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Plato vs Democracy
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Greece had democracy too, and it ran into the exact same basket of problems we experience today.
Candidates would smear each other through rumor campaigns, foreigners would be scapegoated for domestic problems, religious organizations would lobby for special privileges by promising their constituents' support during election season, wealthy men would bribe whomever won to guarantee them favorable treatment, and large portions of the population were disenfranchised in order to maintain a patriarchal nationalist system built on the back of slave labor.
Consequentially, people lost faith in democracy as a mechanism for selecting popular rulers and became increasingly enamored with the military as a source of domestic income, social advancement, and national pride. The Greek system ultimately failed in the face of oligarchy during the Peloponnesian Wars, reemerged in a reformed state for almost a century, and then collapsed entirely following the conquest of the Macedonians.
Plato's idealism not withstanding, his criticism is worth reading because it demonstrates a repeated pattern of human behaviors that modern political groups can learn from and respond to.