The biggest telltale of a confused leftist (i.e. hangs around the current conservative counter-culture) is that he is still brainwashed with the modern form of phony democracy being the ideal of free society. This contrasts with Ancient Greco-Roman [1] conception of citizenship akin to nobility and bourgeois/middle-class, with a middle/working-class of freemen sitting between the former and slaves. While not purely meritocratic, ancient democracy meant having stakes in the game. [2]
In libertarian circles, there's also the concept of market-democracy, where having stakes in the game means individuals answer better questions, and makes more accurate collective decisions . The Wisdom of Crowds (pdf) book cites plenty of examples, such as the stock-market quickly identifying who was responsible for the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster. Political commentary is mostly outside the scope of the book, particularly with the inconclusive last chapter [3].
Without a useful term, discussing this concept or anything related to the uninitiated is unnecessarily verbose, even though it is an intuitive, populist concept.
Edit: Bad democracy is unqualified civies irresponsibly voting on people or ballot initiatives. Switzerland is passable, since ordinary citizens have better opportunity to be directly involved with state matters, for better or for worse. The only accurate phrasing I've come up with is active vs. passive democracy, but that doesn't exclude mob/clique/committee rule, which countermands spontaneous order and independent decision aggregation. I'll share this on the blackandgold Matrix channel and hopefully get a non-leftist answer that I can share here.
Edit 2: Market democracy in quadrant format.
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- Athens, the progenitor of Democracy, had more in common with the Roman Republic or it's rival Sparta than modern societies or feudal Europe.
- Heinlein's Starship Troopers refines this concept on classical liberal principles.
- Shame that the author is a New Yorker suffering from TDS.
Democracy works with a LIMITED voter pool, it's like how a small team can get projects done that seem impossible with great communication whereas an entire town can be paralysed by one issue.
The problem is how to limit it, you need to put in place some prerequisite to be elegable to vote than just age or criminal record as shown by western countries opening up like they have just invites tribal/mob rule.
The Founding Fathers had some specific ideas about who should be able to vote.
Exactly what I'm ultimately after. I just think it would be easier if I and others had an efficient way to frame democracy without putting people on guard, or wasting less time finding if an acquaintance is a socialist pop-tart.
You can immediately figure out if someone is a leftist these days just by talking to them for twenty minutes. Ask them what a woman is, or what they think of the economy.
If the answers are anything besides "adult female human" and "fuck joe biden", you probably have a liberal on your hands. Best case scenario, dedicated normie.
It's just "democracy". Others would call it mob rule. We'd have to agree on what "effective" means before we can agree on which qualifier should be the standard. The standard term for whatever the US and Europe supposedly lives under is Liberal Democracy, and the people who run the Liberal World Order would say that this is the most effective form of democracy. I'm sure you're also familiar with Representative Democracy but that's a broader classification than what you're looking for.
Indeed, and also lends itself to infinite meaningless semantic debates until the parties define terms.
I didn't settle on the term "effective democracy" since 'effective', like 'holistic', has a leftist and pretentious connotation in common vernacular. It most certainly isn't representative democracy, which is even worse than direct democracy. An extreme example of what I mean is Senator Armstrong's ideal of action determining policy.
It's called Based Democracy, son.
There is a standard term for an effective democracy.
Imaginary.
"Severely limited franchisement" and "republic" come to mind.
The former is what I've used to broach the subject, which works with casual conservatives, but not confused leftists. It puts anyone that slants left on guard, which is okay if I want to piss off a coworker or bar addict. The key here is the concept that applies both to public office and private
Republican might work in Europe where at worst it means anti-monarchy, but here in America, low on the list of things I talk to a strangers about is the drama/theater surrounding the GOP and DNC.
I would have not even made this post if parasites didn't co-opt the word 'stake' for the incoherent "stakeholder capitalism", which is almost the reverse of the important concept I'm trying to condense to one or two words. I'm just falling back on meritocracy and social darwinism, even if those fail at subtlety changing a person's train-of-thought that majority-rule is good and natural. Democracy is a synthetic radioisotope.
Representative Republic is what we are, and I refuse to entertain any suggestion that there is anything "democratic" about it.
I subscribe to the Heritage Foundation's conclusion that this stopped being true some time in the 20th century. The faltering of our republic would be much easier for me to explain to normies, or debate shitlibs, if I had better vocabulary for the various methods of bottom-up participation. Same with economics; any discussion with IRL randoms involving minimum wage, unemployment, protectionism (tariffs, grocery store alcohol restrictions, occupational licensing) devolves into cliches and low-grade gametalk. Good populism (i.e. not trend chasing) stands a better chance if we can coax more regular Americans into thinking about substance instead of getting pawned/manipulated by low propensity baizuo issues (not to suggest that the culture-war shouldn't be fought).
It’s what we’re supposed to be.