Quote Originally Posted by Ramil View Post
kidkboom, communism as a political system is a democracy.



Im some 'democratic' countries this is also true. My opinion is - no democracy de facto exists and here's why:

Democracy is an egalitarian form of government, still - there are categories who are limited in their rights and don't vote (children). One can argue that a child cannot make decisions and cannot take responcibility for his or her actions. That is probably true, but consider this situation: in my country one can elect and be elected at the minimum age of 18. Today is the election day and this brilliant person is turning 18 only tomorrow. No voting right for him. Another situation - a person is 25 years old but he is mentally underdeveloped due to some illness. He can vote allright but he doesn't even understands the importance and the meaning of this action. Why we prefer his vote and reject the vote of the younger one?
There's more. It is a sad truth that through usage of trickstery, sophistry, outright lies and other propaganda tricks one wealthy or powerful (or both) evil man can win the mood of the crowd and make them vote for him. You can be optimistic about that but the average IQ of any population of any country is probably somewhere between 30 and 40. Democracy allows this 'stupidity rules' principle. In fact democracy encourages this principle.
More of that - even though democracy declares 'the equality of rights' we all know that the rich and powerfull will always have more rights and personal freedoms than the others. This is not a fault of democracy per se, but democracy leads the ordinary people to believe that they have equal rights with the rich while the rich quietly laugh at the 'plebs' and continue doing what they like.
I could continue... to cut it short - democracy is a show, some trick that makes the population think 'they're free and equal'. It is an instrument to remove the psychological discomfort that occurs when one realizes that there's still aristocraty and the rich and the powerful who decide the fates of ordinary people.

No one is more of a slave than he who thinks himself free without being so.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ramil,

You made several good points concerning some shortcomings of democracy. Yet, I’m not quite sure that I fully grasp in what way any form of power other than democracy (monarchy, dictatorship or others ) is better off in comparison with democracy in the issues you mentioned above . Could you please elucidate the issue and maybe point out the specific benefits for common people that drastically surpass the benefits of democracy? What are those areas where democracy seriously legs behind compared with Brunei, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, etc.?