Which would you rather have, if there came a time where society had to decide between the two? Which is ultimately the better system, and why?
A peculiar question. You are asking us to choose between two of our children, one who washes the dishes and one who dries them. The are more bedfellows than antagonists. Not that children should necessarily be sharing a bed you understand; after they've reached a certain age that sort of thing might be frowned upon. And yes, brothers and sisters often fight and sometimes damage one another...and, of course, let's not lie, we all have our favourites...
They are two completely different things anyway; not opposing, just different, like Christian Bale and a slice of Bree, or Feudalism and a Monarchy.
Agreed, democracy is a subset of forms of government, and capitalism is an economic model. I'll leave this thread open for now, even though it is pointless, but if it turns even slightly nasty I will close it in a heartbeat.
Well, on the surface the question appears to be illogical. But, if you think about it, capitalism does have the potential to erode democracy as corporations/conglomerates become powerful via the markets and then use that power to interfere with the democratic process for their own benefit. So, perhaps the question should be: how do we strike a balance between democracy and capitalism?
As a libertarian, this is an awkward one. Capitalism, I'd say, as it's the only economic model that has continually driven development for the whole of humanity. In fact, it's largely responsible for democracy becoming so entrenched in society, what with the middle classes and ever-more affluent workers.
Democracy and Capitalism? Or Liberal vs. Conservative? I know some people who have tried to start an argument on the latter by using the first set of words, which doesn't start an argument well. At any rate, this question doesn't make sense unless you worded it incorrectly.
Bree isn't cheese. Brie is a semisoft cheese. Bree was the little town next to Staddle between the Shire and Rivendell.
A true Democracy (where the majority everything through vote) is a bad idea. You have to have a check against the power of the majority.
So I guess we are left with a false democracy then. ^^ Right, it was liberty, thanks for the correction.
Well, you have to realzie that the Founders were not in any way fighting for democracy - they held contempt for the Athenian Democracy, and weren't exactly men of the people, by and large. The franchise was so limited, and many elections so indirect, that to associate with a modern conception of democracy seems impossible.
Constitutional repubblics can be either democratic or not, for instance, Lybia is a good example of undemocratic constitutional repubblic. What you described first is called "direct democracy", and they can exist just in small communities. That's the reason why indirect democracies exists, they aren't less democratic than direct democracies, tough.
Even in a small community it seems to me to be a bad idea. I like protection of individual rights from the "tyranny of the majority"
If the majority wants to be tyrant they can always succeed, direct or indirect democracy, and there's no costitutional law that can protect you.
Yes, a pure democracy is vulnerable to bigotry. Minority rights can be difficult to legislate if the majority enjoys privilege.
What's the difference with indirect democracy? If a majority wants they can legiferate against minorities, a classic example was the first period of the Nazi regime.
Well, actually, indirect election (e.g., electoral college, state legislature electing senators) is less democratic than direct election; that's actually the entire point of their existence. The electoral college is designed to dilute the power of high population states (giving more agrarian areas disproportionate power), and indirect election of senators was designed to free the Senate from popular passions and the like. Even if indirect election did not make a country less democratic, as I said, the franchise was so limited at the time of ratification of the constitution that the US couldn't really have been considered much of a democratic republic. Also Libya is not a constitutional republic (it is a republic) because it lacks a constitution and has no clear constraints on the power of its leader.
