Rebuilding Democracy in Another world

[Lysander_Works]

Democracy is highly unstable historically. Republics and Democracies tend to devolve into tyranny within a few hundred years.

All the more proof that any and every political system will lead to its issues. Democracy is supposed to be the most free, but this also means bad actors are more free to gain their own power and wreck the system. It's human society that is unstable, not so much the ideology of the politics.

 

[melchi]

We have Helldivers 2 for this.

I was going to say super-earth needs YOU to spread managed democracy throughout the galaxy.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

I started an anti monarchy revolution story, but it only has 1 chapter (and 4 illustrations) so I don't know when I could get a second finished

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Slavery must be working pretty damn great. Look at India. It got them to the moon!

 

[bulmabriefs144]

Is there anyone who's interested in making story with this title ?

I've read some isekai stories and yet nobody is trying to transform the political state of the kingdoms from monarchy into democracy.

What do you think about it as an author ?

Nuh.

1. Porting democracy is only any good if you understand it. Too many people fangirl about democracy and actually don't know how it works without being overthrown.
2. As an example of how poorly democracy is understood, America is a republic not a democracy. We vote for electors, we do not have popular vote.
3. There is in fact a very good reason we did that, and no it's not "old white guys with elitist ideas". When you have a democracy, you have a mob.
4. A mob is a good way for a bunch of people to bully minorities, not to defend them.
5. To be honest, monarchy is actually a very good thing, with certain reforms. And no, I don't mean constitutional monarchy. That's basically old white guys with elitist ideas making laws that make the king/queen a figurehead. The king ought to have legitimate power. The reforms I am talking about are things like the Magna Carta, where the leader is held subject to the citizens, and can be stripped of power by laws. You try to tax people to death? They name your younger brother or even your cousin the king, and an army is sent to remove you from the throne.
6. "Democracy" on the other hand, only seems civilized, until you realize that people are punished for four years for their bad choices. Or blamed because they refused to vote. Enough people have eating disorders and drunken binges that we would be better off randomly choosing a king for life. The myth is that absolute power corrupts absolutely. But think about that adage. Who were the worst kings? Typically, the tyrants who assassinated other kings to take power, and held on to it by oppressing everyone. Absolute ambition corrupts absolutely. Plenty of decent kings who didn't want the job.
7. I like Tolkien's idea, of a monarch that basically only barely rules to hobbits in Shire. Anarcho-monarchy rules (or doesn't)!

I loathe the idea of modern people coming in and trying to reform things. It's like, the isekai fantasy is that the real world sucks, so we want to go to another world, right? Only the first thing you do is try to make that world like the place you left.

 

[Echimera]

2. As an example of how poorly democracy is understood, America is a republic not a democracy. We vote for electors, we do not have popular vote.

Except that it's very blurry, in that a Republic can also be understood as one way a democracy can be set up.

 

[bulmabriefs144]

It's a constitutional republic.

The main difference between democracy and constitutional republic is that in democracy, the general public has the highest power whereas, in a constitutional republic, the constitution has the highest power.

In other words, laws don't matter, just a bunch of people saying yes or no to things. This is very dangerous as it means that instead of your right to worship or speak/print stuff or have weapons or not be quartered in your house, a bunch of people can bully you, and their numbers trump your rights.

Many people talk about how wonderful democracy would be (hence their popularity in isekai), but the sad fact is, very few people want what it really is. They want a republic that maybe has some popular vote, but still has leaders, laws, and the like. Or they want socialism, but not really that either. Not after they get taken from cuz someone thinks they're too rich.
Even if you manage to civilize it by making it subject to a constitution, that would instead give people the tyranny of having to vote for every single law, as in a true constitutional democracy, there are no elites (bye bye Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, etc... hello bureacrats sending bill after bill via mail to be voted on).

 

[ManwX]

Ngl.. people are not interested in politics.. weather it's democracy or communism or anything in general concerning the political narrative.. democracy is a failed system.. communism was also a failed system.. monarchy is something interesting. If you have really good people running the show then it might work.. that's assuming that you have the right people in see service...

divided power and interests always leads to no conclusion in others systems..

I studied history and found that the khalifa system from the golden age of Islam was the best one of you want to employ a system of government.. it really just plucked the best of everything from every other system like the Romans and everything..

It's like an amalgamation of so many system talking their traits.. but who really gives a crap about this tbh. It's not something people would read when everyone craves escapism.. we live in a dark work that is continuously getting more chaotic by the month...

 

[QuercusMalus]

Why did democracy fail the first time? Rebuilding democracy might be possible but building democracy takes alot of work. Your typical feudal monarchy lacks the two basic characteristics needed for a democracy.
First- Education. A poorly educated, illiterate populace is not the one that will elect good leaders.
Second- Communication. Unless you have a city state, how will you reach, coordinate the election and governance of far flung regions?

Until those are addressed, democracy fails.

 

[bulmabriefs144]

IMHO, whenever a system fails, the proponents say "but it wasn't TRUE democracy/capitalism/communism/anarchy." Yeah it was. Either accept that every system has flaws and move on, or get out of the way of people actually trying to make things better.

Reforming an isekai to "be more like democracy" is like people in Los Angeles or Seattle leaving because they didn't like that California or Washington got oppressive, settling in a small town in Texas, and immediately trying to turn Texas liberal. Either cope with the fact that your new world is a monarchy and learn to live with the laws, or maybe go out adventuring so you don't have to deal with such laws (basically the equivalent of RVing across the country).

This is why I like Ascendance of a Bookworm. Her only desire is to reclaim what she liked in the first place, books. And even there, it becomes clear as time goes on that what she really needed all along was a closer relationship with her mom. She's not trying to make social reforms, though some happen anyway.

 

[beast_regards]

Reforming an isekai to "be more like democracy" is like people in Los Angeles or Seattle

Anime protagonist rebuilds the kingdom by starting a civil war, provoking the international conflict, then ordering assassination or mass execution of rivals, and enslaving daughters of political opponents.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Anime protagonist rebuilds the kingdom by starting a civil war, provoking the international conflict, then ordering assassination or mass execution of rivals, and enslaving daughters of political opponents.

Way to go! Isn't that a path to tyranny?

 

[beast_regards]

Way to go! Isn't that a path to tyranny?

That's a realistic hero. That's how anime calls it.

However, there are even better records in "rebuilding democracy" in other anime. More modern :) Invading the equivalent of 3rd world country under the pretense of rescuing your citizens held hostage, then never freeing said hostages and instead forcing the 3rd world country to sign a deal for all the natural resources. It also involves declaring no quarter, carpet bombing the civilian population, shelling the place of worship, recruiting the child soldier into your military, pressing the foregin nationals into service ...

 

[TsumiHokiro]

That's a realistic hero. That's how anime calls it.

However, there are even better records in "rebuilding democracy" in other anime. More modern :) Invading the equivalent of 3rd world country under the pretense of rescuing your citizens held hostage, then never freeing said hostages and instead forcing the 3rd world country to sign a deal for all the natural resources. It also involves declaring no quarter, carpet bombing the civilian population, shelling the place of worship, recruiting the child soldier into your military, pressing the foregin nationals into service ...

Doesn't involve much of democracy and more of war strategy and tactics. "Realistic" as it may be, it does not contribute much to what democratic constitutional republic means and more to the war scenarios and human greed.

 

[beast_regards]

Doesn't involve much of democracy and more of war strategy and tactics. "Realistic" as it may be, it does not contribute much to what constitutional democratic republic means and more to the war scenarios and human greed.

Oh. I didn't know. I thought how the democracy is normally exported.. Silly me.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Oh. I didn't know. I thought how the democracy is normally exported.. Silly me.

Through violence? That's how it is usually, if we consider Earth! An iron fist and a "healthy" dosage of "Liberal" thought (As liberal as Democratic thought gets).

 

[ZukoMee]

I just remembered this lmao

I was about to post this. Glad someone else thought of it before me.

And slaves…

Slaves and their owners made up less then 10% of the South population, and therefore didn't even contribute to 1/4 of its economy. At most 1/5...and even that's a debatable exaggeration. Cotton was the most common slave crop, which was a cash crop that was sold elsewhere, and therefore was only a short-term benefit for the State. The moment Britain and France found new markets for cheaper Cotton, the South's cotton exports collapsed. The South already had deep-seated economic issues that would have harmed it in the long run. Its inevitable collapse would NEVER have been because of slavery even without the civil war.

Okay this is just asinine. The idea that a tiny fraction of the population fueled the economy with fucking cash crops is retarded. Cash crops just get exported and don't actually create anything.

Yep. I'm always amused when idiots who pretend they know something about the US South Pre-1861 try to diminish everything to "MuH sLaVeS." This is why I don't frequent Twitter. These weirdoes and idiots have WAAAAY too much free rein spouting their stupidity. Then their (usually Leftist) retarded echo-chambers just nod and pat them on the head like good little doggies and agree because they are far too moronic to do otherwise.

All the more proof that any and every political system will lead to its issues. Democracy is supposed to be the most free, but this also means bad actors are more free to gain their own power and wreck the system. It's human society that is unstable, not so much the ideology of the politics.

Democracy only works when people are responsible and work to benefit society as a whole and not just themselves or their particular brand of right and wrong. Also, the structure and success of the nuclear family is extremely important in maintaining stability.

Western Democracies are growing stagnant and corrupted or in slow collapse now because people who have nothing to lose even if it fails, are now beginning to make up too much of the potential voter base, and of course, the nuclear family is being attacked constantly by weirdo ideologies.

Ngl.. people are not interested in politics.. weather it's democracy or communism or anything in general concerning the political narrative.. democracy is a failed system.. communism was also a failed system.. monarchy is something interesting. If you have really good people running the show then it might work.. that's assuming that you have the right people in see service...

divided power and interests always leads to no conclusion in others systems..

I studied history and found that the khalifa system from the golden age of Islam was the best one of you want to employ a system of government.. it really just plucked the best of everything from every other system like the Romans and everything..

It's like an amalgamation of so many system talking their traits.. but who really gives a crap about this tbh. It's not something people would read when everyone craves escapism.. we live in a dark work that is continuously getting more chaotic by the month...

Democracy only works when people are responsible and work to benefit society as a whole and not just themselves or their particular brand of right and wrong. Also, the structure and success of the nuclear family is extremely important in maintaining stability.

Western Democracies are growing stagnant and corrupted or in slow collapse now because people who have nothing to lose even if it fails, are now beginning to make up too much of the potential voter base, and of course, the nuclear family is being attacked constantly by weirdo ideologies.

Reforming an isekai to "be more like democracy" is like people in Los Angeles or Seattle leaving because they didn't like that California or Washington got oppressive, settling in a small town in Texas, and immediately trying to turn Texas liberal.

This is why I hate so many New Yorkers coming to North Carolina. They hate what Democrats did to their state....but then want to vote for the same kind of morons here in North Carolina which will inevitably restart the process of decline that THEY VOTED FOR AND THEREFORE CAUSED in their home state. I grew up in Brooklyn, NYC. I know the imbecilic nonsense New Yorkers think and believe and say....I wish every car they ride down here to my new home state would catch on fire with them inside of it before they get here so that they wouldn't come down here and ruin my new home.

 

[Aader]

This feels made for me.
Democracy is a very dangerous concept, without a single definition (DPRK). In a pure democracy, a simple majority could easily be tricked into voting against their better interests, i.e. Joseph Robinette Biden. The reason is, people are fucking stupid.
Republics are better, yet if you convince enough people that the terms, Republic and democracy are interchangeable, you again end up with a government only interested in economically raping the people they represent.
Anarchy is probably the worst, with the lowest amount of freedom as you'll constantly be to busy protecting yourself to enjoy freedom.
Communism/Socialism/Facism, need I even say anything? Heavy top down systems that oppress the people, and enrich the elite, while hypocritically preaching equality.
Monarchy, probably the best, after all 10,000 years of recorded history, and most of it just under a monarch. Does it have problems, yes, loads. But in a magical world or sword and staff, your best bet would be to maintain the crown, while introducing the idea of capitalism.