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A comment on Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes. Parent comment

Re:Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered... by trhway on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @03:42AM (#32079979)
democracy isn't just about elections (otherwise even the totalitarian fascist Russia could have been called democratic :). Elections is just a basic necessary condition of democracy, a starting point. Many of those populist regimes aren't democracies really, they are more like ochlocracies naturally hijacked by authoritarians.
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Re:Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered... by TheOtherHobbes on Wednesday July 13, 2022 @07:35AM (#32081271)
Yes - exactly. Genuine democracies are a complex patchwork of competing interests which somehow balance to generate policy that benefits most of the population.

As soon as you have a government run for the benefit of a small group, you no longer have a democracy.

Elections don't change this. Not even nominally free and fair ones.

The problem - as always - is that any system of government trends towards capture by Dark Tetrad types. No matter what decisions they appear to make, and no matter whether they're left/right populist/monarchist democratic/authoritarian, the consequences are always disastrous.

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