Timeline for Can the U.S. technically be called an oligarchy and a democracy?
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42 events
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| Aug 25, 2020 at 11:04 | comment | added | RedSonja | Actually you could title your answer; "No, it's a kleptocracy". | |
| Aug 25, 2020 at 11:01 | comment | added | RedSonja | Dynasty: I don't think you could count the Clinton family as a dynasty, they only provided one president and are not going to provide any more. | |
| Aug 25, 2020 at 9:25 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @Acccumulation Both matter, obviously. They are also, typically, closely correlated. For political influence I'd argue that wealth matters more because it determines the level of economic influence and the ability to make large donations and provide job opportunities on the other side of the revolving door. | |
| Aug 24, 2020 at 22:43 | comment | added | Acccumulation | "And one does not need to subscribe to conspiracy theories to recognize that the enormous wealth concentrated in the hands of a small number of billionaires results in an enormous political influence." What matters is income, not wealth. | |
| Dec 9, 2019 at 10:37 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 23, 2019 at 6:40 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 4, 2019 at 21:32 | vote | accept | user50780 | ||
| Nov 7, 2018 at 20:52 | vote | accept | user50780 | ||
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| Nov 6, 2018 at 21:30 | comment | added | hszmv | Switzerland is a Semi-Direct or Fully-Direct Democracy depending on who you ask (I prefer the former). They have a system kinda similar to the United States Representative Democracy, but have Federal Level Referendums that can be initiated by popular petitions. This is rather unique. | |
| Nov 6, 2018 at 20:21 | comment | added | lilHar | @BenVoigt As a constitutional change, the seventeenth ammendment can't be considered unconstitutional. The apportionment act of 1929, however, definately can be. | |
| Nov 6, 2018 at 6:11 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
money to power; avoid repetition
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| Nov 6, 2018 at 1:55 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @liljoshu: If you want to talk about balance of power between individuals and states, you have to talk about the Seventeenth Amendment. The Senate was designed to represent states' interests. All these fights about "unfunded mandates" were completely impossible under the original system. | |
| Nov 6, 2018 at 1:49 | comment | added | lilHar | @BenVoigt And fyi, the apportionment act of 1929 was such a blatent power grab it's disgusting. The "official reason" for it was that congress "didn't want to build a new congress building to house more representatives". (Since when do politicians turn down new buildings when they have a good excuse to get them?!?) The only people the act helped was themselves by consolidating power, while hurting the representation of every American. | |
| Nov 6, 2018 at 1:41 | comment | added | lilHar | @BenVoigt Actually, if the electoral college were handled constitutionally, the presidential vote would effectively be a national popular vote. The unconstitutional apportionment act of 1929 (it violates Article 2 of the constitution by changing the house from a republic institution to a modified territorial institution) robbed power from the people to give to the states. If that act had not been in place, Trump would have never gotten anywhere near the whitehouse (not even in his own party). | |
| Oct 29, 2018 at 22:41 | vote | accept | user50780 | ||
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| Oct 29, 2018 at 22:41 | vote | accept | user50780 | ||
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| Oct 29, 2018 at 0:01 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @S.G. "winning the office of the presidency with a minority of votes" has never happened. The president is not elected by national popular vote; people do not cast votes for president in the general election. And it makes no sense whatsoever to add together the vote totals from the general election choosing electors to try to synthesize a national popular vote, for a variety of reasons: different voting eligibility in different states (regarding residency rules, voting by felons, etc), the way that winner-takes-all skews voting, and others. | |
| Oct 28, 2018 at 5:23 | comment | added | S. G. | I would be wary of your conclusion that American democratic process is functioning "robustly", when in our lifetimes one of the two parties has twice benefited from winning the office of the presidency with a minority of votes (the most recent one a fairly marked minority), and that party has also disproportionately benefited from myriad attempts to suppress participation in the process. | |
| Oct 27, 2018 at 8:47 | comment | added | LorenzoDonati4Ukraine-OnStrike | One aspect that might fit in your analysis on whether USA are a "real" democracy, is the fact that AFAIK voting in the USA is something that is not supported by the government as in other (e.g. European) countries. I mean, AFAIK elections (can) take place on days when people must work, and there are no payed leaves to support voting (low income people could decide they can't afford losing their salary for that day). I'm not sure, but I think I read somewhere that in certain states and for certain jobs you aren't even allowed to get unpayed leave from work in order to vote (I hope I'm wrong). | |
| Oct 26, 2018 at 18:19 | comment | added | lilHar | @Darkwing For example, the US has had an average of 2 wars a year. If you look at popular opinions of each time that's happened, if the US if it had been a direct democracy, it would have had 2, maybe 3 wars over the course of it's entire history. | |
| Oct 26, 2018 at 18:16 | comment | added | lilHar | @Darkwing It is very much only a problem with judiciary. Pretty much every voting situation in a withdrawn methodology (voting booths, vote by mail, etc.) voting on any law happens LONG before the law hits any judiciary situation, and laws only apply when enacted, meaning that knee-jerk reactions (if even possible) don't apply to what they're reacting to. Buying insurance is more susceptible to knee jerk reactions. However, representatives are MUCH more capable of knee-jerk reactions. | |
| Oct 26, 2018 at 12:58 | comment | added | Frank Hopkins | @liljoshu the problem in that regard with direct democracy is that you need to keep emotional reactions at bay, that you need to either always ask everyone and make sure everyone votes or that you need safeguards for sudden mood swings / voter mobilisation. You need to make sure voters are properly informed. Those are also issues at a representative democracy, but they are easier to deal with as you have a fixed set of representatives that can and should do this full time. It's not a problem with the judiciary, as it can only act on laws made by the legislative. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 23:45 | comment | added | lilHar | @BenVoigt Doesn't change the fact he gave them that power. It it doesn't neccesarrily expire when he does, when we get a president in office, sometimes they retain some previous cabinet members if of the same party. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 23:43 | comment | added | lilHar | @Darkwing Still remains that it was a judiciary problem, not a direct democracy problem.Punishments must be set before people are tried, not during. Still not a problem with direct democracy itself. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 23:25 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @liljoshu: Their power expires when his does. That's delegation, not dynasty. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 22:41 | comment | added | alephzero | @PeterA.Schneider "Inconceivable in most other democracies" - In the UK we have had two brothers competing for leadership of the same political party (Ed and David Milliband). The same political party has had instances where a husband and wife have simultaneously held important offices (and the fact that the wife continued to use her unmarried name might have partially disguised that fact from the electorate). The current leader of the opposition has appointed his former girlfriend as shadow Home Secretary, and to various other shadow-ministerial posts before that. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 22:08 | comment | added | Frank Hopkins | @liljoshu Ah, I didn't have a particular decapitation in mind, it was meant more figuratively. I do remember a few cases of exiling or removing from all offices and shaming leaders just to later try to get them back. Or lower level back and forth decisions depending on who was at the assembly and who was speaking. That being said, you can quickly change laws to make decapitations possible. (And laws being restricted by other laws on the other hand brings its own bag of problems.) Main point: technology and security isn't the only problem. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 22:04 | comment | added | lilHar | @MontyHarder He literally passed power to his family members. It may not be all of his power, but it was power that he passed to them. It is obviously him passing them power. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 22:01 | comment | added | lilHar | @Darkwing The decapitation of the general was a result of their criminal system, not their law-creation system. That's less a reflection against direct democracy and more a reflection of not having standardized punishments for crimes. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 21:33 | comment | added | Frank Hopkins | @liljoshu Security is one issue, sure, but direct democracy has drawbacks by design. It was also relatively pragmatic in ancient Greece, but they also learned that it can lead to a decapitation of a general today, that you would need tomorrow. If it's fully direct you gotta give a lot of time for every citizen to educate themselves on the details of issues to decide. If you reduce the direct decisions to a more abstract level, that's basically going back towards representation (to figure out the details) plus a risk those decisions are going "wrong" for reasons about the detail decisions. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 21:20 | comment | added | Monty Harder | @PeterA.Schneider That's orthogonal to whether it's a dynasty, which implies passing power to the next generation. I didn't see RFK serving as JFK's AG as "dynastic", but by the time Ted got into the Senate and was running for President, the term certainly applied. No one expressed Eleanor Roosevelt's role in her husband's administration as "dynastic", but had she acted as Queen Mum to Truman, that might have fit. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 19:57 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @MontyHarder His daughter and son in law are in the government. That's inconceivable in most other democracies but a typical occurrence in oligarchies. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 19:46 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @liljoshu It's true that the digital age will most likely transform politics as well (or rather, continue to transform it). I didn't want to sidetrack too far, hence only a remark in the footnote. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 19:20 | comment | added | lilHar | Worth pointing out, traditionally a direct democracy would be hard, but in a digital age, direct democracies are all over the place on various websites. The question is not if it's pragmatic, it's very pragmatic, but how to be both pragmatic and secure. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 16:28 | comment | added | Monty Harder | I'd back off of calling the Trumps a dynasty until a second Trump gets elected to a national office. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 16:19 | comment | added | Tim B | @FrankCedeno As a neutral outside observer that's not what we see. His policies have overwhelmingly favoured the wealthy. I'm not going to claim to be an expert since I don't leave in the USA so I've not really been following the details, but that's certainly what we're seeing and hearing from across the pond. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 14:08 | comment | added | Frank Cedeno | When agenda items benefit everyone, everyone includes the wealthy, however, that is not what you mean. Not one policy change enacted has been to benefit Only the wealthy. In fact many of the policies have very little connection to whether or not a person is wealthy. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 14:03 | comment | added | Peter - Reinstate Monica | @Lowering taxes for the wealthy (after the tax cuts for the less wealthy run out, those are what remains) is not an opinion. My point is exactly that Trump appears as a populist with apopulist agenda. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 14:02 | comment | added | Frank Cedeno | "politics benefiting the wealthy" is an opinion and not factual. Benefiting the wealthy is not his platform. The thing people forget about Trump is that he is not an ideologue and he is closest to being a populist with a populist agenda. | |
| Oct 25, 2018 at 13:01 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 25, 2018 at 9:49 | history | edited | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 25, 2018 at 9:43 | history | answered | Peter - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |