Is democracy dying

[islandgun]

3 hours ago, grrclark said:

 

 

So, if democracy is dying is it because we are killing it by not being accepting of change just because that change doesn't sit well with us?

 

 

 

Democracy evolving and changing are essential as are the laws and rules arrived at by the majority, it is the undermining of the majority wishes that im concerned about, Taken to its illogical conclusion, democracy will be pointless, as every decision will be objected to by a large slice of the population,  The live and let live ideal will become live and interfere with,  I wonder how  Platos "Rule by experts"  example will sit with those that are desperate to achieve change without effort

[grrclark]

5 minutes ago, islandgun said:

Democracy evolving and changing are essential as are the laws and rules arrived at by the majority, it is the undermining of the majority wishes that im concerned about, Taken to its illogical conclusion, democracy will be pointless, as every decision will be objected to by a large slice of the population,  The live and let live ideal will become live and interfere with,  I wonder how  Platos "Rule by experts"  example will sit with those that are desperate to achieve change without effort

It is indeed a philosophical dilemna, taken to the extreme then we would be wholly impotent and incapable of doing anything by being doggish slaves to democracy.

I attended a really interesting session last year when I was doing some government work, the session was about about developing the theme of "place" for the future within the context of infrastructure strategy.  A big element of the current strategy for infrastructure is this theme of "place", an example being shared use of public facilities so a new school may also incorporate a public library, council services office, police or fire station or maybe even a health clinic.  The "place" being a hub of shared and complimentary services that maximises the return from public investment and has a beneficial impact on the greatest number of people, etc.  Cornoa Virus is causing significant challenge to that strategy however, but that is a seperate conversation.  "Place" is seen as being a way to build bridges between communities too and not leaving anybody feeling frozen out.

Anyway, that ramble set the scene apart, one of the keynote speakers was a partner from a Dutch firm of architects who are massively involved in pubic infrastructure builds globally.  Most of their client base are developing economies that tend to have more autocratic or authoritarian government.

His take was that working in the less democratic countries the easier it is to do everything, it happens at pace and there are no bun fights around investment.  The government simply push on with what they want, so in those countries the scale and pace on infrastructure investment is significantly greater than ours (albeit they are playing catch up).

From the context of infrastructure investment and with infrastructure being the fabric of society, democracy is a real big pain the chacks!  Look at HS2 and Crossrail or the development of aditional runway capacity in the UK as the perfect example.  Our democratic process causes delay, increases cost, incites division, adds time and a general lack of achievement.

Same story is true in every mature and developed democractic economy, we are becoming increasingly impotent in being able to make strategic infrastructure decisions because of the limitations of democracy, which is all down to interference by anyone with an agenda.

[AVB]

15 minutes ago, grrclark said:

It is indeed a philosophical dilemna, taken to the extreme then we would be wholly impotent and incapable of doing anything by being doggish slaves to democracy.

I attended a really interesting session last year when I was doing some government work, the session was about about developing the theme of "place" for the future within the context of infrastructure strategy.  A big element of the current strategy for infrastructure is this theme of "place", an example being shared use of public facilities so a new school may also incorporate a public library, council services office, police or fire station or maybe even a health clinic.  The "place" being a hub of shared and complimentary services that maximises the return from public investment and has a beneficial impact on the greatest number of people, etc.  Cornoa Virus is causing significant challenge to that strategy however, but that is a seperate conversation.  "Place" is seen as being a way to build bridges between communities too and not leaving anybody feeling frozen out.

Anyway, that ramble set the scene apart, one of the keynote speakers was a partner from a Dutch firm of architects who are massively involved in pubic infrastructure builds globally.  Most of their client base are developing economies that tend to have more autocratic or authoritarian government.

His take was that working in the less democratic countries the easier it is to do everything, it happens at pace and there are no bun fights around investment.  The government simply push on with what they want, so in those countries the scale and pace on infrastructure investment is significantly greater than ours (albeit they are playing catch up).

From the context of infrastructure investment and with infrastructure being the fabric of society, democracy is a real big pain the chacks!  Look at HS2 and Crossrail or the development of aditional runway capacity in the UK as the perfect example.  Our democratic process causes delay, increases cost, incites division, adds time and a general lack of achievement.

Same story is true in every mature and developed democractic economy, we are becoming increasingly impotent in being able to make strategic infrastructure decisions because of the limitations of democracy, which is all down to interference by anyone with an agenda.

I did some work with large UK manufacturer of bulldozers a few years ago. They were looking to build a new factory in either India or China. India was a nightmare - lots of red tape, indecision and bribes. China was simple - a tick box of the thIngs you wanted. They then went and bulldozed a few villages and built what you wanted.  

[islandgun]

27 minutes ago, grrclark said:

It is indeed a philosophical dilemna, taken to the extreme then we would be wholly impotent and incapable of doing anything by being doggish slaves to democracy.

I attended a really interesting session last year when I was doing some government work, the session was about about developing the theme of "place" for the future within the context of infrastructure strategy.  A big element of the current strategy for infrastructure is this theme of "place", an example being shared use of public facilities so a new school may also incorporate a public library, council services office, police or fire station or maybe even a health clinic.  The "place" being a hub of shared and complimentary services that maximises the return from public investment and has a beneficial impact on the greatest number of people, etc.  Cornoa Virus is causing significant challenge to that strategy however, but that is a seperate conversation.  "Place" is seen as being a way to build bridges between communities too and not leaving anybody feeling frozen out.

Anyway, that ramble set the scene apart, one of the keynote speakers was a partner from a Dutch firm of architects who are massively involved in pubic infrastructure builds globally.  Most of their client base are developing economies that tend to have more autocratic or authoritarian government.

His take was that working in the less democratic countries the easier it is to do everything, it happens at pace and there are no bun fights around investment.  The government simply push on with what they want, so in those countries the scale and pace on infrastructure investment is significantly greater than ours (albeit they are playing catch up).

From the context of infrastructure investment and with infrastructure being the fabric of society, democracy is a real big pain the chacks!  Look at HS2 and Crossrail or the development of aditional runway capacity in the UK as the perfect example.  Our democratic process causes delay, increases cost, incites division, adds time and a general lack of achievement.

Same story is true in every mature and developed democractic economy, we are becoming increasingly impotent in being able to make strategic infrastructure decisions because of the limitations of democracy, which is all down to interference by anyone with an agenda.

Ok good stuff.so the demise of democracy becomes inevitable over time.. Perhaps Plato was right  with his rule by experts, however what happens when the inevitable happens and a vocal slice of population decide that they know better than the experts !

[grrclark]

19 minutes ago, AVB said:

I did some work with large UK manufacturer of bulldozers a few years ago. They were looking to build a new factory in either India or China. India was a nightmare - lots of red tape, indecision and bribes. China was simple - a tick box of the thIngs you wanted. They then went and bulldozed a few villages and built what you wanted.  

That sounds about right, India can be a nightmare of a place to do business and China subscribe to the state/infrastructure rules over individual liberty school of thought

 

1 minute ago, islandgun said:

Ok good stuff.so the demise of democracy becomes inevitable over time.. Perhaps Plato was right  with his rule by experts, however what happens when the inevitable happens and a vocal slice of population decide that they know better than the experts !

I think it works in cycles IG, we scream out loud for a Government to show decisive leadership and drive change and then when we vote them in with a majority sufficient to do that we spend all our time second guessing them and building obstacles to prevent them being decisive in making change.

Not so much the demise of democracy, just a change in what values are important to us at any point in time.  Do we want water cannon and tear gas to silence the baying mob or do we want the ability to demonstrate and make our voice heard when we think the system is wrong?  Do we want to protest at green spaces being taken over to promote better and easier transport or are we happy to have the bulldozers raze our towns and villages to make way for investment and employment to make more bulldozers, etc?

As to the bit in bold, welcome to social media and PW  

[Raja Clavata]

Without taking the discussion too far off track, it is currently cheaper to build cars in India than it is in China. Indeed, some Chinese OEMs are looking at utilising spare capacity in India vehicle manufacturing plants to build chinese vehicles there.

[12gauge82]

5 hours ago, grrclark said:

It is a really interesting question posed by IG, however we would need to establish what exactly is "democracy"?

 

Broadly and very simply it is a decision-making process that assumes a level of equality by those in that decision-making process where consensus is achieved and decisions are made in favour of the largest element of consensus.

 

We of course have a parliamentary democracy in the UK where we elect representatives to participate in a legislature conducting that decision-making process, however suffrage is not given to everyone in the UK so is not fully representative.  Also, the fact that we operate on a first past the post system of electoral seats rather than proportional representation also means that the makeup of our parliamentary representatives may not represent a majority view in the decision-making process.

 

Further to that, and as evidenced by Brexit votes most notably, our parliamentarians are not bound to vote or act in line with the majority wishes or their ward, once we elect them they can vote in favour of how they choose, whether that be following the party whip or whether they have a free vote.

 

So, there is a reasonable argument that in the UK our parliamentary democracy is fundamentally flawed and is very much dying in its current form.  Especially in the digital world where the ability to share and consider the wider spread of opinion and thoughts is far greater.

 

In respect to what may feel like an increasing level of lawlessness and rebellion against current received wisdom, custom and practice, is that killing our democracy?  I don't believe it is, it is a process of evolution through the forever changing social conscience.

 

I believe there is a very real problem in the UK, and other mature western economies, where a significant proportion of our populace feel disenfranchised and disconnected.  There is significant voter apathy, arguably because people don't think the system works for them; there is a significant loss of trust and faith in our politicians in that they are not acting in our best interest; there is a significant difference in some opportunities open to the youth of today relative to what most of the PW membership had with the largest being the ability to buy and own property and establish a societal root.  Conversely there is far greater educational opportunity afforded to today's youth, but perversely, often with little benefit to show for that extra education.

 

There is also a significant difference in value between generations, Raja touched on it in page 1 when he highlighted the very typical PW outlook of 'old un's wise and sage, young un's feckless, overly sensitive and entitled' (not his words and I’m generalising hugely).  Values are of course subjective and informed by a multitude of things, typically the values of the old un's are informed by when there was a far greater degree of trust and a feeling of being better engaged with society, whilst the young un's see the world differently because it is very different for them.

 

Back to answering the question, is democracy dying in the UK?  No, it is living, breathing and evolving.  That evolution is uncomfortable and ugly at times because we have groups of people who are entrenched with very polarised points of view and bridging the gap feels impossible if you share those polarised positions.  As with any polarised point of view there is elements of extremes and those are hugely unwelcome, but they are also inevitable whilst we remain in a state of conflict.

 

To try and move forward we each seek to tear the other side down because smashing the others argument is far easier than trying to build a bridge to it and to smash the other argument we come up with more and more extremes to try and justify our position.

 

To move forward we have to accept change is inevitable because we live in a constantly changing world, that is democracy at its philosophical heart, accepting of change and importantly change that we individually may not be comfortable with.  To deny change, especially because we are uncomfortable with it, is fundamentally to ignore democracy.

 

So, if democracy is dying is it because we are killing it by not being accepting of change just because that change doesn't sit well with us?

 

 

 

Cool story

[grrclark]

15 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

Without taking the discussion too far off track, it is currently cheaper to build cars in India than it is in China. Indeed, some Chinese OEMs are looking at utilising spare capacity in India vehicle manufacturing plants to build chinese vehicles there.

That's not altogether surprising.  I think in general India will have a better level of education than China and that educated workforce will come at less cost than the equivalent in China.

[ShootingEgg]

On 09/06/2020 at 10:31, Bobba said:

And mob rule by the minority prevails, as in Bristol at the weekend where, because of the Avon & Somerset police low key approach to the Demo they took no action and allowed destruction of public property. Destroyed because the minority regarded a statue as offensive to "their" views. More worryingly are the views of the Mayor of Bristol who regarded critics of what took place as showing an "absolute lack of understanding". Clearly he supports minority mob rule if it suits his personal agenda rather than the views of the majority of the people of Bristol. (Respondents to a newspaper poll showed a majority of Bristol people in favour of retaining the statue)

You cannot erase history, Colstons wealth was contributed to by the slave trade but he was also trading in other things. We should be educating nkt ripping things down. Have a proper discussion about the statues and names of places. Just bowing down to riots and protests doesn't change history. 

[henry d]

1 hour ago, AVB said:

They then went and bulldozed a few villages and built what you wanted

Same as when my wife was in Nairobi, they decided to build a road through Kibera slums, move or we'll move you. Houses, schools, everything.

[islandgun]

41 minutes ago, grrclark said:

That sounds about right, India can be a nightmare of a place to do business and China subscribe to the state/infrastructure rules over individual liberty school of thought

 

I think it works in cycles IG, we scream out loud for a Government to show decisive leadership and drive change and then when we vote them in with a majority sufficient to do that we spend all our time second guessing them and building obstacles to prevent them being decisive in making change.

Not so much the demise of democracy, just a change in what values are important to us at any point in time.  Do we want water cannon and tear gas to silence the baying mob or do we want the ability to demonstrate and make our voice heard when we think the system is wrong?  Do we want to protest at green spaces being taken over to promote better and easier transport or are we happy to have the bulldozers raze our towns and villages to make way for investment and employment to make more bulldozers, etc?

As to the bit in bold, welcome to social media and PW  

Right you are then. Democracy isnt dying forever just for a lot of decades, until a new democracy/revolution takes the place of the junta that ruled the gaff after the failure of this democracy.... ........mines a double..😉

[AVB]

20 minutes ago, grrclark said:

That's not altogether surprising.  I think in general India will have a better level of education than China and that educated workforce will come at less cost than the equivalent in China.

It’s a few years since I was working there but iirc Manufacturing labour rates were about US$150/month in India vs US$250 for China. If there is spare capacity in existing facilities then that would make motor manufacturing attractive but the corporate structure around ownership presents challenges. 

[Raja Clavata]

Just now, grrclark said:

That's not altogether surprising.  I think in general India will have a better level of education than China and that educated workforce will come at less cost than the equivalent in China.

You're right, but I think the key point here is that it's cheaper for the Chinese to utilise the over capacity in India than invest in their own plants thereby creating potential over capacity domestically later on. Smart move. Bear in mind too that this is typically blue collar work rather than white collar.

I am sure the Indian vehicle manufacturers have grown capability compared to my first vehicle launch there in 1996 when a M&M plant in Nashik was producing Ford Focus on a knock down basis. They were punting "production ready" cars out of the assembly line and into the end of line test facility where I was stationed with vehicle panels (doors, bonnet and boot) of up to three different colours on one car. I kid you not but when I asked *** they were doing they replied politely, as always, that the brief was on getting the right fit tolerances on the panels and nobody had said the body panel colours had to match 🤣

India certainly do seem to have done a good job of keeping labour costs down, when the software engineering roles in Automotive were moving to India in the late 90's / early 00's it was a trade off between low cost and correspondingly low quality and the mythical man month applied. Similarly, when jobs starting moving further east to China it did not really affect India and the view was, as has been proven, that since the cultures are different, the costs in China would increase rapidly through their consumerism and cultural tendency to "Keep up with the Smiths Wongs" . I think the jury is still out on the quality of Chinese software engineering - until it all caved in we used to do quite well out of analysing their systems design and software implementation for the new reactors that were planned.

I see you picked up and built on a point I made previously around perceptions based on age, for me just like a lot of societal aspects things have always changed but are perhaps currently changing at an even faster rate than previously. Some of this change will be viewed as progress in the medium to long term, some of it as regressive and it will often follow a somewhat cyclic pattern.

FWIW, from my experience you are also right about democracy being a hindrance to large scale infrastructure progress, in large parts of the world you just pay off who needs to be paid and crack on with it...

[Raja Clavata]

Just now, AVB said:

It’s a few years since I was working there but iirc Manufacturing labour rates were about US$150/month in India vs US$250 for China. If there is spare capacity in existing facilities then that would make motor manufacturing attractive but the corporate structure around ownership presents challenges. 

You're right but Automotive JVs with Western Entities in China haven't always gone well, although I think the Chinese relaxed the laws on stakeholder percentages / ownership recently.

[grrclark]

7 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

You're right, but I think the key point here is that it's cheaper for the Chinese to utilise the over capacity in India than invest in their own plants thereby creating potential over capacity domestically later on. Smart move. Bear in mind too that this is typically blue collar work rather than white collar.

I am sure the Indian vehicle manufacturers have grown capability compared to my first vehicle launch there in 1996 when a M&M plant in Nashik was producing Ford Focus on a knock down basis. They were punting "production ready" cars out of the assembly line and into the end of line test facility where I was stationed with vehicle panels (doors, bonnet and boot) of up to three different colours on one car. I kid you not but when I asked *** they were doing they replied politely, as always, that the brief was on getting the right fit tolerances on the panels and nobody had said the body panel colours had to match 🤣

India certainly do seem to have done a good job of keeping labour costs down, when the software engineering roles in Automotive were moving to India in the late 90's / early 00's it was a trade off between low cost and correspondingly low quality and the mythical man month applied. Similarly, when jobs starting moving further east to China it did not really affect India and the view was, as has been proven, that since the cultures are different, the costs in China would increase rapidly through their consumerism and cultural tendency to "Keep up with the Smiths Wongs" . I think the jury is still out on the quality of Chinese software engineering - until it all caved in we used to do quite well out of analysing their systems design and software implementation for the new reactors that were planned.

I see you picked up and built on a point I made previously around perceptions based on age, for me just like a lot of societal aspects things have always changed but are perhaps currently changing at an even faster rate than previously. Some of this change will be viewed as progress in the medium to long term, some of it as regressive and it will often follow a somewhat cyclic pattern.

FWIW, from my experience you are also right about democracy being a hindrance to large scale infrastructure progress, in large parts of the world you just pay off who needs to be paid and crack on with it...

That is a really interesting insight.  My experience of business in India was we bought a business that involved both software design and development as well as workshop capabilites in the repair of electronic goods.  We fairly quickly moved much of the screwdriver work out to Malaysia as the quality of the work was more consistent and lower cost, but we built on the software engineering function as the capability and quality was consistently high, but low cost.

The structure of the business was a nightmare as well, around 1000 employees in 102 locations and I think there were 90+ different legal entitites.

[Raja Clavata]

Just now, grrclark said:

The structure of the business was a nightmare as well, around 1000 employees in 102 locations and I think there were 90+ different legal entitites.

Blimey.

[Wharf Rat]

On 10/06/2020 at 16:02, islandgun said:

Ok good stuff.so the demise of democracy becomes inevitable over time.. Perhaps Plato was right  with his rule by experts, however what happens when the inevitable happens and a vocal slice of population decide that they know better than the experts !

You may find it interesting to read up on Plato's ideas on polity and democracy that are contained within his book The Republic.   This question has been discussed since about 400BC.   I expect that it will still be discussed in 2400AD!

I don't take Plato to be as interested in 'experts' as such though.  As (some claim) the father of conservative thought, he was perhaps more interested in those who had a certain natural talent for pragmatic rule guided by firmly stated principles.   Rule by experts sounds more like technocracy.  Oakshot expands this idea in a modern context for further reading.  

It may be interesting to consider this...  Reading the comments re: India and China, and taking my own time working in the Middle East in oil production,  more people work in co-ops than all the large corporations put together.   Around 100 million work cooperatively, spending 40 hours a week in an industrially democratic space.  Perhaps that is a lesson for us all.  With industrial democracy, there is so much oversight, that mistakes in practical production (mismatched panels!) and bribery (adding to Indian V Chinese unit costs) etc are much less likely.   We spend much more time interfacing with work than politics.  Perhaps the cold realities of the market and providing for ourselves lead to more sober decision making?  

 

[grrclark]

7 hours ago, Wharf Rat said:

You may find it interesting to read up on Plato's ideas on polity and democracy that are contained within his book The Republic.   This question has been discussed since about 400BC.   I expect that it will still be discussed in 2400AD!

I don't take Plato to be as interested in 'experts' as such though.  As (some claim) the father of conservative thought, he was perhaps more interested in those who had a certain natural talent for pragmatic rule guided by firmly stated principles.   Rule by experts sounds more like technocracy.  Oakshot expands this idea in a modern context for further reading.  

It may be interesting to consider this...  Reading the comments re: India and China, and taking my own time working in the Middle East in oil production,  more people work in co-ops than all the large corporations put together.   Around 100 million work cooperatively, spending 40 hours a week in an industrially democratic space.  Perhaps that is a lesson for us all.  With industrial democracy, there is so much oversight, that mistakes in practical production (mismatched panels!) and bribery (adding to Indian V Chinese unit costs) etc are much less likely.   We spend much more time interfacing with work than politics.  Perhaps the cold realities of the market and providing for ourselves lead to more sober decision making? 

Undoubtably so, but of course the cold realities of the market is that it leaves people behind.  Those that can adapt will and those that cant fail.  Political society in the liberalised western democracies cannot do that because when they do we witness what we are seeing now.

A self governing market co-operative is classical neoliberalism and the very essence of Hayek.

It can be argued that our free market globalised economy has evolved from the Hayekian policies of Reagan and Thatcher and many would argue that modern conservatism reliance on the cold realities of the market driving sober decision making has ultimately caused us to arrive where we are now, although where ever and whatever that is is largely dependent on your outlook.

Keynes was perhaps more aligned to Plato's take on things as you describe, the firmly stated principles were the governance of the state that is supposed to be the moral compass and arbiter of equality/fairness.

You can argue that both major schools of thought of Keynesian and Hayekian economics, which have an inexorable link to the prevailing political outlook have failed.  During the era of the Keynesian model we ended up in the cold war, during the Hayekian model we have ended up with globalisation annexing national interest and massive wealth inequality.

[islandgun]

Cheers WR and GRR some very interesting insights there [ i will read up] below is an example of democracy St Kilda style

https://www.ambaile.org.uk/detail/en/38917/1/EN38917-the-st-kilda-parliament.htm

 

[grrclark]

1 hour ago, islandgun said:

Cheers WR and GRR some very interesting insights there [ i will read up] below is an example of democracy St Kilda style

https://www.ambaile.org.uk/detail/en/38917/1/EN38917-the-st-kilda-parliament.htm

 

I guess that is an example of a meritocracy.  There are lots of good examples of self governing closed communities, the Amish would be a reasonable example.