusted. I.e. to turn the public against each other and then say "we know best". Which, to be fair, seems to be working on me!
 
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Heh, I'm opposed to multiculturalism myself, I'm surprised that you seem to think that any western government is trying to undermine it, it seems to be exactly the opposite. As for your PM, or Merkel, coming out against multiculturalism, it seems most likely to me that those statements were used to calm down the conservatives.

I wouldn't be too worried about the UK trying reverse the multicultural trend anytime soon if I were you.
 
bronson_ said:
Heh, I'm opposed to multiculturalism myself, I'm surprised that you seem to think that any western government is trying to undermine it, it seems to be exactly the opposite. As for your PM, or Merkel, coming out against multiculturalism, it seems most likely to me that those statements were used to calm down the conservatives.

I wouldn't be too worried about the UK ending multiculturalism anytime soon if I were you.
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Yeah, I know it's a play, there'd be no way they'd lose that kind of business. I don't think it's ideological with the Tories, it's just that governments know how much money and skills the immigrants bring in! They actually used statistics to show that there is a higher proportion of immigrants in work than white people in work. The reason for this is very obvious - 1) many immigrants are hired by companies to do specific jobs and 2) a very large proportion of immigrants are self-employed (own shops and restaurants and such). This data was in the end used to say that Britain had to "shape up" - i.e. getting people off disability and onto jobseekers so that they will "look for work" - this is another ideological play. It appeases the masses who believe everybody who claims disability is a scrounger (particularly those ones who don't go to work because they're depressed, God, I mean, they should just grow a spine...etc etc etc). These people are never going to get into work, the govt knows that, it just costs less to have them on the dole and doing mandatory work placements (i.e. gardening and picking up litter, bin men - all people who are losing their paid jobs because the govt can't afford it - now they have plenty of unemployed people to do it for free to teach them "to get used to the culture of work") It's a load of bollocks!
 
What does democracy mean?

The best and the brightest always have to put up with what everyone else chooses.
 
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