sc94597 said:
1. Works "at what?" is the question. It certainly doesn't work at being democratic, which was my point. Democracy means "people power", in a representative democracy the people don't have the power if their representatives don't represent them. The representatives have the power. With tactical voting it is not necessarily true that you'll lose support "if you do not represent your voters in the way they expected you to", because there is no alternative individual whom will in the choosing-mechanism (election.) There is also heavy filtering of whom can fill a particular position in representative democracy before you even get to vote, which means that your choice of representative is limited from the start. An actually representative democracy would involve many people appointing their representatives to represent them independently of any electoral process. Checks and balances are meant to limit majoritarian democracy and mob-rules. You might say that it is necessary, I'd agree, but I'd argue that it is only necessary because majoritarian democracy isn't all that democratic. Depriving a part of the demos of their autonomy does not make a democracy.
2. It's liberal in the political sense of the word. Both modern social democracy and modern conservativism are now merged with branches of liberalism which emphasize different areas of liberal ideology. In 1788, conservatives were pro-monarchists and absolutist, and social democracy (whether in its socialist or liberal form) wasn't a thing yet. The Bill of Rights was the codification of liberal beliefs with respect to human rights. I don't see how it can get any more ideological than that. The idea that majoritarian democracy must be limited and there must be a separation of powers is itself ideological, based on classical liberal ideology. Democracy (in the general sense) is not a system, it's a state of human social relationships where all people (not merely a subset; whether it be a minority or majority) have political power. What you mean when you are referring to democracy is liberal-democracy, the dominant form of government today, denoted by the institutionalization and standardization of liberal values through the state-mechanism. Liberal democracy is more democratic than the absolutism and feudalism which preceded it, but I wouldn't say it is all that democratic by the standards of a radical democrat or a deliberative democrat (both of which are alternative conceptions of democracy.)
"Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. Also called western democracy, it is characterised by fair, free and competitive elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world."
3. So you're going to have to provide some evidence for this "evolutionary tendency." The fact that most of human (and hominid) history was denoted by small tribal/familial egalitarian groups kind of disputes this evolutionary determinism you're trying to imply. Of course, evolution is complex, and since humans have subjected ourselves to different environments and social contexts it's possible that we'd lean toward egalitarianism (and anarchy) in one context and hierarchy in another (which is what I've argued.) I don't agree that "it would require a massive dedication from the people to do so." Most of the changes in social organization throughout human history weren't done by design, but by social forces which no individual (or group of individuals) had total control of. Basically these forces acted spontaneously and unconsciously, as a sort of social evolution. If we were to speak of it in Dawkinian terms, the mechanism of social change was (and is) the meme, in the same way the mechanism of evolution is the gene.
Organization =|= hierarchy, one can have organization without hierarchy. For example, the industrial revolution brought a level of organization unheard of under feudalism, but it was far less hierarchical (but still capitalism is very hierarchical) than feudalism. Fewer mandates and rules were imposed on the lower classes by the upper classes under capitalism than under feudalism, and this lead to much more productive forces. Socialism prescribes that the lower class of workers obtain total freedom in their workplace and organize according to principles which they choose free from the constraints of their bosses. The prediction is that productivity will increase considerably as people sort into those occupations, positions, work-hours, etc that they feel most suited and which incentive them to perform more efficient work.
I agree, that we should look at the empirical data. And the data doesn't necessarily imply that humans are evolutionary predisposed toward hierarchical organization. If anything, the data shows that it requires active social-engineering by those whom gain short term advantages to cement said advantages in violent institutions. When these institutions are dismantled, so is the hierarchy dismantled and if it is replaced, it is replaced by a much weaker but more flexible hierarchy.
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