Does democracy work?

Question

If most people in a country are stupid and never even went to College, does this not mean that the person they vote for will be an idiot? I feel this is why most counties are so messed up!

Answer 1

John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher, said democracy could only work if accompanied by a high-level education for all citizens. He argued that no one can represent your interests as well as yourself so if you do not understand the workings of the world and the workings of politics, you cannot make yourself heard.

Real democracy, in my view, is fairly utopian. The government of my country, for example, though not explicitly, makes every possible effort to maintain the majority of the population at functional illiterate level or below.

Take care!

Answer 2

A true democracy does not work because it is so terribly inefficient to have everyone vote on every single issue. The whole idea of a government is to avoid having to do that. That is why very few countries use a true democracy.

A representative democracy, like the United States, Canada, etc, have, also does not work very well. First, rather than getting to vote for anyone they want, people can only vote for certain parties, making it a choice between the lesser of two or more evils. Second, if the party they vote for loses, then effectively their vote has counted for essentially nothing. Third, and most importantly, if the people elect a corrupt, greedy politician, they (the politician) will put policies into place to try to make the people as stupid and ignorant as reasonably possible, so that they will go on electing corrupt, greedy politicians. It's a vicious cycle. The fact that people can choose who to vote for is meaningless if they always vote for corrupt, greedy people. In other words, it's the result that counts, not the means of getting there.

Answer 3

Democracy literally means ruled by the people. Now college does not equal intelligence!! In fact, nowadays, kids study beer, bongs and sex more than anything else at school. Who knows if they learn anything. Life has a way of teaching you more than a book anyhow. As people who have the right to vote, it is our responsiblity to educate ourselves as to who is best suited for the position being voted on. Countries are messed up because people the people are either too stupid and brainwashed by propaganda to find out what's really going on and they pick whoever has the best commercial, or the people who do know what's going on are not united enough in their views to vote for one person. It's too bad because it wastes $ and makes countries look completely foolish when the majority of people DO KNOW BETTER! But of course in politics, $ can get you a lot of places. Look what happend last election!

Answer 4

I think education is important if not essential. I also think that technology/internet might be the enabler of a practical democracy. However, there are many things that can be done to improve the process. For example, I like the two party system if they would return to shaping government to their respective ideals Hamiltonian vs Democrat. I also believe that individuals could be better prepared for civic participation by learning collaborative skills. Finally, it has not been in our culture to participate in government. If it were, we would naturally attract our best and our brightest to be our leaders.

Answer 5

Does democracy work?
Try asking a political question in North Korea or Cuba and see what happens to you.

Answer 6

Democracy is based on the principle of live & let live others gracefully. Definitly it hardly matters wether a voter is graduate or not .

Answer 7

Let's put it to a vote...

Answer 8

Not lately.

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