Brian Eno's Theory of Democracy
19 comments
·May 4, 2025whatever1
mtsr
And there are actually more flavors of democracy that have been used to break this death spiral:
- ostracism, where the people voted to ban a person who was too mighty or dangerous from the city of Athens for a period of 10 years;
- random selection of (some kind of) representatives. This has predictable downsides, but ensures fair representation and prevents the existence of a political class.
selecsosi
I'm a fan of Joseph Tainter's analysis around organization of societies and issues around collapse being related to diminishing marginal returns. I think there's a lot to that position when you look at the general political party agendas. Technocratic solutions trying to squeeze more blood from the stone while providing less and less to participants (I have less of a theory on effectiveness for any given action, this is more of an observation).
https://risk.princeton.edu/img/Historical_Collapse_Resources...
prox
What is your theory, if you are willing to share?
kstenerud
Unfortunately, this is a little too simplistic.
A democracy doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are competing nations that are at work to undo or subjugate yours, and this never stops. We've lived a charmed life these past 80 years that are unlike any in the history of the planet.
American wealth and power are what brought this unprecedented stability to the western world, but it has been eroding.
As it erodes, the flaws in the American system begin to show, and then fray. The very means by which Americans elect automatically pushes it into a two party system, which is by nature polarizing, especially when external pressures come to bear.
It's also incredibly difficult to change course safely when so many people are involved (this affects all organizations, which is why startups can eat their lunch). Assuming that you can dynamically rise to the challenge is naive at best.
Federation only amplifies the problem, as you simply add more uneven competitors to the national riches.
jemmyw
I don't know, it doesn't seem simplistic in conclusion. The article describes a dynamic environment and you're just postulating further variation than described there. That doesn't mean the ideas don't agree or that the general formula isn't sufficiently complex to incorporate more nuance than the article lays out.
The linked solution isn't as interesting, mainly because the idea of there being a solution seems the simplistic part. It is a system and it will play out.
thom
Ah, so it turns out the solution to the centre not holding is to create as many falconry schools as possible, hoping to yield a dynamic system of falcons in a variety of overlapping gyres, so that at least some remain in hearing distance of a falconer? Big if true.
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vintermann
> This post’s title is a little cheeky. Brian Eno does not have an explicit theory of democracy that I know of
Well I do know he's politically active and worked with Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky. So it's more than a little cheeky.
James_K
The degeneration of American democracy seems an obvious conclusion to the basic premise set out there. Both parties in America are bad, they know they cannot be replaced because of the two party system, and therefore when they lose power, they can be assured they will gain it back again in a few years once people become dissatisfied with the alternative. There is no incentive for parties to better themselves because being bad at their job nets them valuable and necessary private donations from lobbyists with an interest in disabling the proper function of government.
dragonwriter
> Both parties in America are bad, they know they cannot be replaced because of the two party system
Yes, the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists know that they cannot be replaced because of the two party system. (Likewise, neither faces the threat of, if it fails to be replaced, being completely re-oriented in a political realignment.) It's not as if, currently, scholars disagree about whether the US is in its Sixth or Seventh Party system -- the two major parties are dominant, stable, and forever unchanging.
mettamage
How come it's just a 2 party system and not a multi party system like in some European countries?
kybernetikos
Most countries with multi party systems use different methods for selecting their representatives. When you do a straight aggregation of geographical areas in which you take whomever gets the most votes in each area (sometimes called first past the post) it becomes possible for the most disliked party in a country to win, widely geographical distributed concerns (like ecological concerns) become underrepresented, and most relevant to this conversation, having multiple parties that are close to each other is a huge disadvantage compared to having a single party attracting more people. Because of this, countries with this system will usually see smaller parties merge and stabilise on a 2 party government / opposition set up.
The study of how different kinds of voting systems work and their advantages, disadvantages and consequences is called social choice theory. There's an interesting theorem called Arrow's theorem that proves that given a certain set of assumptions, there can be no voting system that works exactly as we would like. Sometimes this is used to argue that all systems are equally bad, but I think this is not true at all - even while imperfect, some systems are much better than others.
mettamage
You remind me of Veritasium's video [1]. I should rewatch it and pay actual attention.
bazoom42
First-past-the-post tend to lead to two-party systems while proportional representation tend to lead to multi-party systems. But you can’t have proportional representation in presidental elections since only one candidate can win. Countries with multi-party systems tend to have parlimentary systems.
mettamage
That question got a downvote? I wonder why. It's a genuine question. Why can't good faith be assumed?
Edit: I get that people downvote this comment since it's always controversial to ask.
I personally always ask when I am more curious about the answer and am willing to burn any potential karma over it.
Asking for feedback is more important.
I'm just genuinely surprised about the other one.
brazzy
> Democracy, then, will be stable so long as the expectation of costs and the uncertainty of the future give the losers sufficient incentive to accept that they have lost.
Brilliant, and provides a foundation for an idea that I've seen elsewhere: that the true test of a new democracy is not the first democratic elections, but the first transition of power, i.e. the first subsequent election where the incumbent loses.
derelicta
White boys will do ANYTHING but take seriously dialectical sciences. It might be crazy to most readers, but major societal events like wars, riots, economic crisis and revolutions, can be predicted way in advance (to some extent). This article is just the equivalent of vibe-coding but applied to polsci.
foo42
what the heck has skin pigment to do with anything?
Democracy & separation of powers stand for something simple: Over long horizons, everyone is wrong.
Take any governance system that is in power for too long. It becomes rotten and it serves its own purposes. Democracy breaks that downwards spiral.
It is not a stable system, it is not predictable, it is not cheap to operate, heck it’s not even guaranteed that it will work. But it prevents the certain path to self-destruction.