Is Republicanism (representative democracy) a failure?

[AZ Progressive]

It seems that with just how corrupt everyone in office seemingly is, and that the average competent American could not run for office unless are were backed with major money or have to give in to some sort of special interest, as well as that politics attracts ambitious, sleazy, and greedy people that nowadays put their own interests over the country and the people's interests, that ultimately Republicanism (representative democracy), of which this country was founded in, and at least in its current form, is a failure.

Perhaps if it was more like Athenian Democracy, with maybe groups of people take turns being a collective representative of a district in one month rotations and are selected by random to help govern, rather than professional politicians (which don't even read the bills they vote for, and amass fortunes due to their insider knowledge), maybe things would be a lot better.

[xchrom]

1. Are we living in post democracy America? Yes.

Is it a flaw in the Republic? Probably.

[baldguy]

2. If we don't have a representitive democracy, can you still call it a failure?

Let's at least try it a bit before we toss it out.

- Complete public funding of all elections

- Term limits

- Work toward a goal of 100% voter participation in elections

etc

etc

[arcane1]

4. -EDUCATION!!!

When most people have no idea how the government functions, and have less an idea of how the economy and global politics function, democracy is irrelevant. It's just people voting for one lie or the other.

[orwell]

7. You got it...

...most people have no idea what is going on.

[AZ Progressive]

11. Well how will you educate the people if it's in the interests of the Politicians...

... to NOT educate the people? How else are they going to make their millions if not from a corrupt system that thrives from the lack of educated people?

Also, our culture encourages apathy by telling us to basically only care about ourselves and be busy with our lives, and thus not care enough of what's going on with other people (that would help us to predict if something is coming our way) or know enough to be able to vote well.


The election system itself is flawed, its not as democratic as possible. Of course, one could say that the founding fathers really didn't want democracy, they didn't want a tyranny of the majority, but how is a government full of aristocrats any better than a tyranny of the majority?

[arcane1]

3. The failure is not democracy.

The failure is fundamentalist capitalism.

[Taverner]

6. The failure IS capitalism

You cannot have a system where everything is for sale, including the government, and expect it to be representative

[AZ Progressive]

9. The vulnerability to capitalism IS a flaw...

A flaw of republicanism.

[Taverner]

5. Ours is, yes. In fact, it is no longer a democracy but an oligarchy

Has been for some time - not sure when it turned tho. 1963, 1968, 1972, 1980, and 2001 are all good candidates

[Prophet 451]

8. In itself, no

In the US, possibly yes. I think there are two major issues in teh USA: The necessity of raising collosal amounts of cash in order to compete and the domination of media by corporate interests. In many countries, representative democracy works fairly well but those countries generally do not have the same collusion of media with big money. Now, there's several reasons the US suffers from that but foremost has to be the abolition of the rules regarding equal time in media.

Additionally, I think lifetime judicial appointments were a mistake. They were supposed to insulate judges from political pressure but in reality they've done exactly the opposite, ensuring a lifetime term for the biases that right-wing judges are selected to advance.

[boxman15]

10. No, it's the corruption of republicanism and the influence of corporate money on politics

That's the problem. We need to limit corporate influence and get the government working for the people 100% of the time again.

Athenian democracy would never work in a society of 300,000,000+ people.

[AZ Progressive]

12. How do you limit the influence of money on politics if only the politicians have the power?

And especially politicians that WANT the money because they are largely if not mostly interested in their own monetary gain, and many, if not the majority, wouldn't be in office if they couldn't use public office to make tons of money?

At least in the federal government, there's no direct democracy process like the proposition system in many states. Thus, there's no other route other than influencing politicians. But look at the last time that happened, back in 2008 when the people cried out against the bailout, jamming the phone lines in anger over the proposed $700 billion dollar bailout. At first the politicians did listen to the people, but a few days and many backroom deals later, the politicians went against the will of the people again.

Also, remember that America IS an individualist country, and perhaps the top individualist country in the world, thus it has lots of selfish and greedy people (especially because the individualistic culture encourages it) that are unrestrained by the culture, thus are free to use anything, including public office, for the pursuit of massive financial benefit.

I'm not talking Athenian democracy, but that we just pull more ideas from Athenian democracy (or any other true democracy) than Republicanism originally incorporated.