A democracy where a set of people rule over others instead of themselves

Question

Democracy appears to work, but why?

Assumptions

Back in the oldest days of democracy, the least fortunate set of people were always the largest set of people (workers / slaves). Today, if you are a minority, and you want something, your fate is in the hands of the majority voters.

Given many (most) people vote primarily out of self interest, since most people aren't minorities, few votes are in the minorities' interest.

Assuming we all want the same thing, The Wisdom of Crowds can explain some of how it all appears to work. I propose though, that for The Wisdom of Crowds to work, self interest must be eliminated, since it increases emotional biased factors.

In an attempt to remove self interest, what would happen if instead of voting for yourself and your own people, you vote for others, and them for you.

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Example

The people of USA voted policies and representatives for Canada, and vice versa.

Answer 1

I do not think this counts as democracy, but you ask what would happen:

Firstly, people are generally motivated by self-interest, so you need to consider how this plays out in this scenario.

If they see no particular benefit to themselves, they are less likely to vote or, if obliged to, to particularly care about the consequences in quite the same way as they would voting for their own government. In some cases this could be effectively random.

They may, altruistically, see this as an opportunity to do the best for another people and make what they consider as the best choices for another people of whom they are not a part. However, not being a part of the direct consequences, they will not have this particular perspective to inform their choices.

They may, malevolently or for amusement or for experimentation, deliberately make bad or suspect decisions. These do not necessarily turn out bad, but the motivation itself is bad and will sooner or later cause problems.

However, the full scenario is that the other people will be reciprocating, voting for the government of the first people. This establishes a feedback loop and this is very very bad.

Essentially, this creates a situation where the population of one state can blame the shortcomings of their government (and all governments have shortcomings and make mistakes) on the population of another state, over which they have a reciprocal control. Now we have the motivation of Revenge with the political system in effective collapse with even the government blaming an electorate over which it has no authority or control.

I think it would end in resentment, hostility, and finally war.

Answer 2

If people were eager to being ruled by foreigners, empires would last much longer.

The key of democracy IS the self interest (someone says Communism has failed just because it neglects people's self interest). When I, as a voter, use my right to vote, I choose the person who better can protect my interest.

The assumption is then that

• the electors choose in a logic way

and

• are able to balance long term with short term interest (i.e. do I prefer a higher salary with no government enforced pension saving, or a lower salary with government enforced pension saving?),

and that

• the elected will stitch to their promises

I think we agree that this is more ideal than practical, but still the only reason why it works is that the same voters who did a choice will bear the consequences of that choice. Simply said, if I know that pushing the red button will trigger a hammer to hit my toe I will be cautious in not touching it. If the hammer will hit Joe's toe, why should I care?

If you remove this layer, you end up in pretty easy bribing and corruption. Whoever gets to vote for country A will simply sell the vote to the highest bid, who cares if he is a psychopath or a total incapable politician?

If you use a cross over to overcome this (country A votes for B government and vice versa), you still have to overcome the different culture. Now just think on the different sensibility on almost all given topics that there is among countries (i.e. weapon controls in USA vs Europe, with Texans electing the Norwegian parliament and Norwegians electing the Texas parliament), and you can realize that the mess you create is way higher than the benefit.

Answer 3

No, because it negates the good points of democracy

Any system of government works as long as people accept it, either because they want to accept it or they are forced to accept it. Democracy works because people are the most willing to accept that system over others. And the reason that people tend to accept it is because...

1. you get a say in matters that affect your life
2. no-one is given more or less of a voice in these matters than you.

Self-determination and fairness are the two big selling-points of democracy, which means that it wins over for instance meritocracy. Democracy is not a popular system "just 'cause". It is popular (pun unintended, but fitting) because it has these attractive qualities as a system of governance, and it aligns well with our universal human rights.

Your system however kills those selling-points. You do not get a say in the matters that affect your own life. And it is unfair because someone else gets a say in these matters that concerns you, while you yourself have no say in them. And vice versa, you are made "better" than the people in the area that you vote for.

Your system it kills the things that make democracy an attractive system of governance to begin with. It disables the good qualities about democracy, and you also get the downsides of democracy, such as the lamentable fact that voters are allowed to vote without actually being informed about the choices.

For the reasons mentioned above — all the downsides of democracy while killing the positive aspects of it — your system will not not be accepted by people, and as such it will most likely not work.

As a last note: if you are going to be forced to be ruled by others, I think you would actually prefer the aforementioned meritocracy rather being ruled by uninformed popular masses.

Legitimacy

LATE EDIT: For a much higher level of discussion about what makes a populace accept their government, read the Wikipedia article on 'Legitimacy', since that is the concept we are essentially talking about there. I am just giving a really dumbed down version of it above.