The list seems ridiculous with many surprising rankings. Where's the source of this data?
@Akbar2thegreat said in #31:
> The list seems ridiculous with many surprising rankings. Where's the source of this data?
Democracy Matrix V.4 is the the source of this data?
there are a few Democracy indexes
try
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
India is 46 on here flawed Democracy
> The list seems ridiculous with many surprising rankings. Where's the source of this data?
Democracy Matrix V.4 is the the source of this data?
there are a few Democracy indexes
try
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
India is 46 on here flawed Democracy
@Waiting4BirnamWood said in #21:
> After all, the U.S. is a republic. Something that Denmark and Norway cannot say about themselves. In fact, these two Scandinavian nerds should be downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy because they are kingdoms (0.602 and 0.598 seem to be more plausible). And the Republic of Finland takes first place.
Finland is a bronze-democracy on third place, and you propose to give them first place by changing the rules AFTER the game? Ludicrous!
> After all, the U.S. is a republic. Something that Denmark and Norway cannot say about themselves. In fact, these two Scandinavian nerds should be downgraded from a full democracy to a flawed democracy because they are kingdoms (0.602 and 0.598 seem to be more plausible). And the Republic of Finland takes first place.
Finland is a bronze-democracy on third place, and you propose to give them first place by changing the rules AFTER the game? Ludicrous!
After playing Stellaris I don't consider democracy the best option.
I'm sorry, I simply disagree with the list itself. And I see no reason to blindly accept that it cannot be questioned.
Covid revealed which governments gave bureaucrats power over common freedoms -- hardly an indication of democracy. And the United States did better than several countries ranked above it on that list. Think back to the pandemic (although not all of the pertinent news was widely disseminated).
As far as "many prisoners" goes, that is a result of crime not some mindless desire to incarcerate. Recently, we have seen the result of trying to take jail out of the loop -- that result appears to be "more crime." Is that better? Not for the victims.
As far as "teaching kids American superiority" -- that was true decades ago. But it has hardly seemed accurate for several decades and it certainly doesn't seem accurate at present. The fashion seems very much to the contrary. Indeed, if I were a statue of an American founding father, I'd be nervous.
I'm sure many will be eager to endorse the list. Well, I'm no autocrat, so I do not resent that others may have an opinion different from my own.
Happy New Year.
Covid revealed which governments gave bureaucrats power over common freedoms -- hardly an indication of democracy. And the United States did better than several countries ranked above it on that list. Think back to the pandemic (although not all of the pertinent news was widely disseminated).
As far as "many prisoners" goes, that is a result of crime not some mindless desire to incarcerate. Recently, we have seen the result of trying to take jail out of the loop -- that result appears to be "more crime." Is that better? Not for the victims.
As far as "teaching kids American superiority" -- that was true decades ago. But it has hardly seemed accurate for several decades and it certainly doesn't seem accurate at present. The fashion seems very much to the contrary. Indeed, if I were a statue of an American founding father, I'd be nervous.
I'm sure many will be eager to endorse the list. Well, I'm no autocrat, so I do not resent that others may have an opinion different from my own.
Happy New Year.
Not that I think Egypt is particularly progressive, but how in the hell is Iran higher on the list?
@morphyms1817 said in #7:
> I'm in U.S., we have issues here. Media companies, public education and entertainment industry promote a lazy attitude about governmental knowledge. "Oh, the government should pay for it (pay for everything is what they're saying)".
It’s all a plot by the aliens to weaken us before the invasion. Jokes aside, the government shouldn’t pay for everything necessarily, but some things are certainly within the social contract between government and citizens.
> I'm in U.S., we have issues here. Media companies, public education and entertainment industry promote a lazy attitude about governmental knowledge. "Oh, the government should pay for it (pay for everything is what they're saying)".
It’s all a plot by the aliens to weaken us before the invasion. Jokes aside, the government shouldn’t pay for everything necessarily, but some things are certainly within the social contract between government and citizens.
@Noflaps said in #35:
> Covid revealed which governments gave bureaucrats power over common freedoms -- hardly an indication of democracy.
A global pandemic is up there with a military invasion in justifying extreme measures. It's not something you can just ignore and go about your daily lives without a care. Millions of people died.
There's nothing inherently undemocratic in having a government body that answers to the executive or legislative branches and has the competence and power to handle extreme situations (like pandemics).
> As far as "many prisoners" goes, that is a result of crime not some mindless desire to incarcerate.
Which crime? We recently saw the story of a billionaire antiques collector who stole 70 million dollars worth of artifacts from Iraq and Syria. He was forced to return the pieces and pay a fine. He was never jailed. At the same time, people often end up jailed due to things like overdue tickets, driving without a license, and similar administrative legal issues (John Oliver colloquially referred to this as "The Fuck Bucket").
There's this amazing paper in the Yale Law Review titled "The Punishment Bureaucracy: How to Think About “Criminal Justice Reform”". It's free online for anyone to read, and it investigates the ways that "crime" is socially constructed. If your prison population is so much greater per capital than anywhere else, you either have an obscene crime problem out of line with most of the rest of the world... Or you have an overzealous, systematically corrupt policing system. Which America absolutely has.
> Recently, we have seen the result of trying to take jail out of the loop -- that result appears to be "more crime."
Got a source on this? Because it sure is a bold claim.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota department of corrections studied the inmates released early due to covid, and found, quote:
"The results of this study demonstrated that the early releases forced by the COVID-19 pandemic did not come at the cost of public safety. The EWRP participants were not more likely to be revoked from supervision or re-arrested, but they were significantly less likely to be convicted of a new offense up to 18 months after release."
> Covid revealed which governments gave bureaucrats power over common freedoms -- hardly an indication of democracy.
A global pandemic is up there with a military invasion in justifying extreme measures. It's not something you can just ignore and go about your daily lives without a care. Millions of people died.
There's nothing inherently undemocratic in having a government body that answers to the executive or legislative branches and has the competence and power to handle extreme situations (like pandemics).
> As far as "many prisoners" goes, that is a result of crime not some mindless desire to incarcerate.
Which crime? We recently saw the story of a billionaire antiques collector who stole 70 million dollars worth of artifacts from Iraq and Syria. He was forced to return the pieces and pay a fine. He was never jailed. At the same time, people often end up jailed due to things like overdue tickets, driving without a license, and similar administrative legal issues (John Oliver colloquially referred to this as "The Fuck Bucket").
There's this amazing paper in the Yale Law Review titled "The Punishment Bureaucracy: How to Think About “Criminal Justice Reform”". It's free online for anyone to read, and it investigates the ways that "crime" is socially constructed. If your prison population is so much greater per capital than anywhere else, you either have an obscene crime problem out of line with most of the rest of the world... Or you have an overzealous, systematically corrupt policing system. Which America absolutely has.
> Recently, we have seen the result of trying to take jail out of the loop -- that result appears to be "more crime."
Got a source on this? Because it sure is a bold claim.
Meanwhile, the Minnesota department of corrections studied the inmates released early due to covid, and found, quote:
"The results of this study demonstrated that the early releases forced by the COVID-19 pandemic did not come at the cost of public safety. The EWRP participants were not more likely to be revoked from supervision or re-arrested, but they were significantly less likely to be convicted of a new offense up to 18 months after release."
It is hardly a "bold claim" that violent crime has been trending up in the U.S. generally for the last three years. A quick internet search, lead me, for example, to a purported "PBS" source (not a source I would consider even remotely right-wing) stating that "In 2021, the homicide rate rose by 5 percent, an increase, but by a much smaller margin than in 2020, when homicides rose by 29 percent." And insofar as I could discover by my brief search, violent crime has generally continued to rise, although not with perfect uniformity in all jurisdictions. Readers can do their own research, of course, and come to their own conclusions.
Such brief research also showed me that multiple commentators have noted the surge in crime seems to have approximately coincided with the recent rise of "criminal justice reform." Of course, this is not a comforting conclusion for many, and so some of those commentators seem eager to point out that "it's too soon to tell" if such reform has contributed to the crime increase. And surely, I will not insist that correlation always indicates causation, although sometimes it does, indeed. And I will likewise not insist that a rise in crime cannot have more than one contributing factor. But could it be "a" contributing factor, and perhaps a significant one?
Has lessening penalties for shop lifting been followed by a decrease in shop lifting or by an increase, in those jurisdictions that have done that? The answer might serve as food for thought. It is my impression from the news that shop lifting has become a bigger problem recently for many American businesses. And does that help society, since the losses would seem inevitably to raise the cost of products sold, to compensate?
But rather than become engaged in a round of declaration or denial, or wishful thinking, or citation to a single, limited source, let's simply use some common sense. Or perhaps remember what we learned in economics and apply it by analogy.
Does reducing the cost -- the penalty -- for a misdeed make such a misdeed less likely to occur or more likely to occur? Are criminals less or more likely to commit crime if the unpleasant consequences for them are removed or made less likely or less onerous? Does the criminal justice system have, as one of its functions, the task of deterring crime, and placing offenders at least temporarily where they cannot continue to commit crime? Why not gaze into a criminal law textbook and see what some rather learned people have thought about the function of a criminal justice system? It serves many purposes, including, inter alia, deterrence and retribution (which helps the families of victims decide to trust the state solution and not to take the law into their own hands).
But getting back to the original point of this string, it isn't at all clear why providing consequences for voluntary criminal behavior is somehow "undemocratic." Unless one thinks, for some strange reason, that a substantial minority of inmates are mere political prisoners and did not commit real crimes, giving them a consequence hardly implies a lack of "democracy."
But there is not much point in debating any of this. People seem, more than ever, to follow their own political and cultural inclinations like a train follows its tracks. And I rarely see anybody change his or mind about anything that tugs at his or her political impulses. Politically, people tend to continue believing what they have long believed -- as if Newton's first law of motion applied to our politics -- and they tend to fish for some datum or argument to preserve their worldview.
Accordingly, if somebody tends to believe that the United States is less democratic than the countries listed above it, well, I'm unlikely to change his or her mind. And I could, of course, be wrong, too. But I have never felt the inflexible, harsh hand of an autocrat where I live. And, for the time being, at least, America still seems pretty free and democratic to me. People in other states might have a different experience, I suppose. I wonder which states those might be? I won't suggest which, since, as I said, debate is largely futile anyway. And, of course, I could be wrong.
Such brief research also showed me that multiple commentators have noted the surge in crime seems to have approximately coincided with the recent rise of "criminal justice reform." Of course, this is not a comforting conclusion for many, and so some of those commentators seem eager to point out that "it's too soon to tell" if such reform has contributed to the crime increase. And surely, I will not insist that correlation always indicates causation, although sometimes it does, indeed. And I will likewise not insist that a rise in crime cannot have more than one contributing factor. But could it be "a" contributing factor, and perhaps a significant one?
Has lessening penalties for shop lifting been followed by a decrease in shop lifting or by an increase, in those jurisdictions that have done that? The answer might serve as food for thought. It is my impression from the news that shop lifting has become a bigger problem recently for many American businesses. And does that help society, since the losses would seem inevitably to raise the cost of products sold, to compensate?
But rather than become engaged in a round of declaration or denial, or wishful thinking, or citation to a single, limited source, let's simply use some common sense. Or perhaps remember what we learned in economics and apply it by analogy.
Does reducing the cost -- the penalty -- for a misdeed make such a misdeed less likely to occur or more likely to occur? Are criminals less or more likely to commit crime if the unpleasant consequences for them are removed or made less likely or less onerous? Does the criminal justice system have, as one of its functions, the task of deterring crime, and placing offenders at least temporarily where they cannot continue to commit crime? Why not gaze into a criminal law textbook and see what some rather learned people have thought about the function of a criminal justice system? It serves many purposes, including, inter alia, deterrence and retribution (which helps the families of victims decide to trust the state solution and not to take the law into their own hands).
But getting back to the original point of this string, it isn't at all clear why providing consequences for voluntary criminal behavior is somehow "undemocratic." Unless one thinks, for some strange reason, that a substantial minority of inmates are mere political prisoners and did not commit real crimes, giving them a consequence hardly implies a lack of "democracy."
But there is not much point in debating any of this. People seem, more than ever, to follow their own political and cultural inclinations like a train follows its tracks. And I rarely see anybody change his or mind about anything that tugs at his or her political impulses. Politically, people tend to continue believing what they have long believed -- as if Newton's first law of motion applied to our politics -- and they tend to fish for some datum or argument to preserve their worldview.
Accordingly, if somebody tends to believe that the United States is less democratic than the countries listed above it, well, I'm unlikely to change his or her mind. And I could, of course, be wrong, too. But I have never felt the inflexible, harsh hand of an autocrat where I live. And, for the time being, at least, America still seems pretty free and democratic to me. People in other states might have a different experience, I suppose. I wonder which states those might be? I won't suggest which, since, as I said, debate is largely futile anyway. And, of course, I could be wrong.
I wonder about the people who claim that the world is becoming democratic.
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