I don’t think having beliefs about “pure democracy”, “pure capitalism” or “pure communism” are very useful for making political decisions. In the real world our systems aren’t pure but very complex systems.
For signaling tribal alliance it’s okay to speak in favor of “pure X” but it’s not good for driving any kind of political agenda. Putting a probability on whether or not “pure democracy” is good doesn’t help with the core issue.
You don’t want to have a state where the only way to change the government happens to be a coup d’état because that way to change your government is much more expensive than holding elections.
You want to have public discussion that can affect public policy that’s open to people who are willing to engage with public policies.
It’s been a while since I read Rousseau but if I remember correctly for him democracy was simply a state where the government does what’s in the interest of the people and not necessarily what the people say when you ask them.
If power is concentrated on few people that doesn’t happen for the reasons Bruce Bueno de Mesquita described in the Dictator’s Handbook and as a result it makes sense to design a system in a way that spreads power over more people.
Representative democracy is a tool to spread out power. Thinking of it as a tool that’s supposed to translate public opinion as directly as possible into public policy misunderstands it’s core purpose.
Going deeper into understanding a purpose helps to develop positions that aren’t “20% that pure democracy is good” and “80% that oligarchy is good” but that have a different structure.
I don’t think having beliefs about “pure democracy”, “pure capitalism” or “pure communism” are very useful for making political decisions. In the real world our systems aren’t pure but very complex systems.
For signaling tribal alliance it’s okay to speak in favor of “pure X” but it’s not good for driving any kind of political agenda. Putting a probability on whether or not “pure democracy” is good doesn’t help with the core issue.
You don’t want to have a state where the only way to change the government happens to be a coup d’état because that way to change your government is much more expensive than holding elections.
You want to have public discussion that can affect public policy that’s open to people who are willing to engage with public policies.
It’s been a while since I read Rousseau but if I remember correctly for him democracy was simply a state where the government does what’s in the interest of the people and not necessarily what the people say when you ask them.
If power is concentrated on few people that doesn’t happen for the reasons Bruce Bueno de Mesquita described in the Dictator’s Handbook and as a result it makes sense to design a system in a way that spreads power over more people.
Representative democracy is a tool to spread out power. Thinking of it as a tool that’s supposed to translate public opinion as directly as possible into public policy misunderstands it’s core purpose.
Going deeper into understanding a purpose helps to develop positions that aren’t “20% that pure democracy is good” and “80% that oligarchy is good” but that have a different structure.