I have no idea who said it, but I learned it in government class...

Democracy is not perfect by any means. However it is the best that is currently available, imo.

Of course, many times minorities are SOL. But most modern democracies have safeguards to protect the minorities.

to be honest, i really dont hink there is a perfect system! I like democracy because of the fact that it gives us all a choice, but to be honest, america has made some pretty stupid choices! Can you imagine if 51% of our country wanted to change something? That's still a huge number of people who didn't want to change something!

I agree that there are a lot of good things involved with it, but there are people who are confused about how the world should be run.

As a christian, i kinda like the idea of communism because of it's fairness. but i would never support it due to its lack of free will to others! Please dont quote me that i am a communist or i like communism! I JUST LIKE THE IDEA OF IT IF WE WERE ALL PERFECT!

I think the only perfect type of reigning will be in heaven and i cant imagine what that will be like!

I have to say that there is no real "perfect" system.

The issue is a fairly simple one. There are just too many people. Let's take into consideration, for example....We'll bring up a game as our example for this.

World of Warcraft(random name - no relation to it).

You have two clans, one with 10 people and one with 50 people, and you are voting on something.

With 10 people it's quite easy, as there are far less people to deal with. With the 50 there is a MUCH greater chance of people arguing or disagreeing. How can you make democratic decisions when this happens? "For the people by the people.." Well, when it ends up half and half, no matter which choice you make you will end up with pissed off people.

Along with this, take into consideration the way votes work. With 10 people each one is 10%. With 50, each vote is 2%. The number of people who will actually take part in the voting process is considerably less, being that people say "well my vote is only 2%, it doesn't matter." When 30 of those people do it, you've broken the voter base down to 40% already. So now they're voting for how others would feel as well, although it may not be true. This is one of the issues with voting in the USA right now. People keep arguing that with 100+ million votes or whatever, their ONE means nothing. Last I heard it was like a 60% non-voting rate.

That's why democracy isn't as efficient in big numbers.

On the other hand, I completely disagree with things like communists. That also works in small numbers but not in large groups. Mostly because of the fact that if you have 5 items and 10 people, they can share 50% of the time. With those same 5 items but 200 people, there are going to be fights and disagreements over who should get what, and when they should receive it.

I guess all in all, it can be viewed as every government being flawed in it's own ways. They all have their strong points, but at the same time they all have negatives that go along with that.

Wow. All these responses and not one of you seems to want to contradict what the second person said. Part of the problem in this world today is the staggering amount of mis-information that seems to be ingrained in the public, apparently from all over the world. The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic not a Democratic Republic. The founding fathers like Jefferson and his pals warned strongly of becoming a Democracy. Democracy, they warned us, would fail quickly because it's essentially Mob Rule and mobs are too easily manipulated. The current political climate here is edging ever closer to Democracy and ever further away from the Constitution that is the Law of the Land, which explains why we're teetering on the edge of a cliff, at the bottom of which lies total socialism/ communism /dictatorship /revolution. Just what the European immigrants were fleeing 250 years ago more or less when they settled here in the first place.

There would be no perfect sytem as long as there is human interception in it. What I mean, power corrupts. The idea behind democry (for a decision to make, everyone should invole) isnt to find best answer. Democry is there to prevent corruption by dividing power among many people so to do illegal things or give selfish decisions you need to bribe more people.

Of couse down side is slow and sometimes unaccurete decisions.

Other systems can give better results but I believe it's gamble.



I agree. Tyrany can give the best results but it's a Russian roulette.

Please visit my newly posted Best Goverment System topic.

This post has been edited by Janissary: May 24 2008, 04:10 PM

Democracy is not a perfect system. Not by any chance.

But then again, it's the best one we have now. Look at how tyranny, communism, and, well, whatever other form of non-tribal government you choose to assume came out.

A system nearer to perfection would be democratic communism, or in other words, socialism. In this system, decisions must reach consensus before passing through. Although absolute consensus is not always possible, here's a referendum system I'd like to see in place:

If a 90% consensus cannot be reached for any certain bill, pass it as a referendum onto the people. If enough people okay the bill for it to reach 90%, then the bill can be passed. How this is counted:
The percentage of people who consent to the bill in the government house is divided by 2, and then the referendum is passed out. The percentage of people supporting the referendum is then multiplied by (one minus the percentage of people supporting it in the house) and added onto this percentage score. If the percentage is then above 90, then the bill can be passed.

So, for example, if 86% of house members support the bill, then this number is divided by 2 to get 43. To reach 90%, 47 out of 57 people (or about 82.5%) must vote yes to the bill.

This way, if there isn't a majority in the house, and the majority of people want it, then the bill can be passed.

This post has been edited by tricky77puzzle: May 24 2008, 04:48 PM