- Cryptosceptics aren't in authoritarian countries, on the contrary, authoritarian countries are prone to have problems of inflation and severe limitations on holding wealth in other assets / foreign currencies than the fiat currency of the state. Hence many authoritarian countries people are far more aware of the perils of a fiat currency and love cryptocurrencies. — ssu

I have made some polls in some forums, and it was revealed that people who value democracy and liberalism are more prone to agree that the bitcoins are not "ponzi schemes".

As I have already explained, each week a referendum will be performed, but these referendums will not be "referendums in strict sense", they will not have a legal force. If the government considers a referendum as "profane", it can reject it; but it will have to explain its position to the people, otherwise the ruling politicians will be possibly imprisoned after leaving the power - through a new referendum. And this leads to the following conclusion. If a ruler (President) rejects a referendum selfishly (e.g. because he does not want to loose money, etc), he will realize, that after leaving the power, he will be soon imprisoned. And this will easily make him a dictator - he will use the force (administrative resource) to keep his power. This means, that the proposed model of referendum democracy can work properly only in conjunction with the Ukrainian political model, "ideology of Maidan", the readiness of population to overthrow any power if it becomes corrupted. That's why the survival of Ukraine now is critically important for the human civilization...

So the simple solution to stopping the war in Ukraine is to let Trump ban trans people from sports? :rofl: — Christoffer

I live in Russia, and I know the mentality of Russians. The Putin’s propaganda manipulatively states that Russia needs a “Tsar”, not the Western model. The Russians use the word “Gayrope” (Gay Europe), and many of them connect LGBT with the democracy in Europe (at least unconsciously). Some Russians use the word “dermocracy”, the word “dermo” in Russian means “sh…t”. As far as I know, only in German 80 years ago there was a similar word – “systemzeit”. This is caused by the fact that both Germans and Russians had been living under democracy with very big economic problems – the Weimar republic in Germany and the Yeltsin’s time in Russia. But I am sure that if Russians see that under democracy people can vote against transgenders, they (the Russians) will experience a cognitive dissonance.

This is a joke, right? — Mikie

No.

The Putin’s propaganda in Russia instill the hatred for the West to Russians. One of its points is the excesses in the West relating LGBT – unpleasant gay parades, transgender athletes in big sports, and so on. The Putin’s propaganda states manipulatively, that these excesses are caused by democracy, especially in Europe, and the word “democracy” is partly connected for the Russians to gay parades (”Gayrope”). In reality, the situation is vice versa: the problems of the Western countries are caused by the lack of democracy (the ruling Left ignore the will of people). The Left has created a meme “democracy is not the power of majority, but the protection of minorities”, and pro-Putin Russians have believed in this meme. But recently the Americans had elected Trump, and the Trumpism is ideologically close to Putinism – Trump dislikes gender diversity too. So my question is, maybe eventually Trump will change the relation of Russians to democracy? What is he doing now to stop such things as promoting transgender athletes in sports?
I believe that there is a very easy way for Trump to stop the war in Ukraine: he must initiate an all-US referendum with suggestions to prohibit big sports for transgenders, and establish that there are only two genders, men and women. If such a referendum is performed, Russians will experience a cognitive dissonance – they will realize that democracy leads to prohibiting gender diversity – and their worldviews will evolute, so they would stop supporting Putin and his war. This is so simple…

Speaking of gold, I have one more question. Bitcoins are analogous to gold; both gold and bitcoins are limited in total amount, making them an effective way to store money without paying the "inflation tax". However, there are currently many problems with cryptocurrencies, such as the division into "pure" and "dirty" crypto, and I am not sure that cryptocurrencies are more convenient to use than gold. And this leads to a new question: why the gold is not growing as fast as bitcoins? Maybe buying gold is illegal in the US/Europe?

↪Linkey I can see crypto being useful in an authoritarian society with high inflation. For me, I'll just buy gold and silver as hedges against inflation. They're also more useful than crypto SHTF scenarios. — RogueAI

Do you deny that there is a big dollar inflation in the world? By the way, the price of gold has increased twice in last 5 years...

If there is a demand for pipyruses and they serve as a store of value, how can they be worthless? — Nils Loc

The gold if an example of such pipyruses - it is nearly worthless in regard of its current price.

I suggest you to read about the Easterlin paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox

The economic growth itself does not do anybody happier. During last 500 years, the productivity of labour of the planet has increased maybe 1000 times, but the people haven't become happier because of this. Only psychological factors can make the society happier, and they include the aim in life, which helps people gather friends (for friendship people need to have common aims). A referendum each week will give people such aims, and this will end the lonelisess and misanthropy...

A.k.a "Direct Democracy." An old idea. — Leontiskos

Does the idea of direct democracy described in the article include the possibility for people to make the decisions which are currently considered as a sphere of judicial branch? For example if the people of USA could vote for releasing Julian Assange...

Here’s the telling phrase in your post - “As far as I know…” if you’re going to speculate like this, it’s your job to have done the research, to have the knowledge, required so that “as far as you know” is further along than it seems to be in this case.You haven’t provided any evidence or shown us you have any particular experience or expertise in this area. — T Clark

Well, if nobody comments my speculations, this will mean that none at this forum have any particular experience or expertise in this area...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15998/the-history-of-mongolia-after-genghis-khan

These were always my own thoughts and speculations, I just asked ChatGPT this question and it agreed.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15997/the-history-of-mongolia-after-genghis-khan

Is my thread ok now?

No, I meant a newer thread.
Maybe there was some error or bug; now I decided to create this thread again:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15996/the-history-of-mongolia-after-genghis-khan

Be good enough to give us your working definition of "democracy." — tim wood

I hear these words from Russian anti-democrats, Putinists, Z-activists when I argue with them (trying to convince them to stop voting for Putin).
Ideal democracy is when any decision is choosen via a referendum. Currently the highest level of democracy (but still small) is in Switzerland.

Maybe more importantly: Are you suggesting that dictatorships are necessarily more stable than democracies when it comes to large populaces? — javra

Of course this was in the past, before the printing press. Do you know any democratic state in ancient history, larger than one city?

Which brings to mind: Ancient Athens was an exceedingly functional democracy (among male citizens) with excellent military prowess all in one bang. So this would directly speak against a non-democratic governance being necessary for war.

While I'm not claiming it's easy to obtain and sustain, it is nevertheless quite possible. — javra

Please read the op and see that I have written the same.
The democratic city-states fought well, but the were just too small in comparison with the huge Persian Empire. This is explained that before inventing the printing press, only small territories could have a democratic government. And again, this is the same thing as the on I mentioned in the op.

I don't think that's a true for most of history, honestly. "The West" being the leading force of innovation seems very particular to the Age of Enlightenment (and Renaissance, to a somewhat lesser degree), much of which was triggered by an influx of (Middle-)Eastern scholars fleeing invading nomadic conquerors. — Tzeentch

What about the Greeks? They were the inventors of science...

Yeltsin groomed Putin for his political ascension. Then resigned. No accident. — jgill

If I am not mistaken, firtly Eltsin planed to support another man, Stepashin, but then choosed Putin because Stepashin did something wrong.

If my hypothesys is true, this have a lot of applications.
Have you heard the word "Egregore"? This is something like a mind in the collective unconscious; we have the Christianic egregore, Comminust ergerore, etc. From my point of view, an egregore is an analouge of a state of a social network, which uses the quantum entanglement instead of common ways of communications (more exactly, a combination of both). In other words, an egregore is a pseudostate or pseudosocnetwork in the same meaning as the pseudotelepathy I mentioned above.
The concept of egregores can be of a great practical use for political science, because it explains a lot of problems in the Western world (the explanation is that the Western democracy is illusory to a significant extent).

This sounds very like what I know as citizens' assemblies. They seem to be very helpful in formulating policy. But I don't think that anyone sees them as a possible legislative bodies. For more detail, see, for example, On Citizens' assemblies — Ludwig V

From this link it is not fully clear for me, what principles do these assemlbies use. Firstly, using a lot (random selection) has a problem: if a small number of people who received the offer accepted to participate in this group, these people are not a representative sample, and their opinions do not represent the opinions of the whole population. To solve this problem, sufficient sums of money must be offered to these people for participating in these groups.

The population of ancient Athens was about 250,000 people with only about 30,000 able to vote. That's comparable to a large town or small city. In the US, about 250,000 million people are eligible to vote. — T Clark

Are you sure with these numbers? Why onle 30 000? I thought the right to vote had all free men (not slaves), and this must be approximately 60% of men or 30% of all population.

So decisions on major public issues now hinge on a video of people - 200 people! - arguing? I'm trying to imagine the sound level and clarity. — Vera Mont

As far as I know, in ancient Greece the "lottocracy" was trusted more than democracy, because in usual democracy, usually not best but the worst people come to power. You can clearly see this in the US now. This phenomenon is explained by the fact, that in usual democracy, for comong into power a man must become a part of some elite which already has the power. With the "lottocracy", average people come to power and the average is better than the bad.

So somehow you’ve gone from hundreds of millions of people voting on laws to 200 people voting. I don’t think you’ve thought this through very well. — T Clark

For me, a better solution would be as follows: these 200 people will perform a vote, also they can vote for spending some state money for creating a video illustrating their argues and decisions; and after the vote of these 200 people, all nation will vote on a referendum with the suggestion to simply accept the result created by these 200 people. If the referendum will be rejected - a usual voting for all nation is performed.

And who would set the question for this Friday? Do the voters get advance warning to inform themselves on the subject? It's not a lot of time to prepare. How would a new mandate be implemented, when, and by whom? Who owns the platform on which the voting takes place and how are votes tallied? What percent of the votes would it take to win, and would that be the same requirement for imposing a parking fine, changing a zoning regulation, eliminating/reinstating the death penalty and declaring war? What if the public mood shifts before the law goes into effect? — Vera Mont

Some of your questions are trivial. Concerning the necessity to gather information before voting, I have an idea of using a lot: a group of 200 random people would be chosen, the state will give them the money for studiing the subject, and possbly they will vote instead of the whole population. This is one implementation of the "lottocracy", for me there are better ones, but they are more difficult for explaining.

Can we vote to create a representational democracy where we have a House, a Senate, and a President so we no longer have to vote on everything personally? — Hanover

You have this "democracy" now, and in fact, the President and expesically the Senate use their powers for serving the financial aristocracy ("300 familities"), they have the full power and do not allow other people to become their competitorr; and it is becomes clear that smart people are not allowed to become presidents in US, because a smart president can become a threat for the power and money of these people.

I'd like want to formulate my thoughts concerning the ranking vote again. If the voters have e.g. three candidates and the voting with the scale, it is possible that they will tend to vote "10 for one, 0 for two others". This vote seems selfish, and the state must try to fight the egoism of voters. If the ranking system is used. each voter will have to vote "10 for one, 5 for second, 0 for third"; and this distribution seems more fair for most cases; it represents a more common distribution of opinions. If there are not 3 candidates but e.g. 100, but most of them are spoilers, the ranking vote wil not help.

At the same time, for referendums, the ranking vote can't be used. I think that the voting with scale will be good for the referendums anyway, but the state must try to solve the problem of unfair voting (if a person votes 10 instead of 6).

Why would we possibly bring in a new system when there is an existing one, ranked choice voting, that has been in use for a long time and works well? — T Clark

Probably there is no big difference, but I am not sure these two systems will always produce the same results. For me, the system I described is evidently optimal.

There is already a better system than this in place in a number of jurisdictions. It’s called ranked choice voting. This from the web — T Clark

This is a good idea, but maybe I don't fully understand the principle from your quote. For me, the best system can be as follows: if we have e.g. 3 candidates, each voter ranks each candidate with 1-3 numbers, and rank 1 means 10, 2 means 5, 3 means 0. So this will be similar to the vote with scale I proposed, but the voter will be unable to choose 10 for one candidate and 0 for each of two others.
In my example in the op with A, B, C candidates, with this system, each of them will finally get 33%.

Roger Penrose has suggested that quantum effects are working in the nervous system of living organisms. Currently there is some experimental evidence in favour of this hypothesis:


https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/ac94be

https://www.mdpi.com/2624-960X/3/1/6

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2018.0640

https://opg.optica.org/opn/abstract.cfm?uri=opn-30-4-42


If this is true, then we can assume that there is quantum entanglement between the brains of related individuals in nature; and then it is easy to assume that the evolution has "invented" quantum pseudo-telepathy which helps animals to survive and reproduce. Then a new science is needed to study this - quantum ethology. Has anyone proposed it?

It does. — Paine

Ok, I have deleted the link. However maybe I can post a link to my channel at my profile? Do the rules allow that?

God bless. The "game theory" of anything-relationship must keep in mind that male and female psychology are wildly different. Women don't like, respect, or feel attraction towards push-overs. It is just another instantiation of the "nice guys finish last" universal. — Lionino

I have some experience of successfull relationships and I understand that it is not useful to be a simp, on the other hand you must give your wife presents from time to time, otherwise the love will slowly leave your family. And for me, being obsessive/intrusive can a form of egoism. Maybe I don't know the correct word and "obsessive/intrusive" are not fully what I mean, I mean a strong wish to prove with doings that you love her.

Reducing divorce by getting husbands to simp even harder? If simping harder were the solution, there would be no divorces to begin with. In fact, the opposite is much more likely to be true. As a man, you can reduce the likelihood of divorce by simping less. But then again, why sign a contract in which you are at the mercy of someone else who can just break it and then cash out on you? It is the modern incentive structure of the contract that explains why it gets broken so easily and so often. Therefore, the only way to avoid divorce is not to sign that kind of unreasonable contracts. — Tarskian

Sorry, I am not a native English speaker and I don't understand the word "simping". Maybe you wanted to say that the husband and wife become "Sims" with my approach? One more person told me so, but I don't understand this argument.

↪Linkey In your example, the husband is a simp if he doesn't go to the football match without her — 180 Proof

People prefer to do anything together, for example they watch movies together, go for sports together and so on. Let's say that the husband gets 0.5 units of pleasure if he goes to futball alone.

How do you justify that statement? Or where is the evidence? I have a book about Persia that I haven't read and no book about Macedonia. So I have no idea how Macedonia was more civilized. The Persians had impressive architecture and crafted items and art. They had religious freedom. How does that add up to being less civilized? — Athena

I suppose, the Persians had a larger oppression of the lower classes by the rulers. The Persia was an Oriental Despotism, and the Greeks considered all Persians as the slaves of their king.
I had read a book "Sex and the evolution of the human nature" by Matt Ridley which describes the Briffault's law in human societis, including the Eastern empires. In all these empires, the monarchs and his feudals took a lot of women from the lower classes into their harems, and I heard that rather often the men from the lower classes remained without women because of this.

People vote with their feet.

They reject rule by the mob.

Millions more would want to live in Dubai and be governed by its emir instead of the mob back home, but they cannot afford it financially: — Tarskian

Even if that's true about the Dubai, it does not contradict what I have said: the rulers of UAE can't allow themselves to become despots, because otherwise they will get a revolt.
And yes, the authoritrian rulers like Napoleon or Lee Kaun Yew often become great reformers, maybe more often than democratic leaders. I understand that.

So essentially you are saying that even if a state is not democratic, the people living in it are likely advantaged if there is a nearby democratic state, simply due to the necessity of the government to please its citizens in order to avoid revolution? — Igitur

Yes.

United Kingdom declared war to Finland in December 5th 1941. I assume the both countries were then democracies even back then. — ssu

Of course there are some counter-arguments against the theory, but they do not matter really much. Finland had to join Germany because Germany started a war against the enemy of Finland. A similar situation was an alliance between USA and the Saudi Arabia, because Saddam became the enemy of the latter.
And there is no case in histiry where a war of annihilation (sorry if my English was bad, I hope I was understood) occured between two democratic countries (well, maybe we can speculate about ancient Greece, my knowledge of it is incomplete).

I have written on Medium an article describing my idea:

https://medium.com/@grandrienko22/the-achilles-heel-of-modern-authoritarian-regimes-699c25d6d9a8

Can anybody help me with the information, how can I pay for boosting (promoting) this article in Medium? I was unable to google this information.

Yet I think there are still Russians who support the war simply fearing what will happen to Russia if the war is lost. You see, Russia isn't a normal nation-state, it still is built on an Empire. That's the real problem. Still many Russians believe Catherine the Great's words: "I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them." This pure imperialism hasn't yet died in your country. — ssu

Do you know about the democratic peace theory?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory

Democratic countries unite instead of dissipating, and the people in the West must try to make the Russians know about that.
Again, if the West is afraid of Putin's nukes, maybe the most weak points of the Evil is China: as I have suggested, the US should declare that they will build military bases on Taiwan unless a referendum is performed in PRC with a suggestion to unban youtube. I think this is really a strong idea: as far as I know, many people in China (probably most) don't like the censorship in their country and the social credit system. I am sure that they will vote for unblocking the youtube, and this will quickly make the democratization of China the only way for Xi. After that, the same processes will start in Russia.