Commentator's Choice - Democracy is a good system of government

(A little parody of mysticegg :)) - instead of quoting my opponent's passages in the inevitable rebuttal that will follow, I will rely on the reader's short term memory in aligning my responses to the content of my opponent's previous round.The Rebuttal Round:The economic argumentMy opponent completely drops my economic argument in favor of pointing out that there is no mutual exclusivity of capitalism to democracies. That is true: capitalism differs across different governmental systems. However, democracies inherently incorporate market-based economic systems, and are exclusively never command economies (economic system in which government assumes absolute control over the economy). The point is, there is a distinction in the type of economic system democracy employs which makes it relevantly noteworthy for the purposes of this debate. Democracy -> Heavy market-based economic elements -> microeconomically efficient.Since no other arguments were substantiated against my economic argument, this point is effectively conceded.The opportunity argument"societal success...is much less likely [in a democratic society] than within a communist or socialist society" - inaudita^prove it"I could not find hard statistics on the success/failure rate of democracies, nor could I find any statistics on the success/failure rate of other forms of government."^uhm.. ok.I will be pointing out several things to uphold my argument. First, my opponent concedes that democratic societies do provide more individual opportunities, thus the crux of my argument stands. Second, what defines societal success and how does my opponent know that communistic/socialistic societies are more likely to achieve it? Third, individuals make up the society. If the totality of individuals in a society succeed, then does the society itself not succeed? Put another way, if the totality of individuals have less opportunity for success (less success for individuals in general), then the society, which is made of individuals, does not succeed as well as if the totality of individuals have more opportunities for success. What does it mean for a society to succeed otherwise?My opponent's anti-democracy statisticsI will also have more than a couple things to say about this data and its conclusions. I clicked into the site which my opponent cites for his 'democracy is bad' evidence. Here are a few points:1) The data is likely inaccurate. The methodology note provided alongside the survey notes that the survey and its data were conducted on 1015 British citizens[1] who constitute a whopping 0.0016% portion of the 63 million British population. The sample size is too small to be an accurate representation of the either British public or Democracy in general.2) These people were asked on random online interviews to give their estimate to a large set of data, some of which my opponent sources as democracy's fault. Unless my opponent can show that this has any real impact on democracy's proceedings, the misconceptions of these 1015 people who should not reasonably be able to correctly estimate/know this large data set anyway can be dismissed as irrelevant.3) How does this data detract from the fact that the public elects policymakers who work for them? So what if a quarter of the public aren't as informed as they could be? Policymakers' achievements may sometimes go unnoticed by some of the public, but that doesn't make the achievements nonexistent.4) How do these numbers correlate in reality to democracy's performance? The point my opponent is trying to make, that ignorance is a problem in democracy, holds no grounds.Successful Government"I define a succesful government as one in which the governmnet is stable and the people are happy." - inauditaI will go one step further to define a stable government as one which endures. A system of government that endures longer than another system of government is, by definition, more stable. - The Nazi governmental system was in control from 1933-1945; it lasted 12 years- Italy's fascists took power in 1922 and started to crumble in 1943; it lasted about 21 years- The USSR takes control from about 1920-1991; it lasted 70 years- Chinese communism has been around for about 60 years. It has authored programs which have killed produced more death than any one nation has suffered in WWI or WWII combined[3] (It's what happens when you have one man deciding policies while ignoring every other PoV).The list goes on: http://en.wikipedia.org...;Notice that no socialist nation has lasted more than 100 years.Here's the list for democratic nations and the list of fallen socialist nations: http://www.scaruffi.com...;The numbers are telling. Democracies are more stable. In terms of stability, my opponent's proposed 'better' systems are less stable than the one which he is arguing against (so the rate of democracy's success is actually higher in comparison, empirically contradicting my opponent's claim.. sweet!)In terms of happiness? Theoretically, based on my the quote on my opponent's profile, killing all the unhappy would indeed increase the proportion of happy. Killing people, however, will make more people unhappy, requiring you to kill more people which will make more people unhappy. In the end, the level of happiness isn't really high. The labor lost and the resources spent on such a massive military campaign will drain the nation completely of its economy. Democracies, which are inherently utilitarian, are better in that, with less people dead, there are more people to be happy. Quantitatively and proportionally, democracies are able to sustain higher populations of happy than, say, socialistic governmental systems. Let's take China for example. In USD, Chinese people earn about $6000 of GDP per capita (there are 1.3 billion people in China, most of them are poor: that's a lot of unhappy people). In the U.S. the GDP per capita is about $50,000.[4]I posit that people with very little money and low living standards are much more unhappy then those with more money and higher standards of living. In terms of happiness, democratic governmental systems are statistically more happy.Summary- My argument for democracy is that its strengths outweigh its weaknesses. All my strength arguments remain intact. - My opponent attempts to point out some of democracy's weaknesses but fails to correlate it to democracy's general performance and well-being- My opponent fails to mention and therefore drops my point on partisanship. - My opponent drops his initial statement on corruption, probably in light of my oligarchy =/= democracy argument which he also drops- My opponent never really addresses my economic argumentSources:[1]http://www.ipsos-mori.com...;[2]http://www.ipsos-mori.com...[3]http://academic.mu.edu...[4]http://data.worldbank.org...I pass the final baton to CON.