🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov4.230737.29054@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>, thomas@McRCIM.McGill.EDU (Thomas Jelonek) writes:
> In article <1992Nov4.052742.16237@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>, mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse) writes:
>> I don't think I've heard of a workable democracy ever involving more
>> people than the city-states of ancient Greece.
> It should be noted that the Athenian concept of democracy was
> markedly different from our own.  Only 3000 men were allowed to cast
> ballots in Athens so one can safely assume that their `democracy' did
> not work for the vast majority of the people.

What was the population of Athens at the time?  (And I'm not so sure
that the ancient Greek notion of democracy is that different from the
modern one; I don't see anything in what you've said to make me think
so, except possibly (depending on the population) the proportion of
residents that had a franchise.)

> As an aside the citizens also regularly voted on banishing someone
> from the city.

So?  We do the same, only we have courts do it, and we call it
"imprisonment"...sometimes "extradition" or "deportation", or in
extreme cases "capital punishment".  In all cases, it amounts to "we do
not want you forming part of our society"; they differ only in the way
in which the person is removed from society.

> One of the best arguments for modern democracy as a political system
> is the seeming inability for two democracies to go to war.

Are there any democracies left?  I don't think there are, except
possibly a couple of small countries, I think in northern Europe.
Everybody else is too large, and has had to go to some other system;
the countries whose governments I am familiar with are either
monarchies (or other hereditary-rule system) or use some
supposedly-representative system, like the US, which is a republic, and
Canada, for which I do not know the correct term.  (Okay, not
*everybody* else.  Vatican City may well be small enough.
Lichtenstein, perhaps.  Maybe a couple of others.)

> I am unware of any historical precedent of a `benevolent dictator'.

A good point - it's a bit like some cynic/humorist who said/wrote,
referring to the USA, that anyone capable of getting himself made
President should on no account be allowed to do the job: being a
dictator borders on incompatible with being benevolent.

					der Mouse