This implies you, and he, previously believed they are compatible. What evidence determined that original belief, and what evidence made you change your mind that only appeared in 2011 in your case? What changed Thiel’s mind (link to quote context please)?
I have added a source for Peter Thiel’s statement, some of his reasons are also mine.
My previous belief was primarily based on adults telling me as a child that democracy was the mechanism keeping us free. My change of opinion stems in large part for me looking for the appropriate evidence for such a claim and not finding it.
One of the arguments that kept me believing in my early teenage years was that looking around the world one sees “democracies” as better places to live and more free than “non-democracies”. This isn’t powerful evidence at all since we have only a handful of countries in the world that don’t claim to be democracies. The problems of this poor data set are compounded by first world people play a game of no true Scotsman to explain the terrible results democracy brings to many third world countries, often with sentiments not far from:
Genocide in Rwanda? Clearly they weren’t a true democracy yet! A key element was clearly missing.
Note this is a fully general argument against all failure of any political regime or ideology, one that is often use to explain away the atrocities of Communism under Stalin or Mao.
First world countries are much better places to live materially and have more freedom than many third world ones but I don’t see a convincing case that this is due to democracy.
My previous belief was primarily based on adults telling me as a child that democracy was the mechanism keeping us free.
“Democracy keeps us free” is a very different claim from “democracy is compatible with freedom”. Even if you now think democracy and freedom are not correlated at all, as long as they are not anticorrelated, why would you think they are incompatible?
Thiel in his essay appears to be saying that specifically in the contemporary US, the people don’t want freedom, so it is incompatible with effective democracy. (His relevant definition of freedom seems to be pure free markets without government intervention, or without intervention of certain kinds.)
First world countries are much better places to live materially and have more freedom than many third world ones
That’s a tautology. Because they are better places, you call them first world countries.
The reasons why they might be anti-correlated Thiel explores seem mostly about the US and not some hypothetical country of mostly Libertarian voters. The thing is no such country exists in the world and this is I think no coincidence.
Democracy is like having dinner in a expensive restaurant with a few million people where everyone knows they will be splitting the bill at the end of the evening. The incentives are both on a organizational and individual level messed up and we rationalize our choices afterwards to make them seen less like defecting against other people. If this wasn’t bad enough people for some reason tend to have strong sentiments attaching them to their state of birth, which leaves them open to exploitation by that Eldritch Abomination. Note that I fully agree that “the market” is one too. Then there is the Moldbuggian argument that in a democracy power corrupts the truth finding mechanisms of a society. The map the society uses veers off in all sorts of unpredictable but memetically adaptive ways from the territory. One of the more insidious edits is the doddle at the centre of the map claiming that you are living in a good approximation of a Popperian Open Society.
In short democratic government like many structures built out of humans doesn’t necessarily behave in human friendly ways. We have strong evidence that it is viral and good at waging 19th and 20th century style wars, weak evidence that it is less unfriendly than most structures we have tried in the past and even weaker if any evidence that we can’t come up with something much better.
That’s a tautology. Because they are better places, you call them first world countries.
You are right. I should have said Western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan are nicer places to live and more free than say Iran, Egypt or Nigeria but the reason probably isn’t democracy.
While redundantly worded I think the original statement still makes sense. Countries that are nicer places to live may tend to be democracies, but they also tend to have higher rates of diabetes. Why do we assume democracy is causing the niceness and not diabetes? This is hyperbole of course, but what if democracy is diabetes human societies get when becoming wealthy or too large?
weak evidence that it is less unfriendly than most structures we have tried in the past and even weaker if any evidence that we can’t come up with something much better.
True. But we have no evidence that it’s any worse, more unfriendly, than other modes of government we’ve already tried before.
If one accepts the above statement, as I do, then “democracy is incompatible with freedom” implies “we have never had freedom yet”. One who holds such a position, should be very wary of freedom: who knows what it might do to society if it’s a major new untried social condition! Fortunately, I don’t accept the premise.
This implies you, and he, previously believed they are compatible. What evidence determined that original belief, and what evidence made you change your mind that only appeared in 2011 in your case? What changed Thiel’s mind (link to quote context please)?
I have added a source for Peter Thiel’s statement, some of his reasons are also mine.
My previous belief was primarily based on adults telling me as a child that democracy was the mechanism keeping us free. My change of opinion stems in large part for me looking for the appropriate evidence for such a claim and not finding it.
One of the arguments that kept me believing in my early teenage years was that looking around the world one sees “democracies” as better places to live and more free than “non-democracies”. This isn’t powerful evidence at all since we have only a handful of countries in the world that don’t claim to be democracies. The problems of this poor data set are compounded by first world people play a game of no true Scotsman to explain the terrible results democracy brings to many third world countries, often with sentiments not far from:
Note this is a fully general argument against all failure of any political regime or ideology, one that is often use to explain away the atrocities of Communism under Stalin or Mao.
First world countries are much better places to live materially and have more freedom than many third world ones but I don’t see a convincing case that this is due to democracy.
“Democracy keeps us free” is a very different claim from “democracy is compatible with freedom”. Even if you now think democracy and freedom are not correlated at all, as long as they are not anticorrelated, why would you think they are incompatible?
Thiel in his essay appears to be saying that specifically in the contemporary US, the people don’t want freedom, so it is incompatible with effective democracy. (His relevant definition of freedom seems to be pure free markets without government intervention, or without intervention of certain kinds.)
That’s a tautology. Because they are better places, you call them first world countries.
The reasons why they might be anti-correlated Thiel explores seem mostly about the US and not some hypothetical country of mostly Libertarian voters. The thing is no such country exists in the world and this is I think no coincidence.
Democracy is like having dinner in a expensive restaurant with a few million people where everyone knows they will be splitting the bill at the end of the evening. The incentives are both on a organizational and individual level messed up and we rationalize our choices afterwards to make them seen less like defecting against other people. If this wasn’t bad enough people for some reason tend to have strong sentiments attaching them to their state of birth, which leaves them open to exploitation by that Eldritch Abomination. Note that I fully agree that “the market” is one too. Then there is the Moldbuggian argument that in a democracy power corrupts the truth finding mechanisms of a society. The map the society uses veers off in all sorts of unpredictable but memetically adaptive ways from the territory. One of the more insidious edits is the doddle at the centre of the map claiming that you are living in a good approximation of a Popperian Open Society.
In short democratic government like many structures built out of humans doesn’t necessarily behave in human friendly ways. We have strong evidence that it is viral and good at waging 19th and 20th century style wars, weak evidence that it is less unfriendly than most structures we have tried in the past and even weaker if any evidence that we can’t come up with something much better.
You are right. I should have said Western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan are nicer places to live and more free than say Iran, Egypt or Nigeria but the reason probably isn’t democracy.
While redundantly worded I think the original statement still makes sense. Countries that are nicer places to live may tend to be democracies, but they also tend to have higher rates of diabetes. Why do we assume democracy is causing the niceness and not diabetes? This is hyperbole of course, but what if democracy is diabetes human societies get when becoming wealthy or too large?
Apologies for late reply.
True. But we have no evidence that it’s any worse, more unfriendly, than other modes of government we’ve already tried before.
If one accepts the above statement, as I do, then “democracy is incompatible with freedom” implies “we have never had freedom yet”. One who holds such a position, should be very wary of freedom: who knows what it might do to society if it’s a major new untried social condition! Fortunately, I don’t accept the premise.