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"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried." -Churchill
There are many more plausible forms of government than those that have been tried. Consider the various forms of Monarchy. How do they handle the problem of the stupid eldest son? Basically they don't. Historical monarchies were small and had problems with communications. Clarity about succession is vital and often lacking. So a simple rule, that invariably chooses the eldest son might be the best that was possible in the past. But modern conditions allow a country like France to have a more elaborate approach to succession, such as The Rotating Triple Crown.
One might look at the options for a country like the UK with around 60000000 people. One king gives a ratio of rulers to ruled of 60000000 to 1. An aristocracy of two dozen Earls makes it 2500000 to 1. A broader aristocracy with a thousand Barons has 2500000 ruled to each ruler. Then we leap to democracy with 48 million electors; the ration of ruled to rulers is five to four. There is a big gap in the ruled to rulers ratio. The expansion of the franchise took around a hundred years, so there is a sense that the missing, intermediate ratios did get tried. But only in a transitory sense. We haven't really tried having one hundred ruled to each ruler, in the sense of having a broad ruling class 600000 strong combined with a lasting commitment to elitism.
In that particular example, that would also solve the dispute between the Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists....
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Sure and it's also, "two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch". It's entirely reliant on there being lots of lambs, not too many wolves, and healthy protections for minority rights.
It's a tautology that democractic countries do better because we simply redefine "democracy" to mean "a well-functioning democracy". So its kinda like saying good countries are good.
The Soviet Union was a democracy on paper. When democracies vote for retarded shit they stop being democracies (see: Venezuela). It wasn't like they said "let us be a dictatorship". They just ended up that way because the voters were retarded. The root cause of Chavez was democracy run amok. And technically, Venezuela never stopped being a democracy.
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