I'd like to reply to pravebeatle anyway: I disagree with them, but they're polite and follow the HN guidelines, and their reply doesn't deserve to be flagged.
I know what you're saying - there's a lot of instability in the world and sometimes people make very poor choices - but democracy is a way to better handle the turbulence.
In essence, it gives us the ability to handle the coup that occurs every few years in unstable environments with less bloodshed - rather than the military taking control and ousting a leader, and a bunch of people dying or being imprisoned, another party takes over at the ballot box.
The newly elected ruler might be a really bad choice, but it's the people's perjorative to choose their leaders and it's a much better alternative than another coup.
By definition, “companies” are incentivized to prioritize capital pursuit over moral pursuit. It’s actually the most fundamental part of the whole concept.
Many democratic governments in the world, and particularly the most wealthy and powerful ones, are run by people who are (to a large unmeasurable extent) incentivized to do what companies want them to do. This is not a fundamental concept of a democratic government, but as long as the electorate fails to take responsibility for their own government’s behavior, the incentives remain in the company’s favor, which doesn’t make a very good case for democracy.
Democracy is a very slippery concept. America, for example, is well understood to not be a democracy, but it’s people seem to have convinced themselves it is. These kinds of miscalculations are really at the root of “why not”.
> By definition, “companies” are incentivized to prioritize capital pursuit over moral pursuit. It’s actually the most fundamental part of the whole concept.
Indeed. But if it's most reasonable economically, for a company to pay someone to dump their taxic waste into the sea, that doesn't mean it is morally OK to do so.
> Many democratic governments in the world, and particularly the most wealthy and powerful ones, are run by people who are (to a large unmeasurable extent) incentivized to do so what companies want them to do.
Yes. Lobbyists exist. They are bad. Lobbyists are bad because the undermine democracy. Democracy is not bad because of lobbyists.
> But if it's most reasonable economically, for a company to pay someone to dump their taxic waste into the sea, that doesn't mean it is morally OK to do so.
True, but what are you getting at? It has happened and it does happen. The fact that it isn't morally OK doesn't change the facts on the ground. It's like the bicyclist complaining that he had the right of way vs. a car that hits him.
Oh, I thought it was obvious. Much in the same way we disincentivize waste dumping, or bad drivers, we can disincentivize working for totalitarian regimes.
- American companies stop facilitating totalitarian regimes
- World governments also prompt totalitarian regimes to move towards democracy