My first thought to your comment was an opposing example of gay rights. Sure gay marriage was SCOTUS but it first changed as policy at the state level. politicians changed because it became popular enough and strong voice in media (remember obama was against marriage equality amongst other things at first). We're now seeing this struggle with Trans rights. Where it's >52% popular you see equality legislation, where it's a good wedge issue for Republicans they act against (e.g. DeSantis is running for president on the backs of attacking children..)

Civil Rights Act comes to mind too and interesting in that it had such strong opposition, interesting question of what are special interests if you expand beyond 'economic and business elite.' NAACP et al were very powerful.

Marijuana & decriminalization is another quick thought, though that's a bit more cloudy especially with later states with a more established business interest group. But I worked on the original campaign here in CO and our budget was pretty tiny...

It is worth remembering that at that time period, which was just 2008, California literally voted to change its constitution to ban gay marriage, which was purely a popular vote which was successful. If you want 55 electoral college votes, you aren't going to be saying things that ensure the opposite outcome.

I don't think it is useful to have actual opinions if you are playing that game.

Regardless of your opinions of Obama's politics, he is not a stupid man. All this nonsense about his position "evolving" is just that, nonsense. Obama was never really against gay marriage, he just needed to have viable positions to get elected.

In 2012 it was different. There was no primary. Obama could afford to be less of a follower and more of a leader. Black voters might not be enthusiastic about gay rights, but there was no doubt they’d show up to vote for their guy. So Obama calculated he could get the black vote and the gay vote by “evolving” his public stance.

This is of course separate from his own personal stance, which likely hasn’t evolved in a long time. What people find difficult to understand is that public figures have public and private personas.

Not singling out Obama here because all politicians do it to an extent (the ones who don’t never get far).

Just calling out it’s not exactly a virtue.

Obama presided over many terrible things, but overall the amount of terrible things dropped during his tenure.

Not sure virtue is the right word but it’s more complicated than “lying bad”.

Therefore, the system will always be moving towards more consistently acting that way. It's not right or wrong driving much of anything, just survival.

If this is bad, the incentives must be changed; you can't just wish people were nicer, cause even if you got your wish magically, they'd still lose to those that aren't

Not just politicians, although they are the most visible at it.

Is it wrong for a politician to mirror the opinions of their voters? That’s literally what a representative democracy is supposed to be.

Is it wrong for a person to express their heart felt opinion to folks who like and trust them? Isn’t that what all human communication is?

Obama did the right thing, in both 2008 and 2012. If he does 2008 differently, he remains a Senator with no national platform. If he does 2012 differently and doesn’t use his national platform to advocate for gay rights, maybe it takes longer for it to reach 80% support in the general population.

If you’d like to actually understand politics, I’d suggest reading The Dictators Handbook or watching this video for the tldr- https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

Dismissing criticism about our system,in which the officials just do whatever they want without checks and lie every four years to keep doing it, by saying "tell me a better system", implies you have given up. Good for you, but at some point the "best system in the world" was monarchy because the question "can you tell me a better system" had no answer either.

Because he could have just as easily STFU'd and said some mumbo jumbo without giving a real answer. As a career politician (and well spoken one at that) giving a non-answer that gives both sides hope he'll be on their side was perfectly within his capability.

Maybe he isn't the one who needs to STFU.

Some rightfully point out below that there's always politician BS lip service, saying something during the election and not following through or doing the opposite.

But on this issue both 'sides' show the point I'm trying to make. Public sentiment, not industrial lobbyists, drove anti-queer policy (though to be fair with Prop 8 you could call the mormon's monied elites since they evidently have a ginormous secretive endowment controlled by a few white guys).

And then in just a few years popular opinion turned, laws/policy followed at a lightning fast pace. Because politicians want to get elected. Pretty amazing. I distinctly remembering talking about marrying my at the time long term boyfriend, my parents didn't realize I could get married like a year after SCOTUS opinion & they are very supportive.

i think and hope that there are many examples like this, which parent's study seems to show doesn't exist, at least affecting business/tax/money policy

Yes I know most of it is meaningless me-too bullshit and to an extent is even done cynically to make themselves look good as much as enact actual change. It's largely done to make hiring easier, but nevertheless the fact that big companies openly and publicly promote these attitudes does matter to politicians. As big employers, companies get a say in local, regional and national policy development. They comment on and influence advertising, safety, accessibility, transport and zoning regulations. They are big donors to political campaigns. Over time the fact that they have consistently and persistently pushed the same narrative has I think had a normalising effect.

Can you support that? History is filled with protests leading to change. Just looking at 100 years off the top of my head: Women's vote, Gandhi, civil rights, S. Korea, the fall of the Soviet Block, the Arab Spring ...

In France, countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party, in addition to criminals not being arrested, should at least give you a doubt on how much the “bad vs good” show is artificial.

Many legitimate protests from people who actually are minorities in their nations, were put in bad light and you never heard of them.

It's an attempted tactic, though in the US I think by the political opposition (radical neo-reactionaries) and not the government. It has uneven success.

> countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party

Do we know those pictures were legitimate? Countless pictures on the Internet doesn't mean much.

> Many legitimate protests from people who actually are minorities in their nations, were put in bad light and you never heard of them.

How do you know?

The only democracy is Switzerland. Switzerland solves the problem of populist tyrannical capture by having an Executive Council instead of a President.

More recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that all Republics are doomed to fail.

One should never let an “expert” make a decision for you. They will over time deceive you because they will always be a likely scapegoat.

It is much better to get it wrong yourself because then you can face the truth instead of constantly being on the watch for a scapegoat and damaging the dynamics of decision making.

But women weren't allowed to vote (in every canton) until 1991. There is a ban on new minarets being constructed (but not other tall buildings). The anti-immigration referendum couldn't be implemented as would have led to dramatic consequences for Switzerland's relationship with the EU.

From an outside perspective even Switzerland doesn't seem like a "true" democracy.

Does democracy mean something else to you? I think you are confusing your indoctrination of good and inclusive with democracy. Or Vice versa.

I’ve seen that alot.

People like to talk about good and inclusive as if they aren't universal values. Good is a value in every culture and religion; it's human nature; we aren't sociopaths. Just off the top of my head, there's the fundamentals of the Bible, 'love they neighbor, love thy god'. There's the Mandate of Heaven in Imperial China, which said only a good ruler keeps heaven's mandate and thus their power.

Inclusive is not only part of good, it's necessary to democracy: It requires respecting the votes and believing in the rights of everyone, and practically, freedom requires respecting your neighbor.

The question is, why work so hard to undermine good, including inclusiveness, democracy, and human rights? What an incredible heritage we've been given; what an optimistic history and what opportunity we have to build something even more amazing for the next generation. It takes an very cynical politics to try to undermine that - to give that up for yourself, for an entire generation, for our descendants. People from Washington to Lincoln to Churchill to Gandhi to MLK to all those who have died and struggled in service have worked to bequeath to us our free and good, in large part, society. With everything we've been given, what will we bequeath? Hate, authoritarianism, and climate change? What a shame our generation would be, among the others, if that was what we produced. The question is, what can we accomplish?

Constitutions provide inclusiveness, constitutions are not unique to any system of governance, and can be the basis for any form of governance

Collaboration with the people willing to abide by the system isn’t unique to any system of governance, and is required by all systems

Democracy is just rule by majority

It's not, by any meaningful definition, and not how people who study it think about it. Democracy's are rule by majority and, just as essentially, protection of minority rights. You need both or you have nothing. The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution is the best known example.

Authoritarian dictatorships and single party countries have constitutions that give the same guarantees as seen in the Bill of Rights and other areas of the US Constitution

You are conflating the definition of democracy with ideals you were taught to respect. This is indoctrination by definition of accepting a set of beliefs uncritically.

Instead of trying to argue that point or differences between constitutional countries, you could just drop your expanded definition of democracy in favor of the rule by majority one.

academics in democracies are viewing it uncritically too. democracy doesn't mean anything related to limitations of the government or a form of inclusivity that aspires to enfranchise everyone. it means rule of the eligible voting majority, just like when all states in the United States only allowed male land owners of Northwestern European descent vote, that was a democracy. All tweaks are adjectives, such as representative democracy, parliamentary democracy, etc.

I'm not responding to the pending questions you generated because they are aspirations from completely left field, used to support your warped aspiration view of a form of governance that has no specific name, that you dream of as right and correct which you also consider a non-existent inclusive democracy to be. I am just hoping you try to explain your view so that you see that on a standardized test, my answer would be the "more correct" choice than your. If you chose your own answer you would get points off.

The newest definition I’m aware of is “the original 51% attack”

The referendum wasn't on noise or the legality of minarets broadcasting sound though, it was on the structures themselves. Churches can still build steeples (or even noisy belltowers). I fail to see why the simple construction of a minaret harms anyone any more than say a steeple of a church of a different denomination. If anything it just seems like legislation to tell Muslims that they are not welcome in Switzerland.

I think it is exactly that and this should be their right.

Minarets do not build themselves. There would be very possibly some money and influence involved from countries that do not share Swiss people values.

But then why not address that by banning foreign funding of construction of religious buildings? If Swiss Muslims want to build a minaret on their mosque I personally don't see the harm. But it's clear that others disagree.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: if you could please stop creating accounts like this and definitely stop creating accounts to break the site rules with, we'd be grateful.

Americans have long referred to themselves, quite proudly, as a democracy. The distinction is otherwise a technicality for political scientists.

A recent political trend has one group, which fears getting outvoted, saying that it's not, that it's a 'republic' (they, of course, that they won't be the ones excluded from power). But the distinction is theoretical - government by the people, for the people, of the people, to use just one phrase, is what defines the US and the US is a democracy. We the people created the government and make the law.

> More recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that all Republics are doomed to fail.

Well the evidence is pretty bad. The most stable, successful form of government in history is modern democracy. If you want failure, look at the disasters of authoritarian governments, with their civil wars, weak economies, and governing calamities (e.g., hyperinflation, needless wars, etc.).

In Switzerland you have 4 referendums a year where the demos, the people, make decisions in concert.

In most republics, all you get to do is elect a representative. Some US states do hold referendums like California. This means that some republics do have representatives and the people share decision making power. This however does not happen at the level of the American Federal government. So far as I know, you can only vote on having someone speak for you and you are not part of the decision. These representatives are much more susceptible to capture than the entire demos.

It would be nice if the etymology of Rep in Republic came from Representation because that is all you get for sure. Sadly, that is not the case.

As to the stability of governments—I would also agree that a Republic is more robust and long lived than a tyranny. However, I still hold that a Republic is likely to end in tyranny because the incentive and the likelihood to capture becomes enticing and likely.

We do not disagree here. Would like to know if the distinction between the decision making power of a Swiss citizen and the decision making power of an American citizen seem meaningfully different to you as they do to me. The difference becomes even more stark if you compare the Dominican Republic and Switzerland as the Dominican Republic has even less democratic aspects than the US Federal Government (which incidentally has fewer Democratic characteristics than US states)

You should check out ballots from around the U.S. There is far more than "a representative" on them.

> These representatives are much more susceptible to capture than the entire demos.

I'm not sure that's true. Recent history hasn't shown the public does well with complex issues - that's why it's good to hire someone to focus on them.

The first point dosen’t really do anything for me because I did cite California as one of many US states holding a referendum.

The 2nd point is a more interesting debate and it may involve some preference.

For my money, I would much rather be Swiss than Singaporean.

Swiss trains run on time and the infrastructure is plenty good compared to Singapore. You could switch this out for a more free and still very competent state like Taiwan.

Of note: questions of citizenship in Switzerland are decided at the Canton, not the Federal level. Your neighbors are making the decision as to whether they want you to become a citizen. Not some far away bureaucrat.

An argument for your stated preference of more expertise is hinted at in this review in what I think is the book of the year, “The Premonition” by Michael Lewis. They cite a book “10% Less Democracy.” There is some merit to this in the short run—but in the long run, I would rather be Swiss. (And I would be on the side where I would be happy to have the union expect more responsibility from me. For example, I would not be in favor of shortening the time of service.)

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/06/th...

The efficacy of peaceful protests in enacting change is orthogonal to whether the US is a democracy "in any form" or not.

If you mean, it doesn't match theoretical models of democracy, of course: Reality is messy. To say there's no democracy in the US doesn't match my experience of my community, state, and country.

I guess Canada isn't a democracy either, it's a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Oh and I guess Germany isn't either, it's federal parliamentary republic.

That does not mean anything. A republic has more stability because of (typically) a constitution which guarantees principles, whereas a democracy can turn into "whatever the current majority decides". A democracy can easily turn into a dictatorship or at least an authoritarian regime just through voting. A republic, much less likely without a bloody revolution.