democracy is a huge circlejerk

[shubla]

just saying
as elections are coming close in finland yet again..

[Burinn]

I'm sorry you think that.

[Grog]

You found another way to increase your post count, huh?

Are you more of the submissive type that you dislike the "circlejerk"?

[iamahh]

don't try this at home

[dageir]

just saying
as elections are coming close in finland yet again..

And by the statement "Democracy is a huge circlejerk" you mean?

[Grog]

Probably nothing. His latest post don't seem to have much thought behind them.
He's just shitposting all over the forum.

[Granger]

just saying
as elections are coming close in finland yet again..

And by the statement "Democracy is a huge circlejerk" you mean?

By that he expresses his high hopes that someone will have mercy and massage him off too, while at it.

Off to HEL with this?

[shubla]

These examples are primarily about Finland, because I have most experience with the Finnish system, but I am pretty sure that other countries with "democracy" have the exact same problems.

First, to make few things clear about the circumstances:
as everyone probably already knows. Finland is a 'democratic' country.
President is chosen every 6 years by elections, president does not really have any real power, but people generally listen if he has something to say. Prime minister and other ministers have generally a lot of power.
Parliament is called "eduskunta" and consists of 200 people, chosen by elections every 4 years or so. Political parties are divided into opposition and the ruling parties, and ministers are chosen from the latter one, and all that.

Democracy as a system, is meant to give power to decide about things to the normal citizens of the country. So decisions would be made in a way that they want, and which benefits majority of them.
But it does not work.
Not at all.

First of all, most people who vote do not know about things. They are easily persuaded by the populists saying all kinds of things to vote for them.

Second, even if everyone who voted was well educated about things and made their decisions of voting in the most rational way, democracy STILL would not work. Because.. Politicians lie, all the time.
As an example:
In the last parliamentary elections in Finland, there was one big thing. "Koulutuslupaus" which roughly translates to "education promise". The promise was that if the politicians get elected, they will not cut any funds from education. Which is pretty cool? Right? There are even videos and pictures of the now prime minister of Finland holding a sign which says: "we are not going to cut from education" smiling at the camera. Well, he got elected and got chosen as a prime minister. The current parliament has cut OVER 690 MILLION euros from the education alone. That is a lot of money for a country with size of Finland. And the whole education system is currently having massive problems, and collapsing, because of the lack of funds.
So what is point in choosing who to vote, if they are not going to keep their promises, but instead just do what the fuck they want? People generally forget in 4 or 8 years that they lied, and elect the same guys again!

Most disgusting thing is, that people often think that the most important thing in democracy, is to have high percentage of people to vote.
But that is really dumb! Because of the things that I said above. Most people are not making rational voting decisions, and even if they would be, politicians lie so there is no point in voting.

I don't know about other countries, but these days in Finland vaalikoneet, "election machines" are traditionally published. They are basically interactive websites, with questions like "climate change is important" and "traditional values are good base for politics" and then you can choose if you agree/disagree with them. All politicans are asked to fill the answers to these machines, and then the machine tells which politicans agree with you. Its rather debatable whether these machines are good or bad thing, but they are pretty popular in Finland. Many popular newpapers have their own machines, with pretty much the same questions. But a week ago or so, one smaller department of YLE (a media company ran by the state, one of the most popular ones) released their own election machine, which had videos before each question. Videos that are... Basically VERY, VERY biased, videos shortly discussed the questions that the machine would soon ask about you, but as I said, in extremely biased ways, basically telling you what the "correct" answer to the question is. And this department is aimed towards the younger people, who generally do not vote as actively as older people do. I am still quite shocked that they released it, because YLE is owned by the state, and is trying to be as unbiased about political things as you can, but this election machine was basically propaganda aimed at the young people.

Flaws of democracy are never really discussed in the media. And in school these flaws of democracy are never discussed and the democracy is generally talked about in a very, very positive light. Making people in the early and young age think that its the one and only system with no flaws nor room for improvement, because it already is perfect.

Are there better systems? Probably.
Dictatorship works really well, if the dictator is a good guy. Sadly that is not always the case.
But my point is not that some specific government form would be better than democracy, but to point out that democracy is very imperfect system, and there should be more discussion about improving it. Instead of just writing articles about low percentage of voters and keeping on brainwashing the public to think that it works...

In short: democracy does not work but many people pretend that it works and that makes it a huge circlejerk.

[Grog]

Dictatorship works really well, if the dictator is a good guy. Sadly that is not always the case.

I think you miss that people change if the hold power for too long. Orban and Erdogan for example started as people friendly reformers.
So you static good guy/bad guy sceme is a little off.

Thanks for getting the thread out of the shitpost zone though. Your info are interesting to read.

I'm fascinated flaws are not discussed on your side btw.
Here in Germany we see it as the lesser of all evils.

[Farn]

The problem with democracy is that people like shubla get to vote.