Quote:
Originally Posted by aka123
I posted the link to the news about the study. Read it yourself. Answering to that you have representative democracy is just being smart ass or stupid. Either way, it has nothing to do with that study.
USA has so sucky kind of democracy that:
"Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
At some point it is viable to say that it isn't democracy, any kind of.
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it concluded that the "claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened." i've never claimed we don't need to be vigilante in support of democracy but threatened is not the same as not having something, threatened means that something you have is in risk of disappearing.
Moreover, one of the authors of the study points out it's important NOT to use the word 'oligarchy" in discussing his research:::::
You say the United States is more like a system of "Economic Elite Domination" and "Biased Pluralism" as opposed to a majoritarian democracy. What do those terms mean? Is that not just a scholarly way of saying it's closer to oligarchy than democracy if not literally an oligarchy?
People mean different things by the term oligarchy. One reason why I shy away from it is it brings to mind this image of a very small number of very wealthy people who are pulling strings behind the scenes to determine what government does. And I think it's more complicated than that. It's not only Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers or Bill Gates or George Soros who are shaping government policy-making. So that's my concern with what at least many people would understand oligarchy to mean. What "Economic Elite Domination" and "Biased Pluralism" mean is that rather than average citizens of moderate means having an important role in determining policy, ability to shape outcomes is restricted to people at the top of the income distribution and to organized groups that represent primarily -- although not exclusively -- business.