this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Denmark is a representative democracy. And yes, by direct democracy, I do mean voting directly on laws. It doesn't necessarilly have to be a burden. It could be a system where once a week, there's a vote held for 1 or 2 bills, and if there is an urgent matter, such as going to war, or if there's another pandemic and there's an urgent need for a lockdown, then that vote can be held sooner.
I don't think any state needs to pass more than 1 or 2 bills in a week to be functional.
I think if electing representatives instead, corruption becomes way too easy to accomplish; just slip some cash into the right pockets and get whatever you want in return. Direct democracy would bypass that issue, since corruption would be way harder (as in, one would need to slip money into half of the populations' pockets, or run some very effective propaganda, which would be difficult if one person doesn't have insane amounts of money to spend to begin with)
I'd love for you to explain to me how corruption works/doesn't work in Denmark, though. My perspective is very US-centric.
Yes that's true, I thought you meant voting on your candidate directly, without an electoral collage like USA has for presidential elections. IMO the electoral college system is undemocratic.
It 100% will be, people barely care to vote every 4 years in most places, even where it's easy like here. It's not just the act of voting, but all the time needed to get familiar with the issue at hand. There is absolutely no chance that could work until we have a work free society. Possibly not even then.
That would be nice, but it's not plausible, industry needs to be regulated to function efficiently and have transparency and to not do harm, Industry has 100's of branches that each need their own specific regulation. Just think cars, food, medicine, appliances etc etc.
I think Marx too had this idea, based on that without capitalism, people would behave like model citizens, and companies would not hurt the community they are part of. But they don't. We have unfortunately seen that in communist countries companies actually behave worse.
Unfortunately like everywhere else we do have corruption, but for instance a mayor getting plumbing done by a company used by the city is a HUGE scandal. And will make it impossible for that politician to ever run for public office again. But there are many degrees of corruption, and we don't have a lot of corruption for personal gain, but more of the kind that some functions have a hard time managing, so they cut corners illegally. You can't generally bribe public officials, although I'm sure it's happening anyway, it's usually subtle, so they can say they didn't think it was a problem. Large scale corruption is almost impossible here. Either that, or they are damned good at hiding it. We did have a public servant a few years ago, that managed to funnel millions into her own accounts over several years. She managed to get away when it was detected, but was later found somewhere in Africa, and she returned home to face justice. A notable thing in this situation is that she was not just punished herself. The values of her family was confiscated, and they were judged to prison too, because it was deemed that they couldn't reasonably have believed she could have afforded the riches she gave away on a public servant salary, although she did serve in a very high position. She gave things like race horses to her daughters!
All in all, Denmark is often mentioned as among the least corrupt countries in the world. I'm not sure why? But we have among the worlds highest taxes, and I suspect people won't tolerate that they are wasted. Also everybody is paid reasonably well, and you can live fine on a minimum salary. So corruption is unacceptable because nobody needs to be corrupt to pay their bills. We have free education and healthcare. For education you even get support from the state to manage economically through the education. We have decent wages, and although high positions earn more, it's not the insanity like USA where one CEO can make as much as the rest of the company combined. CEO and other high salary jobs are more moderate here. So you don't need to skim money to give your children food and an education and a decent place to stay, and you don't need to finance some huge hospital bill. Everybody has 5 week paid holiday, and we get paid when we are sick too, although it's a reduced rate.
Despite the rosy picture, It's not perfect. Some people still have a tough time managing. But that's just it, we are at a point where tough times are considered a problem to be solved. Not a necessity for the economy to function.
To sum it all up, I think the low corruption is due to the mentality here, and the mentality is due to our living circumstances and policies that at least attempt to be fair. Where USA often seems more like everybody for himself, and I got mine.