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Orlanth wrote:After the Great Leap Forward China was essentially still a medieval society, it had regressed in many ways due to Maoism. From the seventies a claw back occured, China has caught up and is overtaking other economies.

You keep pointing out that China is recovering from Maoism, as if people weren't aware of this. And you keep pointing out that their economy is growing rapidly, as if people weren't aware of this.

But you keep failing to understand that one reflects the other. That high rate of growth is just playing catch up. China is hardly the first country to go through this, look at Germany in the second half of the 19th century. Look at Soviet Russia.

Then compare the two, once they'd gone through that initial burst from making use of existing resources, then they had to rely on making more efficient use of existing resources for future growth. Germany was able to match UK economic growth in this phase, because they had an underlying capitalist model. The Soviet Union stagnated, because there was nothing to drive growth.

Once China can't drag anyone else off the farms it will hit the same problem the USSR did.

[quoteMeanwhile Chinese science is making advances of its own, they have learned, they are now as advanced as western technology is. Now they are trying thier own hand at next generation armaments, space technology, stealth, rocketry, advanced manufacturing.

Saying there is no innovation or improvement of process is a gross misunderstan ding of what China is doing.

This is why cheap plastic goods come from all over the far east, but China now makes cheap version of high tech goods. The infrastructure is there to make whatever the world wants, along with the know how to do it.

sebster wrote:You really need to think about your definition of the word 'work' there. There was a series of very bloody wars created by the simple fact that the system didn't always work. There economic stagnation produced by the political system. There were incrediblet injustices doled out to much of the population.

Then we'll have to define the purpose of a government, or what makes it "work."

Monarchies and dictatorships 'worked' in that they protected the people from outside invasion, secured a line of succession, protected the social structure, enforced a system of taxation, and completed government projects.

Maybe they weren't efficient, and sometimes there were violent revolutions (between ruling classes), but for the most part, yes, they did "work."


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Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

biccat wrote:Do you not accept this moralistic principle, that the state is the servant of the people?

The state is the servant of the people in that it exists to protect them and serve their interests, not that it listens to every little whim they have, as those tend to frequently contradict its actual obligations to protect them and serve their interests.

It doesn't have to listen to every little whim, but neither should a state develope into a tyrannical state where the population is ignored in order to do what the ruling class thinks is 'best' for the people.

If the people don't want something, they should have the authority to demand their government not act.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The state is given the authority to act in the best interests of its people, as determined by people who actually know how to go about doing that;

What on earth makes you think that there are people who actually know how to act in the best interests of its people? People aren't selected for political positions based on their knowledge, they're selected based on patronage. There's no requirement that they actually do a good job, besides getting reelected, which is more about putting on a good show than issues.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:if people could just sit back and say "I live in a safe neighborhood, why should I pay for cops?", "I don't have kids, why should I pay for schools?", or "I'm not sick at the moment, why should I pay for public healthcare?" then society falls apart.

Public schools and publicly provided health care are pretty recent innovations. Society didn't fall apart without these institutions. Ditto for welfare, food and drug regulation, and building inspectors.

You can argue that these provide a benefit, but I hardly think they're necessary for keeping society whole.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:People are generally greedy and shortsighted, and don't understand the complexities of keeping a state running, so all of that gets delegated to people who at least should know how.

Except, especially in democracies, the complexities of keeping the state running aren't delegated to people who actually know what they're doing. Politics aside, Barack Obama had no experience as an executive (for example running a state or a company, and for that matter, neither did John McCain). The rationale to put him into the highest political executive slot in the land wasn't based on experience or qualifications, it was based on ideology and showmanship.

Obviously we hope that such an inexperienced executive will surround himself with quality staff to help him manage and make appropriate executive decisions, but there's really no guarantee that anything like that will actually happen.

biccat wrote:Then we'll have to define the purpose of a government, or what makes it "work."

Monarchies and dictatorships 'worked' in that they protected the people from outside invasion, secured a line of succession, protected the social structure, enforced a system of taxation, and completed government projects.

Maybe they weren't efficient, and sometimes there were violent revolutions (between ruling classes), but for the most part, yes, they did "work."

First up, they didn't secure a line of succession. You've read about the War of the Roses, yeah? A hundred thousand people died in the course of deciding who should rule.

Second up, Iran would fit the criteria you listed. Any list of criteria that gives Iran a tick for it's form of government is a bad list.

Any decent criteria would include a system that provided as decent a standard of living for the majority of its citizens as was practical for the time, and included systems to ensure that the rights most valued by most of its citizens were protected.

And yes, this means that most governments throughout history didn't work. That's kind of the point. You can observe this by the vanishingly small number of people attempting to return to absolute monarchy or serfdom.

biccat wrote:
No, I'm arguing from the position of "why the hell are you arguing against my proposed system when others have proposed systems which are significantly worse."

Because the system you have proposed appears deficient for novel reasons, whereas the deficiencies of a benevolent dictatorship are obvious, and can be covered in about a paragraph. Sebster already stated the most blatant one.

biccat wrote:
You're not attempting to debate the idea, you're just coming up with excuses why it won't work.

The essence of constructive debate is criticism, and criticism involves pointing out the shortcomings of a given idea, among other things. These objections can come in the form of arguments from pragmatism, from principle, from logic, and any number of other sources.

If you want to debate in the sense of swaying a third party observer, then I'm not really interested in continuing this conversation.

biccat wrote:
I'm proposing a system, not saying that it's perfect, and I have no interest in writing a 6000+ word academic thesis on how exactly it would work. I'm suggesting that strong economic actors should have a stronger voice than the average person on the street. Additionally, money (economic success) should translate to a stronger voice in government.

Yes, and I'm criticizing that idea; primarily because, in a representative democracy, strong economic actors already have a greater say than the average person on the street. In fact, its generally my view that democracy isn't designed to ensure an equal voice for all members, but rather to mitigate the power of strong economic actors; at least in the modern world.

I'm not expecting your system to be perfect either, I'm simply pointing out its shortcomings; largely as relative to a representative democracy. As Sebster said, simply saying that something "works" is meaningless. Anything can be made to work given the proper social conditions , and distribution of power. I mean, North Korea "works", and is actually one of the most stable states in the world, the same goes for Saudi Arabia.

biccat wrote:
On the U.S. side of things, you apparently don't realize that the 'glue' holding the government together is cooperation between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Without cooperation, the Constitution is meaningless. The executive has no reason to abide the rulings of the SCOTUS except for the fact that they agree to. Even FDR, with his court packing plan, was willing to abide by the rulings of the court, as much as he disliked them, because he realized the downward spiral that would result from outright war between the branches.

Well, obviously, that sort of thing is true of any institution. My point is that you're system provides no realistic reason for that cooperation to occur, particularly to an extent that would meaningfully differentiate it from either an oligarchy or an autocracy.

biccat wrote:
You're wrong on the Obamacare (HCRRA? AHCAA?) decision, but that's another topic, all together.

Judge Vinson permits healthcare bill to stand during the appellate process
Judge Vinson formally stays his ruling.

sebster wrote:

biccat wrote:Then we'll have to define the purpose of a government, or what makes it "work."

Monarchies and dictatorships 'worked' in that they protected the people from outside invasion, secured a line of succession, protected the social structure, enforced a system of taxation, and completed government projects.

Maybe they weren't efficient, and sometimes there were violent revolutions (between ruling classes), but for the most part, yes, they did "work."

First up, they didn't secure a line of succession. You've read about the War of the Roses, yeah? A hundred thousand people died in the course of deciding who should rule.

Second up, Iran would fit the criteria you listed. Any list of criteria that gives Iran a tick for it's form of government is a bad list.

Any decent criteria would include a system that provided as decent a standard of living for the majority of its citizens as was practical for the time, and included systems to ensure that the rights most valued by most of its citizens were protected.

And yes, this means that most governments throughout history didn't work. That's kind of the point. You can observe this by the vanishingly small number of people attempting to return to absolute monarchy or serfdom.

If those are your criteria, then you're right, almost all governments throughout history haven't "worked." But a government has to be perfect or fair to work. It just has to provide a basis for internal social order and external safety from foreign threats.

Under my criteria, yes, monarchies and dictatorships "worked." They didn't work well or provide equality in any meaningful sense of the word, but they did work as an institution of government.

And you're right, there really isn't anything good about Iran's system of government. But it does keep social order and maintain the sovereignty and safety of the Iranian people against outside threats. In that sense, it is a working government.

Any government that fails to provide equality can still be a government, any government that fails to provide/enforce social order or defend against external threats won't be around for very long, either overthrown or overrun.


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dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
You're wrong on the Obamacare (HCRRA? AHCAA?) decision, but that's another topic, all together.

Judge Vinson permits healthcare bill to stand during the appellate process
Judge Vinson formally stays his ruling.

Real quick.

The administration lawyers agreed to abide by the Judge's ruling on the motion for summary judgment.

The Judge ruled against the administration, declaring the entire bill unconstitutional. Note at this point the entire bill is void.

The administration continued to implement the bill. Since the whole thing had been declared void as unconstitutional, this raised some eyebrows.

The administration then filed a motion for further clarification of the Judge's ruling.

The Judge saw this and said "what the hell?" He treated it as a motion to stay pending appeal, which is a motion that is usually granted in these cases. It makes sense that the Feds shouldn't have to dismantle the whole system only to have to build it up again if they win on appeal, then dismantle it if the SCOTUS rules against them.

The Judge issued the stay as well as further clarifying his ruling that declared the bill unconstitutional. However, given the fact that the administration didn't play by the rules last time, he gave them 7 days to file an appeal or he would lift the stay.

There are basically two reasons why the administration lawyer did what they did. Either they were stalling for time or they are inexperienced and don't know what they're doing (an experienced attorney would have had his Notice of Appeal and Motion to Stay Pending Appeal already written, just in case the trial didn't go as expected).

I'm being generous and assuming that they were doing these actions for strategic reasons, and not out of incompetence. But I could be persuaded.

As my history lecturer once remarked...


"The Germans are only happy when they are under a dictatorship...

...The French are only happy when they are under the Germans."


Strangely his joke didnt go down well with the visiting French and German students...

biccat wrote:If those are your criteria, then you're right, almost all governments throughout history haven't "worked." But a government has to be perfect or fair to work. It just has to provide a basis for internal social order and external safety from foreign threats.

Under my criteria, yes, monarchies and dictatorships "worked." They didn't work well or provide equality in any meaningful sense of the word, but they did work as an institution of government.

And you're right, there really isn't anything good about Iran's system of government. But it does keep social order and maintain the sovereignty and safety of the Iranian people against outside threats. In that sense, it is a working government.

Any government that fails to provide equality can still be a government, any government that fails to provide/enforce social order or defend against external threats won't be around for very long, either overthrown or overrun.

But then all that's needed for a system to 'work' is for there to be no alternative. I mean, you referred to the English monarchy working, but they had plenty of political unrest, it's just that when successful they replaced one king with another, because that's the only system that could be considered. It took a long time to basically stumble upon the ideas of liberal democracy.

And really, in the end what does it matter if you have stability if that stability requires the violent oppression of your people? It really comes back to my point earlier in the thread, that people considerably underestimate how good life is in our liberal democracy. You can say English monarchy 'worked' but only because you can treat the oppression, injutice, social stagnation and poverty as hypothetical concerns.

Thing is, even in the dodgiest of regimes today are generally better than life was then. Well, maybe not for the folk in North Korea.

sebster wrote:

biccat wrote:If those are your criteria, then you're right, almost all governments throughout history haven't "worked." But a government has to be perfect or fair to work. It just has to provide a basis for internal social order and external safety from foreign threats.

Under my criteria, yes, monarchies and dictatorships "worked." They didn't work well or provide equality in any meaningful sense of the word, but they did work as an institution of government.

And you're right, there really isn't anything good about Iran's system of government. But it does keep social order and maintain the sovereignty and safety of the Iranian people against outside threats. In that sense, it is a working government.

Any government that fails to provide equality can still be a government, any government that fails to provide/enforce social order or defend against external threats won't be around for very long, either overthrown or overrun.

But then all that's needed for a system to 'work' is for there to be no alternative. I mean, you referred to the English monarchy working, but they had plenty of political unrest, it's just that when successful they replaced one king with another, because that's the only system that could be considered. It took a long time to basically stumble upon the ideas of liberal democracy.

And really, in the end what does it matter if you have stability if that stability requires the violent oppression of your people? It really comes back to my point earlier in the thread, that people considerably underestimate how good life is in our liberal democracy. You can say English monarchy 'worked' but only because you can treat the oppression, injutice, social stagnation and poverty as hypothetical concerns.

Thing is, even in the dodgiest of regimes today are generally better than life was then. Well, maybe not for the folk in North Korea.

Like many things on dakka, couldnt this argument descend into simply what "best" means? I mean.. i remember when i went to Sierra Leone one of the officers told me during the country brief that SL was bottom of the index the UN uses to measure human life quality, i think he said the average age at the time was 17?

Who determines who has the "better" life?

And whats the average life expectancy in NK anyway? Maybe its not as bad as we think?

Ive been on ops in Africa twice, its a proper full on gak hole. I think NK will have to be going some to beat it! And i know its hard to get any information about the place.. maybe they keep it secret because its just THAT awesome!


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I got a mate of mine who is SPEC OPS to send me this photo, he said its a satellite image of the hospital in Pyonyang.

sebster wrote:
First up, they didn't secure a line of succession. You've read about the War of the Roses, yeah? A hundred thousand people died in the course of deciding who should rule.

I question that figure. I know twenty five thousand or so died at the Battle of Towton, but that was the largest battle of the lot by a mile. I would be curious to see where the figure of a hundred thousand casualties total comes from.

sebster wrote:But then all that's needed for a system to 'work' is for there to be no alternative. I mean, you referred to the English monarchy working, but they had plenty of political unrest, it's just that when successful they replaced one king with another, because that's the only system that could be considered. It took a long time to basically stumble upon the ideas of liberal democracy.

Yes.

Do you dispute that there was a sovereign nation called "England" from the 1400's through to the 20th century? Do you dispute that they had a government?

Probably not. The fact that we can talk about the British Monarchy for that entire period means that there was a functional government in place.

It's not good, it's not "the best." But it worked to keep the country together.

Also Ketara, most histories of the War of the Roses put the death toll around 100,000. Unless you're a Tudor apologist. Then the death toll was probably more like 7.

biccat wrote:

Also Ketara, most histories of the War of the Roses put the death toll around 100,000. Unless you're a Tudor apologist. Then the death toll was probably more like 7.

Top tip: Always question a casualty figure that's incredibly easily divisible by ten. It's probably invented.

I have no idea what your comments about Tudor apologists are about, but a quick scan online tells me that a current train of thought is that the hundred thousand figure is invented by Tudor historians as propaganda. Considering Henry VII went around painting humps on portraits of Richard III, that doesn't seem so farfetched a notion.

Ketara wrote:

biccat wrote:

Also Ketara, most histories of the War of the Roses put the death toll around 100,000. Unless you're a Tudor apologist. Then the death toll was probably more like 7.

Top tip: Always question a casualty figure that's incredibly easily divisible by ten. It's probably invented.

The best you're going to get for a war that long ago is two significant digits. The histories I've read about the time put it around 100k. They could be wrong.

Ketara wrote:I have no idea what your comments about Tudor apologists are about, but a quick scan online tells me that a current train of thought is that the hundred thousand figure is invented by Tudor historians as propaganda. Considering Henry VII went around painting humps on portraits of Richard III, that doesn't seem so farfetched a notion.

Just a lighthearted suggestion that the Tudors wouldn't want their ascendency to the English Throne to be built on a pile of skulls.

"No no no, it was totally a peaceful transition. Only 7 guys died, and they were all bad. Nothing to see here, move along."

mattyrm wrote: Like many things on dakka, couldnt this argument descend into simply what "best" means? I mean.. i remember when i went to Sierra Leone one of the officers told me during the country brief that SL was bottom of the index the UN uses to measure human life quality, i think he said the average age at the time was 17?

Who determines who has the "better" life?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, I just threw out North Korea to stop people pointing out that not every part of Earth is completely wonderful right now. Because that wasn't really my point.

My point is that how most of us live right now is much, much better than how most people lived throughout history.

The places we look at as hellholes right now, like some of Africa, are fairly close to how many people in history lived. Their whole lives in one town, suffering poverty and the threat of random violence, with sudden outbursts of political violence always just around the corner.


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Ketara wrote:I question that figure. I know twenty five thousand or so died at the Battle of Towton, but that was the largest battle of the lot by a mile. I would be curious to see where the figure of a hundred thousand casualties total comes from.

There were a lot of engagements in the war, it spanned thirty years. If the overall figure is exagerated, and I know there are claims that it was, then Towton was likely exagerated as well.

I honestly don't know enough to enter into any debate on the of the total bodycount, and it doesn't really impact my overall point, which is that claiming a political system as 'working' when it produced a thirty year civil war is a pretty loose definition of the word 'work'.


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biccat wrote:Yes.

Do you dispute that there was a sovereign nation called "England" from the 1400's through to the 20th century? Do you dispute that they had a government?

Probably not. The fact that we can talk about the British Monarchy for that entire period means that there was a functional government in place.

It's not good, it's not "the best." But it worked to keep the country together.

At which point you've defined 'working' as 'existing', which is a very strange approach indeed. A ship launched to sea that immediately tips over, and proceeds to float off upside down would still exist as an identfiable object floating in the ocean, so it would meet your definition of 'working'. But it would be useless for carrying people or goods, and most people would consider it a complete disaster, even if it kept floating about in the harbour for the next 400 years.

In deciding if a ship is working or not, it's important to decide if that design is actually doing people any good, not just if the ship has managed to exist for a long time.

Government is no different.

Why couldn't this topic have a poll?

sebster wrote:

There were a lot of engagements in the war, it spanned thirty years. If the overall figure is exagerated, and I know there are claims that it was, then Towton was likely exagerated as well.

I honestly don't know enough to enter into any debate on the of the total bodycount, and it doesn't really impact my overall point, which is that claiming a political system as 'working' when it produced a thirty year civil war is a pretty loose definition of the word 'work'.

Fair enough. I was just curious as a student of history(as opposed to a point on the debate).

I always respect someone more for being capable of admitting they don't really know the topic area.

halonachos wrote:Why couldn't this topic have a poll?

Cause I'm too lazy to figure out how to make one.

sebster wrote:At which point you've defined 'working' as 'existing', which is a very strange approach indeed. A ship launched to sea that immediately tips over, and proceeds to float off upside down would still exist as an identfiable object floating in the ocean, so it would meet your definition of 'working'. But it would be useless for carrying people or goods, and most people would consider it a complete disaster, even if it kept floating about in the harbour for the next 400 years.

In deciding if a ship is working or not, it's important to decide if that design is actually doing people any good, not just if the ship has managed to exist for a long time.

Government is no different.

Then I'll have to bow to your superior definition of what constitutes a "working" government.

Obviously there were no working governments anywhere in the world before the French started chopping people's heads off in 1789.

I would argue that a working government is a government that manages to posess internal sovereignity. That is, it is recognized by its people as the 'government', in a slightly harsher terms, it has a monopoly on the legal use of violence within its territory.

That would be my definition of a working government.

biccat wrote:
There are basically two reasons why the administration lawyer did what they did. Either they were stalling for time or they are inexperienced and don't know what they're doing (an experienced attorney would have had his Notice of Appeal and Motion to Stay Pending Appeal already written, just in case the trial didn't go as expected).

Yeah, that's nice, but the competence of a given attorney has no bearing on the reality of whether or not the state violated the initial ruling; particularly given that, as you've noted, there are certain precedents in place that establish a conventional sort of treatment for government action.


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biccat wrote:
Obviously there were no working governments anywhere in the world before the French started chopping people's heads off in 1789.

That argument has been made by people that have likely studied the issue more intently than you, so I wouldn't be so flippant.

In any case, even if we accept the sort of minimal definition of "work" that you are proffering, we still have to answer other questions regarding a proposed system of government. These questions can be moral (Is it good?), practical (Is it stable?), ideological (Is it capitalist?), or metaphysical (Is it as God wills?), among many, many other things.

biccat wrote:Then I'll have to bow to your superior definition of what constitutes a "working" government.

Obviously there were no working governments anywhere in the world before the French started chopping people's heads off in 1789.

It works a fair bit better than your definition, which was so minimal that every government ever meets it up until the point where it stopped existing.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
There are basically two reasons why the administration lawyer did what they did. Either they were stalling for time or they are inexperienced and don't know what they're doing (an experienced attorney would have had his Notice of Appeal and Motion to Stay Pending Appeal already written, just in case the trial didn't go as expected).

Yeah, that's nice, but the competence of a given attorney has no bearing on the reality of whether or not the state violated the initial ruling; particularly given that, as you've noted, there are certain precedents in place that establish a conventional sort of treatment for government action.

Yes, there are certain precedents in place. They say that when the law is struck down, the administration doesn't try to enforce the law unless it gets a stay. Here, they didn't.

You first said:

Vinson explicitly allowed the HCRA to remain law during the appellate process, and later issued a stay on his ruling.

This was incorrect. He did not explicitly allow the HCRA to remain law during the appellate process. His ruling was that the law is unconstitutional, void, and could no longer be implemented. He later issued a stay of his ruling.

dogma wrote:

biccat wrote:
Obviously there were no working governments anywhere in the world before the French started chopping people's heads off in 1789.

That argument has been made by people that have likely studied the issue more intently than you, so I wouldn't be so flippant.

What argument? That government can't work unless it is benevolent? I would love to see a source on that, because honestly, I don't think any scholar or serious person would make such a patently oblivious claim.

dogma wrote:In any case, even if we accept the sort of minimal definition of "work" that you are proffering, we still have to answer other questions regarding a proposed system of government. These questions can be moral (Is it good?), practical (Is it stable?), ideological (Is it capitalist?), or metaphysical (Is it as God wills?), among many, many other things.

Yes. I agree. There is more to government than "does it 'work.'" I recall making that point several posts ago.

sebster wrote:It works a fair bit better than your definition, which was so minimal that every government ever meets it up until the point where it stopped existing.

Except it's not better, because your definition ignores centuries of history and denies the legitimacy of a significant portion of the world's countries.

Monarchies produced prosperity as often as they did ruin, and managed to be solidly mediocre the majority of the time. Democracy doesn't have nearly so solid a track record, having been nothing but a front for de facto dictatorships far more often than not, while the only countries seeing any benefits from it are so wealthy they'd prosper just as much under a competent dictatorship, if not more. Style of choosing one's leaders is mostly procedural, with just about every other factor carrying far more weight in determining quality of life. At it's best, democracy leaves you with a competent leader, though more often with a terrible one, and still more often with a solidly mediocre one. Of course, in this day and age, dictatorships have a worse track record, but they only crop up with any regularity in embattled, impoverished countries that are already screwed anyways.

biccat wrote:Except it's not better, because your definition ignores centuries of history and denies the legitimacy of a significant portion of the world's countries.

It doesn't ignore it, it places it in the proper context of what life was like and what it is like now.

It doesn't deny legitimacy, that's complete piffle. Stating that something isn't working doesn't mean it isn't legitimate, because the two words have totally different meanings and they're meanings you should become familiar with before you try and have these kinds of conversations.


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Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Monarchies produced prosperity as often as they did ruin, and managed to be solidly mediocre the majority of the time. Democracy doesn't have nearly so solid a track record, having been nothing but a front for de facto dictatorships far more often than not, while the only countries seeing any benefits from it are so wealthy they'd prosper just as much under a competent dictatorship, if not more. Style of choosing one's leaders is mostly procedural, with just about every other factor carrying far more weight in determining quality of life. At it's best, democracy leaves you with a competent leader, though more often with a terrible one, and still more often with a solidly mediocre one. Of course, in this day and age, dictatorships have a worse track record, but they only crop up with any regularity in embattled, impoverished countries that are already screwed anyways.

Again, when I posted very early on in this thread about the common problem of people criticising democracy by having both too pessimistic a view of life in a democracy, and too optimistic a view of life outside of one, it's your thinking like yours above that I referring to.

The idea that monarchies promoted the growth in wealth we see in the modern world is nonsense, exhibited by the plain reality that when mercanitlism and early indutrialisation began to produce real wealth, most monarchies were the immediate casualties. Inheritance based divisions of power don't work well when wealth (and therefore status) can be created through other means.

That somethings called themselves democracies when they are dictatorships makes no sense as a criticism of actual dictatorships.

The idea that modern democracies are so wealthy they'd be wealthy anyway ignore the fact that there are benefits to a system beyond wealth, and that it was because they were democracies that they became so wealthy.

And in every day and age, alternative forms of government were more likely to produce terrible leaders.

biccat wrote:
What argument? That government can't work unless it is benevolent? I would love to see a source on that, because honestly, I don't think any scholar or serious person would make such a patently oblivious claim.

No, that there did not exist functioning governments prior to the French Revolution in 1789 (or roughly that period). Its not even an obscure idea, both Nietzsche and Weber advocated it in some sense or another.



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biccat wrote:
Except it's not better, because your definition ignores centuries of history and denies the legitimacy of a significant portion of the world's countries.

I don't see why the latter is a problem, and I don't see why the former should be inferred.

one thing i would like to ask is, why do "proponents of democracy" like to shove their hand fully and totally into other countries electoral process, whilst alot of the time the people they are dealing with at the moment aRE a result of the last 100 years of colonialism.
To me, just coz you helped fekk up a country 80 years ago, why are you trying to pressure them/intervene now?
In my mind britain and the US owe the middle east a LOOOONG hand of policy non-intervention.