fatvegan

Some people like democracy a lot, and think that everyone should have it. Others quite like it, but don't think that it is necessarily right for everyone. Some people really hate it, but they usually get bombed or shot by one of the first two sorts of people, and don't last that long.

I think I'm in the first group, and I don't think it's because I'm a cultural imperialist or a capitalist pig of any sort (as much as I like pigs). These are the reasons I think I'm in that group, and probably don't mind if other forms of authority are replaced by democracy in the long run.

1. All cultures are violent and have practice killing one another (bar a very isolated few).
2. Virtually all cultures would like to reduce violence.
3. All societies that have to deal with scarcity, develop some sort of power structure.
4. All people are basically equal of value and capacity.

The first three seem fairly straight forward. I don't think it would matter who you are, or what culture you come from, you could probably agree with them. The fourth premise is a little flimsier, since I suspect people in quite a few cultures disagree with it. But making generalisations about the inferiority of any particular group is tricky. It's prone to making you look stupid since it only takes one clever, capable person from whichever supposedly incompetent group you're upset with, to mess up your theory. So I don't mind believing that those people are just wrong. Whether a group is capable is an empirical issue. Whether or not a group is valuable is a matter of belief, but one I'd be willing to do violence to defend.

So if you accept those four premises, then I think the universal acceptability of democracy becomes fairly clear. I think that democracy attempts to short-circuit the path of majority power through violence. That is its key claim to validity. It's not that it obtains the best possible outcome. Or results in the best possible leaders. It won't even result in a good outcome often, particulary when minorities are abused. You could even have a situation where every individual who voted would prefer to be led by someone else, but the guy who got inwas the only one that a majority were happy with.

However, you can easily argue that the outcome of democracy is the inevitable outcome of violence in the average case. Assuming that each person is equally able to harm, then in general the majority would win any violent power struggle. In the short-term this assumption is often wrong, but I don't believe there is any legitimate argument that a minority should control a majority through means of better weapons, or more violent tendencies. And unless the minority group has the support of some great, external power (such as the US), then I think an outcome of violent minority rule will generally be unstable.

The other thing I like about democracy is that if you want the support of a greater proportion of the population, your best bet is to be nice to them. In a war, if you want the support of a greater proportion, your best bet is probably to kill some people that don't currently support you. I'd have to reckon that changing political parties would be easier than change armies. Certainly the paper-work is more straight-forward.

So I like democracy mostly because it reduces the amount of blood. It's also stabler and less messy because most people get less upset about losing elections than about losing family in wars. Perhaps democracy is not as much tops, as practical and clean.