# Late stage democracy ??



## 307169 (May 24, 2015)

I have been harbouring this idea for a while, but the extreme hatred between left and right, and the desire of both side seeing each other as evil make me more confident about this.

As our society become more prosperous, citizens have less desire to earn more money, and instead, they started to support causes (both liberal and conservative). (This is because as people become more wealthy, the marginal utilities of more money reduces/ *laws of diminishing marginal utilities*). Consequentially, there are diversification of political opinion and naturally, proliferation of political entities. As a result of increasing number of political entities, it becomes increasingly more difficult to conduct anything meaningful in terms of policies. As a result, citizens engage in politics become frustrated and increasingly, they see themselves as a force for good and the other side as evil (a consequence of being frustrated by the constant need to negotiate and compromise) which cause the coarsening of political rhetoric we see right now.

Please grill my hypothesis.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

First of all I think this is mainly an American thing, not a Canadian thing.

I don't think there would be a left/right struggle if the population was left on its own, so I *don't* think this is an organic hatred at all. I think that the public is manipulated into this, a "divide and conquer" approach which is orchestrated by the rich.

There are plenty of clues that it's manipulation, an active effort to divide. Look at the role played by major media outlets like Fox News and CNN, for example. These are 24/7 propaganda machines.

And I think it gets more intense because the greater wealth disparity becomes, the more the rich people struggle to cling to power. So to fuel even more tribalism among the population, they amp up the rhetoric more and more... because it's very hard to cling to power when your policies are basically constantly screwing most of the population.

Therefore I believe that a huge wealth gap (very high concentration of wealth among very few people) contributes towards political craziness and very strong right/left divide.

I think the rich fuel this divide, because it helps motivate each of their voting segments, and perhaps more importantly, prevents the population from collaborating and organizing together to overthrow the rich. *The most dangerous thing for the ruling elites* would be if Americans of various walks of life recognized they were all getting screwed, and if they organized and ousted the various super-rich political rulers.

For example the last Republican leadership had a billionaire as president and a lineup of other billionaires and extremely rich people in top roles, including head of the Treasury. The Democrats also have fabulously wealthy people in the top ranks. The Clintons for example are worth around $200 million, which actually is on the low side compared to some of these recent Republicans (Trump at a few billion, Kusher around $1 billion, DeVos at $5 billion). Never have there been so many billionnaires directly in power!

It's a divide and conquer approach, performed by the rich class or aristocracy.

They each talk to their base, get them excited, and encourage anger towards the other side. This way you end up with poor and middle class people of various stripes, all distracted and blinded by these absolutely pointless distractions.

Tribalism helps blind people to common sense. In reality what is harming America is the ultra rich, and giant companies, always passing legislation to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense. The sensible thing for the population to do would be to organize a party to represent their own interests, and stop the ultra rich from repeatedly screwing them.

Very ironically, America was founded as a country which wanted to prevent aristocrats from ruling over them and controlling them. Unfortunately this is what America has now.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

james4beach said:


> First of all I think this is mainly an American thing, not a Canadian thing.
> 
> I don't think there would be a left/right struggle if the population was left on its own, so I *don't* think this is an organic hatred at all. I think that the public is manipulated into this, a "divide and conquer" approach which is orchestrated by the rich.


I agree in general, except it isn't "the rich".
The various group leaders gain personal power from divisiveness.

Even if you're in a relatively poor group, becoming the leader of that group can make things substantially better for you.
That's why leadership has an incentive to divisiveness.


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## 307169 (May 24, 2015)

These are the standard narrative, but wealthy people always outsize influence in politics, the press are always divisive in order to get more views, and leader of any political groups always have desire to self benefit (or at least not harm themselves), in another word, human nature have not change much. So what gave ?

P.S: I know one possible hypothesis, the key word is psychology.


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## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

> First of all I think this is mainly an American thing, not a Canadian thing.


Really?! After Trudeau started to rule, "extreme hatred between left and right " increased a lot... You barely can find country in the World when half provinces practically 100% vote for right party and other half for left . .. and I'm not even talking about QC . As West is giving up, the separation party is coming (Maverick) , western analog of BQ..


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

Johnny_kar said:


> These are the standard narrative, but wealthy people always outsize influence in politics, the press are always divisive in order to get more views, and leader of any political groups always have desire to self benefit (or at least not harm themselves), in another word, human nature have not change much. So what gave ?
> 
> P.S: I know one possible hypothesis, the key word is psychology.


 ... isn't psychology part of the human nature or that the human nature produces psychology? So I think you got your own answer. 

And I agree with your point that "human nature have not change much". In fact, I think humans (the good and bad mix though the latter type has evolved a grade higher from my POV) haven't changed at all. Same traits.


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## off.by.10 (Mar 16, 2014)

Psychology may not be much different but information flows a lot faster today than it did 10, 20 or 50 years ago. I think that is the biggest change.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

I agree with the speed of information making a huge difference.

Remember all the past protests like "Occupy Wall Street" etc that built up and then fizzled out because of a lack of direction.

Now social media helps direct protestors and binds them together in a common cause. A bunch of Redditors caused panic in global financial markets.

People can now bind together to "punish" businesses, politicians, celebrities who they find offensive. They can swiftly organize boycotts etc.

Trump used Twitter to change politics. Now the politicians worry publicly when their Twitter followers numbers decline.

It is a different world now. Intelligent, socially progressive, engaged, young adults are taking over the reigns of power and that is a good thing in the long run.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> I agree with the speed of information making a huge difference.
> 
> Remember all the past protests like "Occupy Wall Street" etc that built up and then fizzled out because of a lack of direction.
> 
> It is a different world now. Intelligent, socially progressive, engaged, young adults are taking over the reigns of power and that is a good thing in the long run.


That's because Occupy Wall Street never had a direction. It was just envy and greed

I think it's a bunch of poorly informed, energetic young people running around pushing for regressive policies.. I think once they get a clue about what they're doing, or understand the repercussions of their actions it will be a good thing. Right now they're like bulls in a china shop just smashing the place up.

Look at one of the most obviously ill considered initiatives, they actually massively defunded/disbanded a few police forces, and they got the resulting massive increase in crime.

Rest assured, they'll either continue on the regressive destructive path of the left, or they'll learn something and become a bit more liberal/conservative.


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## 307169 (May 24, 2015)

MrMatt, I think defund the police means giving more resources to social service and psychologist. 
Position of power always attract people that have low self esteem and like to lord over people, I think that is what the protester is concern about.

I think the standard narrative is that social media is causing many problems we face, because it is segregating people with different opinion and ideology (group think).
However, if my psy101 serve me correctly, group think can also cause people to become less aggressive and expressive in their opinion, as a result, I have some doubt this this the mechanism that cause the problem of divisiveness in politics.

I do believe social media and the internet in general is causing problem in terms of focus, which cause people to become unable to think deeply and nuancely. This is because the internet is feeding us information with MSG that is design to arouse emotions immediately.

Going back to my original point, a wealthy society allow more citizens to engage in politics. It is natural that more political opinion and entities will arise as a result. It is also natural that doing so make any political decisions more difficult to reach (more entities = more time to come up with common ground). Simply put, we told people to engage in politics without realising that the democratic process simply cannot handle it.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Democracy is messy. That is why the wealthy and powerful prefer to own and control politicians to ensure the results they want.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Johnny_kar said:


> MrMatt, I think defund the police means giving more resources to social service and psychologist.
> Position of power always attract people that have low self esteem and like to lord over people, I think that is what the protester is concern about.


No, defund the police means "less funding for police"

I'm all for providing other resources.
A very important note is that police, and US police in particular do not have enough training in de-escalation techniques.
In too many cases, they don't have the specially trained person (police or civilian) there to handle the call in the best way.



> I think the standard narrative is that social media is causing many problems we face, because it is segregating people with different opinion and ideology (group think).
> However, if my psy101 serve me correctly, group think can also cause people to become less aggressive and expressive in their opinion, as a result, I have some doubt this this the mechanism that cause the problem of divisiveness in politics.


I feel that they feel reinforced and encouraged, also the penalties for making a statement that the group disagrees with can result in complete ostracization. 
I think this results in increasing balkanization.
Also you have to realize that to even discuss issues with the opposing side can get you into trouble with some groups for "platforming" the opposition.



> Simply put, we told people to engage in politics without realising that the democratic process simply cannot handle it.


I think the problem here is that open debate is critical to a functioning democracy, and some groups are aggressively attacking open debate, and consequently democracy itself.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Some people say that social media has simply strengthened the public's voice, but I don't agree. Instead I think there is a "fake populism" problem in social media, where entities (some with big $$) engage in campaigns and propaganda, *but then pretend* that the dialog on social media is organic.

There is a lot of propaganda being spread across social media, and it certainly is manipulative; not organic, not democratic voices.

Social media has also given an avenue for foreign adversaries to spread their propaganda. In the old days, say the 1960s with established mainstream media (NBC News and major newspapers, etc) there was no way for the USSR to directly inject propaganda into the US. But today, where people don't read newspapers, and get all their news from flaky web sites sites and Facebook, it's now perfectly possible for (e.g.) Russia to inject propaganda directly into American and Canadian households.

Some examples of that are Zerohedge, which carries very obvious Russian propaganda, and there's also plenty of Russian propaganda (including anti American, anti western values) stuff on platforms like Youtube. Social media is absolutely full of this kind of stuff.

Then there are groups which produce propaganda, for example, conservative and liberal think tanks and interest groups. There is TONS of money behind all of these, producing propaganda and then disseminating it via social media

Social media has become a free-for-all battle ground where various groups + governments + big corporate interests are all blasting out their propaganda, and using innovative techniques to get eyeballs.

When it shows up in social media, people mistakenly believe these are natural or organic conversations, perhaps the opinions of friends, even when it originates from heavily-funded propaganda efforts. *I think this is a new problem the world has never faced before*. The mainstream media used to be the gatekeeper for news and information. Even though some of that contained propaganda too, _at least it wasn't misrepresented_ as the opinions of friends.

I really hope that children are being trained to understand that they shouldn't believe what they read on social media, and that these messages may be funded, and manipulated, even if they appear to be genuine opinions of a 'regular little guy'.


Social media is full of bots, automated propaganda agents, and paid humans acting in a covert capacity to pretend they are 'just a regular guy'. I really don't think people understand what they are consuming when they spend all day on Twitter, Facebook.


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## Money172375 (Jun 29, 2018)

james4beach said:


> Some people say that social media has simply strengthened the public's voice, but I don't agree. Instead I think there is a "fake populism" problem in social media, where entities (some with big $$) engage in campaigns and propaganda, *but then pretend* that the dialog on social media is organic.
> 
> There is a lot of propaganda being spread across social media, and it certainly is manipulative; not organic, not democratic voices.
> 
> ...


Some teachers are good at explaining the dangers of social media. In a few of my kids classes, the teachers spent the first week of class going through proper source citing, identifying fake news sites etc.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

The other problem is mainstream media's reliance on opinion pieces because news is covered so well elsewhere.

Yes social media has been corrupted by special interests. Best to be avoided to maintain your health.


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## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

I blame the mainstream media. They have always sought out sensational stories and often stirred up trouble purely to sell papers, but it has gotten way worse since the internet became popular. They are losing readership plus they now have new ways to monitor readership and jazz it up, aka clickbait. There are thousands of examples of stories that are wildly exaggerated or simply made up. All you have to do is check up on some of them, it's not hard to do, and find out how little they respect truth or objectivity. The result is they are literally driving the public insane with Trump Derangement Syndrome and Social Justice Warriors being leading examples.


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## 307169 (May 24, 2015)

Rusty, I have to respectfully disagree with you. The incentive for press to publish sensational things for advertisement revenue have not change over the years. It is probably something else that is newer that cause our problem.

Going back to my point, I still believe it is rather naive and counter intuitive to believe more political entities leads to easier negotiation for making political decision.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Johnny_kar said:


> Going back to my point, I still believe it is rather naive and counter intuitive to believe more political entities leads to easier negotiation for making political decision.


But if it's true that more choice and more parties confuses political matters ... then wouldn't a true "two party" system such as the US with only (R) and (D), in fact be a very stable and coherent democracy?

Instead, it is not. Even though there are only two parties, and most Americans identify with one or the other, there is still a lot of dissatisfaction and concern that the parties don't represent the public's interest.

I really think the problem comes from too much money in politics (lobbyists & donors). Personally, I don't think the problems come from too many voices or too much participation in democracy. When there is money in politics, and the ability to fund/donate to parties, the politicians stop becoming representatives of the people, and instead become representatives of the super rich, and big companies.

In Canada for example, you get situations such as Quebec-based industries controlling the Liberal party, and resource companies + wealthy business owners controlling the Conservative party.

Do those parties then properly represent the interests of the people? That's my concern. I really don't think the widespread opinions of the public factors into this very much, when the agendas are set by those lobbyists & donors.


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## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

Johnny_kar said:


> Rusty, I have to respectfully disagree with you. The incentive for press to publish sensational things for advertisement revenue have not change over the years. It is probably something else that is newer that cause our problem.
> 
> Going back to my point, I still believe it is rather naive and counter intuitive to believe more political entities leads to easier negotiation for making political decision.


They love sensational stories because they boost readership which boosts ad revenue so you are right, in a way. What changed is 1) they were driven to desperation as they saw their business failing due to online competition 2) computers and the internet allowed them to find out who was reading what stories and why, leading to clickbait type publishing, in other words, more of the same only worse.
There was a time when being caught lying to the public would have resulted in loss of faith, loss of sales and possibly lawsuits but those days seem to be over. Today's consumers don't seem to know or care whether their news is true or not. News media today more properly called politically correct, propaganda machine.


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## 307169 (May 24, 2015)

james4beach said:


> But if it's true that more choice and more parties confuses political matters ... then wouldn't a true "two party" system such as the US with only (R) and (D), in fact be a very stable and coherent democracy?
> 
> Instead, it is not. Even though there are only two parties, and most Americans identify with one or the other, there is still a lot of dissatisfaction and concern that the parties don't represent the public's interest.
> 
> ...


James, it is safe to say there are more entities inside political parties these days, and the internal struggle is spilling over. This make compromising between dems and reps more difficult as a result.

The reason why democracy seems to work well in the past is, in my opinion, because people have more similar view in the past, thanks to the fact that they all consume their information from similar sources. However, as the internet become more develop, people end up forming their own little groups where their understanding of the world no longer have anything in common.

This is the reason why democracy cannot scale up traditionally (Athens is a city state). The reason why Rome can last this long is because it is originally a system where a small group of elite and political dynasty (patrician) controls everything, while the people only keep checks on the leader mostly through tribunes of the plebs.


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## hfp75 (Mar 15, 2018)

My position is simple, stay in the center, it really is where most of us really are. Sure there are some deviations, but over time it is where you will see success and power. The fringe left and right are more a pita for all of us. I feel its driven by news agencies for political cause. In other words they are trying to manipulate society. Imho this is no longer news and undermines the freedom we grant the press. A lot of our media agencies should be punished - shamed for what they are doing.....


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

hfp75 said:


> My position is simple, stay in the center, it really is where most of us really are. Sure there are some deviations, but over time it is where you will see success and power. The fringe left and right are more a pita for all of us. I feel its driven by news agencies for political cause. In other words they are trying to manipulate society. Imho this is no longer news and undermines the freedom we grant the press. A lot of our media agencies should be punished - shamed for what they are doing.....


I think the issue today is that the extremists don't even agree what the center is.
I've been called alt right (or far right).

Yet politically I'm clearly liberal, just not Liberal.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

I don't see much to complain about in Canada, at least at the Federal level.

The Liberals won the most seats so they formed the government.

They didn't get a majority so the NDP and Greens have pushed for some worthwhile changes in return for their support for the government.

The Liberals, NDP, and Green parties represent a majority of Canadians, so the democratic process appears to be working well.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

sags said:


> I don't see much to complain about in Canada, at least at the Federal level.
> 
> The Liberals won the most seats so they formed the government.
> 
> ...


Good job standing up for the tyranny of the majority. 






Tyranny of the majority - Wikipedia







en.wikipedia.org





Centralization excess: when the centralized power of a federation make a decision that should be _local_, breaking with the commitment to the subsidiarity principle.[2] Typical solutions, in this condition, are concurrent majority and supermajority rules.
Abandonment of rationality: when, as Tocqueville remembered, a decision "which bases its claim to rule upon numbers, not upon rightness or excellence".


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## 307169 (May 24, 2015)

Johnny_kar said:


> Going back to my point, I still believe it is rather naive and counter intuitive to believe more political entities leads to easier negotiation for making political decision.


(My tone is kind of rude here, I apologize for that.)


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Johnny_kar said:


> Going back to my point, I still believe it is rather naive and counter intuitive to believe more political entities leads to easier negotiation for making political decision.


I don't want "easier negotiation", I want good decisions.
Also I want the government to do less, but that's because I'm a liberal, small government guy.


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