Elfred,
1) assuming that the public have a very low level of enlightenment
and that the government leaders in an autocracy have very high
enlightenment is an extremely naive assumption, since either party
can have either a high level or low level of enlightenement. The
difference of course, is that the leaders of an autocracy have a
zero-sum case to enlightenment- either they are extremely
enlightened or extremely non-enlightened and succumb to what u
listed: conceit, arrogance, bootlicking etc. (which, i hope i am
right to assume, an enlightened one will not fall prey to). Thus,
the stakes are high; either 100% or 0%. in the case of the
democracy, a proper free one, and not a gerry-mandered, faked-out,
masked autocracy, like Singapore, it is of course a known fact that
the public can either be enlightened or non-enlightened, and not
just non-enlightened. Hey, as a matter of fact, there ware many
bright (read: enlightened) Singaporeans who are not serving in the
civil service i.e. they are mere members of the public. the
democracy makes such a situation that the non-enlightened are
cancelled out by the enlightened, so the effect is a more balanced
one than in an autocracy. THat is why, in true democracies, the
victory margin is usually very slim (As a rule, only Indonesia and
the Philippines are considered true democracies in SEA). ANd the
strength of a democracy is that the public is much less likely, on
the whole, to fall into the vices which you admit autocrats can
fall into, since the public is made up of diseparate intdividuals
with no common agenda, and thus they have different behavioural
patterns, unlike the autocrats, which will have a common behaviour
pattern throughout their small elite group.
2)hmm... which FB forum are you referring to? YP BB's? haha, as I
told you before, SIngapore is not a true democracy; it is a banana
democracy, in the same way that Cuba used to be referred to as a
banana republic. YP BB is unfortunately not at all the free press i
am describing to you in the previous post. Rmb, the free press is
independent from all political parties'
involvement and influence. In YP BB, a majority of moderators
(unsurprisingly) come from within the ranks of the ruling party, so
YP BB's FB forum cannot be considered a democratic feedback
channel.
As for the issue on that laymen cannot be depended on to provide
the checks-and-balances required, what is your definition of
"laymen"? For one, those in research institutions are obviously
able to be considered as experts in their respective fields. THey
hold degrees which are equal in standard to government officials
themselves- in fact, some even have even higher qualifications. WHo
are we to judge on the leadership of NGOs? AI was founded by a top
lawyer in England who ahd the same qualifications as LKY- in fact,
he studied at tehs ame university. As for journalists in the press,
such a generalisation is invalid, as the spectrum in journalism is
great.
About your point on the chain reactions.... In such an
interconnected world as ours, can we truely isolate all issues in a
specialistic manner? The chain considerations, which you seem to
disregard, may in fact be the important information tha tthe
government needs to decide on the correct policy. for instance, if
youa re just going to see the casino as an economic issue, then
most woefully you miss the larger picture of things.
3) *sigh*... my main point was that, a democracy will likely to
have more complete amount of information, because there are more
avenues for information retrieval, and more objective avenues at
that. Autocrats tend to all have the same umbrella perspective. the
advantage, then, of the democracy is that it provides a variety of
perspectives, certainly more than that of any, even the most
enlightened, autocratic administration. all the journalists and
researchers will definitely have differing takes, adn thus will
provide fresh perspectives that the main legislative or executive
has not come up with, unlike in an autocracy, where its nature
limits the perspectives to a limited few.
And as you said, change comes fast, so if you can have more
perspectives on the change, you can quickly identify the best path
to take, and are mroe likely to make the correct decision on the
choice of action.
your "you only need to know what you need to know" is badly
smacking of naivete. What guarantees that an enlightened autocrat
will know all that he needs to know, from the limiteed perspectives
he has of judging a specific issue? no man is perfect. the addition
is simple: in an autocracy, you only have the perspective of the
autocratic legislative-executive, but in a demcoracy, you have the
perspectives of the legislative, executive, free press, research
institutions and NGOS, which means that in a democracy is much mroe
likely to come up with a more effective plan of action than any
autocracy, even an enlightened despotism.
In conclusion, therefore, this is the reply:
Man ain't god, so can one man's wisdom (autocracy) always be
counted on to be better than many people (democracy) in handling
all the facts and figures required, which in this Information age,
are reaching an extreme amount? (Yes, and I am referring to teh
necessary information
only.) If you can, without doubt, answer yes, then I concede. If
you cannot make a definitive assent, then I urge you to think
again.
Thanks.
the pikamaster
