Yes. The biggest problem we face here is cartel violence which isn't caused by democracy at all, but rather by political corruption, which is only possible due to an extreme power imbalance. If anything, we need more democracy, specifically more accountability against corruption.
Back when we were a "perfect dicatorship", government repression was even worse, as shown by the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968, but this information was censored by the government and even today we don't have the full list of victims.
There's no reason to believe that going back to that system would make the country safer. On the contrary, the rules would most likely be allied with the cartels just like they are now but with no opposition to expose their abuses.
This, of course, creates a kind of dilemma: in a liberal democracy you are allowed to expose and criticize the flaws of the system while the alternatives limit the flow of that information, so you end up in this situation when people compare the idealized propaganda of a non-democratic regime with the hypercritical journalism of liberal democracies and conclude that the latter are worse.
Government is a thing that forces everyone to follow their rules. You can’t opt in or opt out. On face value that’s extremely coercive and bad.
I think of democracy as a “good idea” being not necessarily about being the system that delivers the best governance outcomes, but rather about providing some measure of legitimacy for the coercion inherent to government.
Phrased another way, the strength of democratic systems is that they reduce the tail risk of extremely negative governance outcomes, not that they improve the expectation of overall governance outcomes.
Many people believe that every human is essentially equal to every other and has an equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that a government that represents the will of the people, even imperfectly, is preferable to a dictatorship.
I don't know why you would say we're all supposed to love democracy "by default" as if there weren't centuries of history, philosophy and bloody conflict behind that point of view.
Americans, despite their bellyaching, live in a democractic republic and can afford to indulge in romantic fantasies about benevolent dictatorships (as they often do about civil war and revolution,) while remaining safe from (edit:likely) ever having suffer their consequences. People who have actually lived under dictatorships, meanwhile, very rarely seem to recommend it over democracy.
Yes democracy is a good idea. The idea that the people govern themselves.
Now we can discuss how well the so called democracies of our time implement the idea. For example, the pavlovian association of election = democracies has always left me perplexed.
Democracy is a system of government, not an economic model. You could easily argue, simultaneously:
1. Capitalism has failed in those countries, even if in different times and places one could say capitalism has succeeded
2. India and Mexico have major issues with their democracies—if a democracy is a system of government in which the citizens of a state hold collective power over their government, then there are many obstacles preventing either country from having a well-functioning democracy.
I can sympathise with your feelings that the current global status-quo is failing many people—I would agree—and I would argue India and Mexico are great examples of how unchecked capitalism and authoritarianism are causing an active erosion of democracy (and standard of living) in those two countries.
> Democracy is a system of government, not an economic model.
For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress.
The thinking was, that when people (countries) have democracy this somehow "empowers" them to become economically successful.
This reasoning was fairly prevalent, after all, the U.S., the showcase of democracy, was such an economic powerhouse. Worth noting as well is that democracy was normally peddled with economic liberalization, free trade, etc.
After China's rise however, the idea that democracy is a necessary for economic prosperity has more or less been debunked. China has demonstrated that democracy is not a precondition for economic prosperity.
Now, developing countries are faced with the question, what political model should be followed? If economic prosperity is the objective, the Chinese model seems to be promising. On the other hand, what does democracy have to offer? Looking at the U.S. as the showcase of democracy, what does the U.S. have that a developing country would find worth emulating?
> For the longest time, "Democracy" the political system was bandied about to be the primary precondition for economic progress.
I agree with you. I think that mindset has a fundamental misunderstanding of the root cause of economic prosperity.
Economic prosperity comes from liberty. Democracy and liberty are two very different things. For a long time, they were treated as roughly equivalent.
China figured out that economic liberty, coupled with state sponsored abusive labor conditions and few ecological restrictions, can effectively compete with "democracy" where people are able to vote to regulate labor markets.
In the face of this, Democracy is a weakness. After all, how can a Western economy that's voting itself (for example) four day work weeks and great work/life balance benefits compete with forced labor in the short term?
I think it competes well in the medium to long term, as economic systems that maximize liberty seem to mostly win.
China can compete in this method because they have 4 times the population of the US. And even so in aggregate they are still clearly in 2nd in the global hard power race.
Scarily for china their demographics look horrific through the rest of the century while America will likely continue growing due to immigration. By 2100 it's projected they could have less than twice the population of the US. Will they still be competitive then? Will any of the asian tigers besides Japan & SK escape the middle income trap?
Personally, I've always believed the best form of government is an absolute monarchy headed by a benevolent monarch. The problem with that, of course, is benevolent monarchs are few and far between.
You may be surprised your role in an absolute monarchy would be a horse manure cleaner, not a noble landlord you are imagining it in your head. Same would go for your children - with no possibility to change it. Have fun!
We're all supposed to love Democracy by default but ... I don't know anymore.