Problems with Democracy
braindump
The biggest problem with democracy is mob rule. Rule of the majority and the majority can oppress the minority. Example, if you were gay and living in a democratic Saudi Arabia, then majority rule would negatively effect you.
Most governments in democratic countries today are not actually voted in by the majority of the population. Due to a variety of reasons, some of which is no political representation or low faith in politicians, voter turn out in democracies is usually between 50-60%. Meaning, if a political party won 51% of the votes, then they were still voted in by 26-30% of the people and by democracy’s own definition, it has failed.
NIMBY laws are a form of democracy that ultimately denies people affordable housing and the ability to come into a neighbourhood. So democratic voting in the case of NIMBY, hurts would-be arrivals in a new neighbourhood.
Saying that a constitution can protect individual rights in democracy is not entirely true, because both the USSR and North Korea had constitutions and Chile completely got rid of theirs.
Democracy is ever expansive and will tend to grow - and hence grow the government - to more and more areas and consolidate more and more resources and reduce more and more rights.
In Democracy, because politicians can only serve for a set amount of time, they have no or little incentives to enact policies that hurt in the short term, but have beneficial effects in the long term. In other words, “the future” for politicians is a tragedy of the commons.