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---
title: "Democracy: Some fundamentals"
date: 2022-07-28
---
*Unless otherwise specified, "democracy" in this article refers to
representative democracy. "Country" can additionally refer to other
regions that have people and its own policies, such as a state,
provinces in some countries, etc.*
We usually think of "democracy" as people influencing the policies of
the country by electing trustworthy experts that serve their interest to
make actual decisions about running the country. This type of democracy,
representative democracy, has evolved from direct democracy aging back
two thousand years ago as created by Athens in Greece. Representative
democracy is more scalable than direct democracy and also avoids some
forms of populism and uninformed decisions as its the experts in the
field that are making the actual policies.
The Chinese term for democracy is "民主". The first character, "民",
means "people"; the second, "主", ascin "主人" means "owner". You could
understand it as saying "the people of the country own the country (and
thus get to decide on its affairs)". But at the same time, "主" as in
"自主" means "do things themselves", i.e. the right not to be interfered
by others while doing their own business.
This is, of course, not the proper definition for democracy; democracy
is just saying that the general public ultimately runs the country. But
we could take the time to appreciate how with democracy we usually end
up with liberty and how we take personal liberty for granted.
In any case, both democracy and liberty are important in a long-lasting
prosperous system of society. Note my wording in the first paragraph,
that the decisions of elected experts are for "running the country"—I
specifically mean issues that deal with either the general public (such
as public health and the environment) and things that would be otherwise
hard to solve personally (such as enforcement of contracts and crimes).
The "will of the people", represented by the government, have no
business doing things like banning freedom of thought or mandating
people not to smoke in their private property. Only when things affect
others such as smoking in public should the government, or the will of
the general public, have any say. And of course, people should take
responsibility for their own private deeds. It is argued that a lung
cancer patient who got lung cancer by smoking excessively doesn't
deserve medical insurance from taxpayers; but for cases where an illness
isn't caused by a identifiable private decision factor, medical
insurance and support should be given. (In practice the distinction is
subtle; this is also a very controversial topic.)
People overemphasize the importance of democracy. In fact, democracy is
in my opinion less important than liberty—though in practice indeed
liberty wouldn't survive for long without democracy.
Note that abortion and similar subjects may fall into the scope of
government. Some opponents of abortion believe that fetus is human life
and thus abortion is murder and shall be outlawed. The "privacy" and
"personal liberty" arguments don't stand up well against this as it's no
longer a personal matter when another human life is supposedly on the
line. [I oppose the abortion bans that Republicans in the US are placing
in many states for a different reason.](abortion)
Modern populism (which is a poorly-defined term but does have the
following general scope) gives the power of deciding everything that
happens in the country to the people. This is bad in two ways. (1) The
general public often make uninformed and un-thought-through decisions
and are easily influenced. (2) The government, in this case directly the
collective decision of the people, is stepping its feet into the
personal lives of people. While it is democratic, it doesn't give people
liberty, creating a tyranny of the majority, and at the same time making
uninformed decisions which are better made by experts which people
elect.
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