Let's take for example when a plane flies into the world trade center. I don't know who exactly flew into the towers and I don't know that any individual point below is the definite answer. Likely the planes really were flown into the building by terrorists who truly believed in Islam. Let's pretend that one of the following happens in a situation like WTC:
- intelligence sources say that it was probably terrorists. The country has a tyrannical leader who says "OUR COUNTRY WILL FIGHT THE WAR, WE ARE STARTING NOW".
- intelligence sources say that it was probably terrorists. The country has a democratic leader who says "OUR COUNTRY MUST HAVE A VOTE BEFORE GOING TO WAR".
- intelligence sources say that it was probably terrorists. The country has a tyrannical leader who says "OUR COUNTRY WILL NOT MAKE IMMEDIATE ASSUMPTIONS OR GO TO WAR UNTIL WE ARE SURE WHO FLEW THE PLANES. IF OUR INTELLIGENCE REPORTS BECOME CLEAR WE WILL RESPOND IMMEDIATELY. IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS CRIME YOU CAN REPORT IT TO US EVEN THOUGH WE ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY, OBVIOUSLY WE WILL ACCEPT ANY TIPS IN THE RESEARCH PHASE.
- intelligence sources say that it was probably terrorists. The country has a democratic leader who says "OUR COUNTRY WILL NOT MAKE IMMEDIATE ASSUMPTIONS OR GO TO WAR UNTIL WE ARE SURE WHO FLEW THE PLANES. WE WILL HAVE A DEMOCRATIC VOTE AFTER OUR INTELLIGENCE REPORTS GIVE US MORE INFORMATION, AND YOU ARE INVITED TO GIVE US MORE INFORMATION IN THE MEAN TIME TOO.
- intelligence sources find that it was the government who flew the planes (*cough*, b.s.), and the leader doesn't reveal this.. the leader says either that the country will go to war now or that the country will wait and see for more information from the intelligence reports and the people first (to make it look like they really are doing more research before deciding).
The disadvantage of the democratic vote is that the country wastes time voting, and it may be that EMOTIONALLY the people vote to go to war. The advantage of a democratic vote is that it delays things.. maybe by the time they get the voting organized, they will come up with more intelligence about who hit the buildings. Another disadvantage of the of democratic vote is that it may take too long for the results of the vote to come in. For example, if someone declares war on your country and starts bombing and killing people, do you have time for a vote.. if thousands are dying? In the WTC case there was time, because it wasn't as if continual bombs were being dropped each day. But at the same time, there wasn't time, because more planes could be hijacked the next day possibly.
In the last case, it doesn't matter whether or not it is a democratic or tyrannical party running the nation.. because they are covering something up, so they obviously are not going to have the people vote. However, at the same time, it is also hard for a government to cover something up like this.. since so many people work at the government which would have to be hiding it all. You or your friends work at the government, right? In fact, even you yourself could run for president or prime minister, so once you or your friend becomes prime minister are they automatically bad now that they work for the government and they are hiding things? and who are they hiding things with? just the top people in the government, or also the people who work in the government like every day folks and friends?
On the other hand, although it seems unlikely an entire government could hide something and cover it up, world war 2 had a similar cover up where Hitler bombed a building on purpose and pretended he was being invaded by polish folks. The reason hitler was so successful was because he made lots of every day folks happy by creating jobs. The war and factories provided income and jobs.. everyday people love jobs. So it is still possible for a government to be bad and cause a cover up. However in the case of world trade center it is far more likely that Islam really did believe they would get 72 virgins in heaven for flying planes into buildings since that's what the quran asks militant muslims to do.
In the case of Hitler, even if he ran a democratic system rather than say a pure tyrannical system, he probably still would have been successful because of all the people who like jobs, income, and consumerism that comes from war. All the factories needed create jobs, so a democratic vote would have probably allowed all those factories to be built. After all the democratic society is going to say.. GREAT these factories we are building creates jobs for us, the people. They would just go along with what the democratic leader was saying about jews (conspiracy) in order to get the jobs.
Even Hitler still had to make sure that people actually wanted jobs in the factories and he still had to make sure that people actually would dress up in uniforms and go to war.. because if they didn't, someone would have just killed him and some other person would have taken leadership... so in some ways, all tyrannies are democratic, if someone has the guts to do something about the situation. Anybody has the ability to stop a leader, even if all the rules in the law book say you can't stop the leader. Anybody has the ability to break 10 windows on a building, even if it says on the windows that you cannot break the windows.
Every day people Need Oreo Cookies
And hey if hitler is going to create great jobs for us the people, then yes every day people are going to democratically vote positive for the decisions he makes. Even if he makes some mistakes, like all leaders do, people will still think it is better to vote for someone that creates jobs for every day people, since every day people are more concerned about their income and salary to buy their children oreo cookies than they are about the poor souls in china that are working their tails off for them at 0.5 cents per hour, or the poor jewish person in a concentration camp.
I mean hey, if some poor soul in china is working at a half a cent per hour, and it creates better jobs for us in OUR country, well, that suffering chinaman can be ignored, because I care only about my oreo cookies for my children, not about some poor soul in china or some person in germany that we grind up in ovens to make soap out of.. right? (understand I'm playing devils advocate).
So just because democracy allows all the people to vote, doesn't mean it is going to prevent bad activities from happening. After all, the typical person is worried about their own kids and their next oreo cookie purchase, rather than the well being of the world.
At the same time a tyrannical political system can have similar flaws if the wrong people make wrong decisions, or even if the right people make wrong decisions. It's not as if it is clear cut. Democracy is not ideal, nor is tyranny.
Democracy is vague.. not much is really voted for
In many cases a democratic society is a tyranny. For example, when the nation decides to BAN incandescent light bulbs, and only allow people to buy fluorescent compacts, did we democratically vote for this? Do we democratically vote each time walmart decides not to carry a certain brand of toy, or do the leaders of walmart make these decisions? Do we vote every time a new pesticide is introduced to farmers, or do the pesticide company CEO's make those decisions? Does the government contact each and every one of us whenever they have to decide whether or not to put tax on cigarettes, or does some small group make this decision undemocratically?
Does the government have a democratic vote for every little decision it makes? The reality is, most democratic systems aren't really democratic in that each and every person in society has a say. That would be too time consuming. But on the other hand, even if each and every person did have a say - would this be better than say having 10 brilliant and intelligent people making decisions? If 80 percent of people are not very intelligent, or say 60 percent of people.. does that make democracy right? On the other hand, even if 60 percent of people aren't that intelligent, does that mean that full intelligence is really needed for a good vote (maybe even half intelligent people could make okay votes)?
Tyranny is human instinct
I think that all nations are a mixture of lots of tyranny and a little democracy.
Humans are naturally tyrannic.
Babies YELL and SCREAM tyrannically. Babies CRY tyrannically. Children NEED A TOY or ELSE they will CRY tyrannically.
Open source projects have tyrannical leaders that swear and insult the team (Linus Torvalds is notable for calling people IDIOT's on mailing lists.. I'm not exaggerating here, he actually directly calls people IDIOTS in their face, using that exact word IDIOT. Therefore I equally call him idiot on this wiki a few times, if you look.).
Parents tyrannically tell their children "Don't Be Smart" and parents still spank their children tyrannically, even if they don't admit to it or even if spanking has lessened in the past years (it is still an instinct).
Pet owners tyrannically yank on the leash and yell at their dogs instead of say slowly training them and trying to communicate with them (part of the problem is that dogs can't understand english perfectly, so being tyrannical with pets is actually more effective than with people.. but there are a lot of pet owners out there and this influences society).
High schools and elementary tyrannically force children to take CourseA and CourseB and CourseC, and the student cannot choose to specialize only in CourseA and CourseB. This isn't so bad, since one could always just get a bad mark in CourseC and not try hard... but the fact still stands that it isn't 100 percent democratic, and nothing really is.
Even store owners and store managers are tyrannic - for example if you want to take back an item to a store, it isn't as if you get a vote. Ultimately one guy has to decide whether or not you are allowed to take the item back. There would be no time for a voting system where the entire town or country would vote for each decision.
Whether or not a society is supposedly democratic or tyrannic or not doesn't really matter, because ultimately all societies are composed of some tyranny. Some societies might have a brilliant tyrannic leader who may be harsh and direct at times, but maybe he is correct most of the time and the best thing for that society.
On the other hand, some societies may have a poor tyrannic leader who makes very bad decisions and incorrect decisions, and the people go along with it. On yet another hand, there may be a democratic leader who needs assistance from many of the people in order to make a decision because he can't make the decisions himself or he can't speak for the people.
On yet another hand, there may be a democratic leader who knows what he is doing but asks the people, and the people vote differently than he wanted, and things either turn out bad because the majority of the people don't have a clue since they are more focused on their individual careers rather than society as a whole, or things do turn out good because the people do generally have a clue and the leader overlooked what the people wanted.
There is no holy grail, obviously. I personally think that all societies have a bit of tyranny in them, and some is needed.
Tyranny in closed or open source software
In closed or open source projects I always see a lot of democratic feature requests that take years and years to democratically come to a consensus. Ultimately, tyrannical decisions are made by those who can write good code.. i.e. if someone says that the project needs featureABC and the tyrannical leader says that no we don't need featureABC, but then the person that suggested featureABC goes on to write featureABC source by himself and comes in and says "I wrote featureABC take it or leave it" then it may be that featureABC is accepted anyway, and the tyrannical leadership now becomes partly a democracy anyway, since they initially tyrannically rejected the feature. But if the person doesn't implement featureABC then the feature probably isn't going to be implemented by the tyrannical leader since featureABC isn't really of interest.
If another featureYYY is asked for by someone, but someone doesn't write it, the tyrannical leader may write it if he wants the feature though. It's not as if all tyrannical leaders make internal decisions only - because they still communicate with the public always, don't they?
Pure Democracy Does Not Exist, It Takes Too Long
With a democratic system, decisions usually always take way too long. There is risk that by the time decisions are made, it will be too late or it will fade away. Democracy takes lots of time, this is the real problem. Lots and lots of time to vote and come to conclusions. For example, when you eat an apple, do you ask the entire society if it is okay to eat the apple, or do you just immediately tyrannically bite the apple knowing from experience, instinct, and by luck that it is generally okay to eat the apple right NOW. There are millions of people in the world, and there are not millions of seconds in a minute.. so decisions cannot possibly be 100 percent democratic. They can be partly democratic, for sure.
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