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.
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.