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Democracy is a kind of fetish object for modern progressives. My argument is that Democracy is time and situation bound, Democracy is not in the constitution. We are called a republic and few seem to remember what that means. It comes from the Latin res publica, res is thing and public is all of us. The idea is that the state belongs to the people, not to an individual.
But the way the people manage the state is an open question. Here is where the work of the Greek historian. Polybius, writing in Rome is a real help. He proposes the government takes different paired forms, monarchy - tyranny, aristocrats- oligarchs, kings - tyrants. Then he said something really important: the form of government should match the challenge the government faces. If the challenge is internal such as wealth distribution, democracy is a way of resolving that issue. But if the challenge is from outside like an attack from another state, democracy is inadequate because it creates internal divisions and prevents unity but runs the danger of becoming a mob. For such a situation monarchy is preferred, with the danger of becoming a tyranny.
I have been looking at those and I see that history has gone in the following sketchy progression:
slaves (prior to agricultural evolution)
Peasants (settled farming)
Citizens (industrialization)
Consumers (markets )
??? (digitized society)
The missing name is important. Cyborgs we have become. in a world of increasing complexity and rapidly distributed digital agency.
Whatever that is, it probably replaces democracy. The name democracy no longer names what we have, only what we like to think we have. This mismatch renders us powerless. Finding the right sense of how. networked people converse and have power is really important.