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- Hacker News
- Hasn't this been obvious for a while ? The US is about 1/5 of the way down an ever-more-slippery slope towards a fascist state. Its much-vaunted "checks and balances" have been shown to be paper tigers, and the constitution it heralds far and wide doesn't seem to be worth the paper its written on.
The US already has one of the weakest social safety nets in the Western world, it has military-spec weaponised police with little to no oversight, it has a political system ripe for abuse with the electoral college and gerrymandering running rife, and it has a political legacy of "it doesn't matter what you do to win, as long as you win", which allows racism to dictate voting rights. It's an attitude (along with a lot of the other political institutions) that hasn't been updated since Victorian times.
There's a lot of things I would not agree with, with any of the political leadership of the UK, but I wouldn't expect any of them - even the worst in my eyes - to separate children from families, prevent them from taking their medicine, lock them up in desert camps where rape and abuse are rife, and then remove them to remote locations with no record of where they went. Human trafficking, organised by the US government, for the profit of the rich. Not content with legal slavery for the imprisoned, they implemented it for migrants too. Migrant children.
I'm genuinely not sure if the US is capable of reversing its current course. I'm not even sure it's worth trying without a huge shift in opinion for the public who vote these rat-bastards in. Again. After the human-trafficking came to light...
by spacedcowboy - > Its much-vaunted "checks and balances" have been shown to be paper tigers, and the constitution it heralds far and wide doesn't seem to be worth the paper its written on.
The Constitution was oligarchic by design of the founding oligarchs, who stated explicitly that the point of the "checks and balances" was actually to stop majoritarianism.
by lapcat - A reverse would violate three red lines that the current oligarchy will not budge on:
* More sharing of political power with ethnic, class or cultural outgroups
* Less revenues for the oligarchy from land ownership, investment in healthcare and investment in finance (other investment sectors would do better, however)
* Greater civil and criminal penalties for civil or criminal wrongdoing by oligarchs, their loved ones and their class allies (e.g. the affluenza case)
Even installing something like Juche and losing internationally to China in every way is preferable to having any one of these go forward, at least to their perspective.
by OgsyedIE - It's been obvious to anyone who pays attention to all the details and thinks hard about their meaning, but that is a small fraction of people.by inigyou
- yes kinda obvious now for many, but I've never seen it so nicely summarised and also from 2014!
I always try to consider a possible biased view, but again seen it summarized it like this makes it extremely simple and clear.
by giov4 - https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy...
The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.
Otherwise it will probably slide in to being a full Oligarchy like Russia.
To me this crazy thing is the complete lack of alarm or sense of urgency from Americans on this. They seem very subdued and very complacent regarding this change.
by s_dev - > The US has slid below Hungary in democracy, Hungary was also straight sliding towards dictatorship. Hungary did a 180 though by electing Peter Maygar. Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.
Considering TFA is from 2014 and knowing the Democratic Party, I think instead of a 180 you could at best expect a 20
by pu_pe - > Hungary did a 180 [...] Hopefully the US can do a 180 in the midterms.
One recent US poll (July 2026) reported that the Democratic Party has close to an 8 point lead over the Repuglican Party.
8 points — that's all!
After all the crime, violence, war, corruption and offence to US democracy...
No one observing this thinks that the US will do a 1.8, nevermind a 180.
- Our system is an direct descendant of the Norman conquest system over England, with a conquering class sitting at the top, feeling no connection to those lower than them, extracting any and all value they can from them.by _DeadFred_
- Their average vs elite:
> "[...] the fiftieth income percentile—that is, [...] the preferences of the average citizen"
> "[...] “affluent” Americans at the ninetieth income percentile can usefully be taken as proxies for the opinions of wealthy or very-high-income Americans [...] about $146,000 in annual household income"
Their conclusion:
> "This evidence indicates [...] policy is consistent with majority preferences roughly two-thirds of the time; that public policy changes in the same direction as collective preferences a similar two-thirds of the time [...]"
> "Furthermore, the preferences of economic elites [...] have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do."
They forgot to mention that income is a strong indicator of voter turn out[0]; "economic elites" vote in higher numbers with a gap of around 20-30% depending on source and year. Also, voter turnout is pretty low to start with at around 50-60%.
So, now we have a better understanding of who actually votes instead of surveying the "average" citizen if they agree with policies as this study does compared to the policies favored by the "elite".
The conclusion read with the added voter facts is: The higher the income the more likely to actually vote; Elected government officials work to create policies that favors the people who voted for them; People who turn out to vote in greater numbers have all the actual policy influence (they also currently have increasingly higher incomes than those who don't vote). Well no shit, they said it themselves "Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections [...]" sound like democracy is working. Therefore, if the "average" citizen surveyed here doesn't like the policy they are well within their rights to hold their representative responsible by getting themselves and 3 vote-eligible friends/family members to go vote. This especially includes the primaries. The "elite" do.
[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231251338441
by 1659447091 - > getting themselves and 3 vote-eligible friends/family members to go vote
Vote for whom?
Political campaigns are self-funded. Financially, it's difficult for nonwealthy persons to run for office and to raise campaign contributions from other nonwealthy persons.
And if a candidate happens to gain prominence who runs against the interests of the wealthy, the wealthy are especially eager to throw tons of money at an opponent of the candidate in order to crush them.
So of course the wealthy are more enthusiastic about voting for candidates who represent their interests.
by lapcat - We hear a lot about what is or isn't a democracy but the reality is that very few countries today would ever be above the bar set. Even Athenian democracy wouldn't, as it was a demos of the male citizens only, supported by a large slave class.
What is more important is: is it working? And if not, why not?
by hunglee2 - This sounds like a more elaborate version of Whataboutism.by DarkNova6
- agree, but do you think are there any working examples? is it working somewhere someway? could we learn and take example from it? or is all chaos and corruption?
I still think about the Bonobos a lot.
by giov4 - > What is more important is: is it working? And if not, why not?
It's always “working”, the question is for whom.
by stymaar - When asking if it's "working", you need to ask "for whom?".by tdeck
- Which is why, instead of "democracy", it's more useful to quantify democratic. One traditional measure of such is the degree to which political power can be gained through free elections. But the research in TFA instead uses a novel measure: the weight a population has in its country's policymaking. Which yields fascinating results.
Because, per the linked research, in present-time USA that weight is ~zero.
Which is especially interesting considering the USA's narratives about itself. And how, it seems to me, its population is so invested in said narratives that it will defend those even in the face of contrary research. You'd think a culture so invested in its self-determination would be angry about this result and endeavor to do something about it.
by Balinares - Democracy isn't absolute. I'd rate US style democracy 6 out of 10, while Russia is 2.by feverzsj
- Why not 4 and 1 respectively?by inigyou
- Hm, so study discovered hot water, what is new ?
- Representative democracy is by nature oligachic. Practically, there was no other way to organize a large state until modern communications technology, so that's very understandable, the critical issue is that the US is becoming less and less democratic and more oligarchic over time while we are more and more capable of democracy (instantaneous communication across the world, very fast travel, universal education, etc). The end of proportional representation in favor of a fixed-size Congress was the beginning of the end, IMO.by t-3
- "All politics is local", which used to be true until perhaps 50 years ago, was the only thing that kept the oligarchs in check. Now the oligarchs can use modern communications technology to organize and consolidate power at the national and even international level. Consider how Rupert Murdoch for example was able to spread his political propaganda from Australia all the way to the US and the UK. Consider also how Jeffrey Epstein organized a global social network of oligarchs.by lapcat
- Well private financing of political parties has the unwanted side effect of making politics cater to the interests of those with money.by thefz
- And starting to smell like a kleptocracy given the rampant insider trading and leveraging military to influence market outcomesby Havoc
- Klepo-pluto-ano-neo-krato-kakistocracy with a side of extra oligarchy.
- How can a country be democratic with only two parties?by mertbio
- It's more like two collisions rather than two parties.by pan69
- Not just two parties, but winner-takes-all elections manipulated by gerrymandering on top.by classified
- Interesting take: arguing whether the U.S. democratic system is a democracy when, as the paper points out, economic elites and organized groups representing business interests are the elephant (no pun intended) in the room.by JKCalhoun
- I'd like to think that it's twice as good as a one-party system.by DarkNova6