A democracy provides a Schelling point, … an option which might or might not be the best, but which is not too bad and which everyone agrees on in order to stop fighting. … In the six hundred fifty years between the Norman Conquest and the neutering of the English monarchy, Wikipedia lists about twenty revolts and civil wars. … In the three hundred years since the neutering of the English monarchy and the switch to a more Parliamentary system, there have been exactly zero. … Democracy doesn’t always perform optimally, but it always performs fairly, … and that is enough to prevent people from starting civil wars.Fairly...if one includes the once-English America...we should probably count 2 (American Revolution & US. Civil War). By observation, besides it's other many faults, Monarchy causes internal civil wars, perhaps at a rate of 1/33 years. Democracy is running 1/150.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
QoTD
via Robin Hanson, from Scott Siskind:
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6 comments:
This one isn't running fairly or smoothly, this one is executing a Control Fraud.
And this one isn't a democracy - that ended with the New Deal. When the generation of 68 took power from their utterly non-democratic but very able, Patriotic parents who loved their country and their people our ruling class was replaced by people who scoff at honor, scorn patriotism, bought us Rubinomics - The Control Fraud - and have defiled everything they touch. They have greatly damaged America, and they've destroyed governance.
So I wouldn't bet on 150 years. Oh..wait..perhaps I see a point here...
Is that a feature, or a bug?
Maybe if we had a re-set every 33 years, we wouldn't be on our current path to extinction.
A five times lower rate of civil war -- OK. But what do we really care about here? Surely not that there was a "war" or a "civil war". War is not bad because of "war"; presumably it is bad because people get killed, property destroyed, bad institutions created, or whatever. Perhaps war is bad because of all that carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Not all wars are equal. Therefore I think the democracy advocate is beholden to say exactly what it is about war that he finds objectionable. And as such, he should use that rating to determine whether or not democracy and its wars are superior to monarchy.
Personally I am more down with number of people killed and quantity of property destroyed, than number of "wars", which I find utterly meaningless.
The civil wars of monarchy were more frequent, but limited wars. Democracy brings rarer total war. You cannot simply point at the rate of "war" and say one is better than the other.
Other important changes over the same time, notably industrial revolution: no longer malthusian, so less need to risk lives for change. X plus y as moldbug said.
To say that democracy gives a better choice that monarchy, is to say that humans will be smarter about government when they are given a couple of years to make a deliberate choice about government, than when one young prince makes a choice about sex, with government as a 3rd order effect.
Sounds like the monarchists have the burden of proof here.
But Alex is right, we need some more data, from other countries where monarchy->democracy and malthusian->industrial didn't occur at sort of the same time.
Switzerland? Established in 1353. Democracy in 1850, industrialization in 1860s... no that doesn't work.
Germany? Industrialization in 1870s, Democracy in 1920s.. Well that didn't work out that well.
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