LOL no they do not offer course correction through the ballot box. between the DNC putting their finger on the scale (how many coin tosses can one win at a caucus before one starts questioning the coin?) for the 2016 primary because it was HER TURN (and then in 2020 all of the primary candidates conveniently quitting and supporting biden ahead of super tuesday with the exception of warren to split the progressive vote - that totally wasnt a coordinated effort to undermine the sanders campaign) to bush and co stealing the election from gore (with multiple brooks brothers rioters presently on the supreme court) to the insane and unconstitutional gerrymandering in many states.. no we do not have the ability to vote our way out of this because the voting itself is rigged and has been for a while. voting at the federal level is essentially pointless and is only moderately representative at the state/local level, and even then if you start digging you realize that most local politicians are real estate investors and have a financial incentive to maintain the status quo. the republicans havent won the popular vote since bush 1... who was president when i was born. NO. we dont have a democracy. we dont have a representative democracy. we have the facade of a democracy and people have been brainwashed for so long they dont even question it.Bubba wrote: ↑Apr 3rd, '23, 11:46Are you seriously comparing early human societal development to the humans that developed from them? Yes, we are a social species (sometimes way too social - as in tribal) but we are also animals at the most basic level; animals that develop pecking orders, alpha behaviors, etc.asher2789 wrote: ↑Mar 31st, '23, 21:21 your points on human nature arent accurate either. human nature up until the agricultural age (the majority of human history) relied heavily upon cooperation. we are on the top of the food chain because we are a social species who learned from each other to create and use tools and make fire.
All of this is part of human development. Greed is human nature. Capitalism is merely the best system we humans have developed (so far) to improve the human condition. It is not perfect as humans are not perfect. We regulate capitalism to limit human greed.asher2789 wrote: ↑Mar 31st, '23, 21:21 with the introduction of agriculture came the introduction of bean counters, greed and by extension the divine right of kings to enforce it all, which in some form or another was "human nature" up until the enlightenment. during enlightenment capitalism was born, (over)throwing away the divine right of kings and establishing the beginning of liberal representative democracy. the leaders of the enlightenment thought that a form of government could be devised that had checks and balances to prevent corruption, selfishness and greed. but even in the structure of government they made sure to maintain class order and protect class interests (capital) of the upper class - look to the US senate here or the house of lords in england for example. and of course, our longstanding history in this country as seeing black people as less than - at one point, 3/5 of a white person. our very government structure is inherently flawed and designed intentionally this way to keep yesterdays landed gentry and todays billionaires in power.
Democracy as a concept developed out of the enlightenment but only really formed here in America as an experiment in self-government, and it is constantly evolving. As a form of government, it does not require the economic system we call capitalism; rather, a capitalist economy eventually requires some form of democracy to succeed and grow. Democracies are not perfect either but they do allow for course correction through the ballot box. Dictatorships have no such ability and eventually fall of their own weight and their inherent corruption.
even if our electoral systems werent rigged it still doesnt matter because we have the choice of capitalist liberals or capitalist conservatives, both of which are pro capital, anti worker, anti libertarian, owned by the banks and corporate conglomerates, pro big government and telling people what they can and cant do with their bodies. if you remove the far right christian fascists from the republican party (which is now probably half the party, with the other half going along with it for power) and you remove the small handful of democratic socialists from the democratic party you would be left with pro capital "moderates" who are virtually indistinguishable from each other on the real issues like workers rights and foreign policy. on the economy they wanna give tax cuts to businesses and raise taxes on working people.
capitalist economies do not need democracy, in fact they eat democracies by capturing regulation. russia's state capitalism is a great example of a non-democracy with capitalist features.
"Dictatorships have no such ability and eventually fall of their own weight and their inherent corruption."
so will this house of cards we have as a country. american exceptionalism at its finest is thinking our government is immune to historical trends like empires collapsing after ~250 years or so. like the divine right of kings the worship of capital will also fall.
you bring up that we are animals, but it is our cooperation with each other for the greater good that separates us from most animals. and from the dawn of time to the agricultural age humans cooperated to survive, and that is still seen in the small nomadic hunter gatherer societies that still exist today around the world. indigenous groups are often less hierarchical in their function than larger society.