"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause." - George Lucas

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Some quasi-libertarian rubbish that was thrust at me:

"Philosophers and historians from Aristotle onward have noted that democracy is inherently unstable and falls apart as the have nots vote to take away from the haves. The ultimate result is impoverishment of everyone as incentives to produce disappear. Sometimes this takes decades. Other times it takes centuries, but a democracy has historically been the most short lived form of government, even including the American experiment. You can’t stop the short sighted from selfishly destroying democracy by income redistribution. Just realize that the inveitable blow up will occur eventually in the United States. Democracy will be followed by anarchy then dictatorship, then monarchy, then democracy again, completing an endless cycle because our species lacks the insight and will to maintain the incentives (and income inequality) necessary to maintain a semi stable system."

My response was that:

The assertion is rubbish because democracy relies on people's conflicting self-interests to check each other. You might as well say the free market is inherently unstable and doomed - but look how history has turned out.

The closest to democracy which has existed prior to modern times is the Ancient Athenian model and in a very limited sense, the Roman Republic. England from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had many democratic elements too. NONE of these fell because "the have nots vote to take away from the haves". In fact, I can't think of ANY state which has fallen because "the have nots vote to take away from the haves". That's just Romantic feel-good rubbish libertarians/conservatives repeat to make themselves feel good.

If you look at history instead of talking rubbish to comfort yourself after paying taxes, you'll notice that what usually brings down states (except for external invasion) is factors like inequality and oppression - all of which democracy is the best form of government for mitigating.

In any case democracy has evolved since those times. We don't take Aristotle's word as Gospel for Natural Philosophy - why should we for Political?

Democracy is something that works in practice, even if not in theory.