Democracy: The God That Failed

Defense of R2:Specifications:I referred to a specific type of monarchy (hereditary and based on private property) that historically existed and thus cannot be considered unrealistic. This was specifically permitted in the rules. The Wikipedia page was for supplemental information, not to defend my own stipulation.Recall that Con's definition is so flawed it describes any political system.Criterion:All Con says is that the supposed relationship I am suggesting in my arguments is 'silly'. That is not analysis. There is certainly an inverse relationship between monarchy and freedom vis-a-vis anarchy, and he is correct in this sense, but we are comparing monarchy to democracy.Con does not actually challenge the criterion.C1. WarCon oddly asserts that I have violated the ceteris paribus assumption by limiting my analysis of the cost of private wars to wars between hereditary rulers (in other words, to nearly all private wars in history). This is clearly not a fair objection. He cites no example of any other private wars, so we have only mine to go off anyway.Con provides no alternative explanation for why military spending has quadrupled with the rise of democracy despite increasingly peaceful conditions, so my reasons must be taken as the only option. See my reasons for the correlation in R2.C2. Time PreferenceCon cites no real evidence whatsoever to back his claims that monarchs managed funds irresponsibly. The fact that two people have allegedly been bad rulers is not a counterargument. All the metrics of sound fiscal policy were much stronger under monarchy than they are today [1]. See almost everything I wrote in R2.Con says that people in a democracy will elected far-sighted leaders. At face value, this is equivalent to my stipulating that all kings will be nice people but adding in a middleman in the form of voters. For why the democratic leaders won't actually behave this way and people won't elect good leaders, see R2, C2 and R3, CA5.C3. Economic CalculationCon does not seem to understand what this argument is about. A democrat is in principle incapable of running a country efficiently because he does not have a price mechanism to aid resource allocation; a monarch at least could manage effectively in principle because he has such a tool at his disposal. This argument is not “unsourced” because I explained how it is logically (praxeologically) certain, and Con offered no objections to my deductive reasoning, so it stands. Furthermore, the lottery of getting a monarch who is a sound businessman is preferable to the democratic system that ensures the election of demagogues.C4. Legitimacy and Public Relations Dropped and therefore conceded. This is a serious blow for Con, whose own criterion is personal and political freedom. He can lose the debate on this point alone because he has accepted that my system better fulfills his own criterion. It's strange that he would pick person and political freedom as a criterion after seeing this argument and then not address it.C5. Monarchy Contra SocialismIn R2, I gave reasons why a monarch would tend to implement more capitalistic policies and a democrat would tend to implement more socialistic policies. Con did not challenge my argument that capitalism is better than socialism or that monarchy tends to promote capitalism. All he did was point out that alternatives results are possible, which is true but trivial. The real argument is never addressed.C6. Social DegeneracyCon's response to this argument consists of mean words and praise for abortion and unemployment, which are apparently well established as the signs of a successful society. He also claims that it is impossible to get data for societies that existed long in the past, but monarchies existed in Europe as recently as the last 100 years and were very successful (the Austrio-Hungarian empire until its defeat in WW I) [2].Once again Con says that I cannot prove causation but does not offer an alternative explanation, so my explanation must stand.Voting Guide:Conduct: ProI have not violated any of the rules in R1, so I am eligible for this point. Throughout the debate and especially in R3, Con was unnecessarily rude in his characterization of my arguments, calling them 'silly', 'pathetic', 'stupid', 'baseless', etc. It would probably not have been too much to ask that he keep his opinion to himself instead of trying to present it as objective fact. My tone has been much more fair and objective even though Con has demonstrated frustrating inability to grasp several of my arguments. His constant criticism of my sources while limiting himself to the dictionary might also strike some as hypocritical.Spelling and Grammar: TieArguments: ProCon dropped my C5, which appeals to his own criterion. He did not present any coherent criticism to my other R2 arguments, instead opting to simply declare them not properly defended, unsourced, or in violation of the ceteris paribus assumption (that he seemed not to properly understand). Despite criticizing my arguments as such, Con offered no alternative explanations or data of his own and routinely ignored the ceteris paribus assumption himself by citing Hitler and Stalin as monarchs. All of my arguments present data and logical arguments explaining the relationship between the data and the theory. Con does not challenge my data or theory with alternatives, he just evaluates it as unconvincing. Absent any alternatives, my explanations must be taken as valid.Contrast to my response to Con's arguments, in which I cited dozens of real world examples and provided theoretical analysis to better explain the data. For instance, I argued that censorship in the Middle East was linked to cultural conservative rather than monarchy. I also provided examples of the way the democratic state violates the rights of its citizens to counter Con's claim that voters will restrain the government. This use of alternative explanations and opposing evidence seldom appears in Con's counterarguments. All he does is give a negative evaluation of my argument. I don't bother mentioning that Con's argument is weaker than mine in my own opinion because that proves nothing.Sources: ProCon seems discontent at the fact that I cited a book over and over again in a debate that was named after the book. The stated purpose of the debate was to defend a thesis that was not my own using arguments that are not my own, so this approach should basically be expected. I referenced arguments by page number to give proper credit and so that readers could check the data supporting my claims when I said, for instance, that something had “increased” or “decreased” without going into further detail. The book is available online, so this feature could be quite useful for checking my statistics. It also enables readers to check the footnotes and discover that the sources Hoppe himself used are quite credible.Comparing my sources to Con's, the winner is evident. Nearly all of my sources are from published books or articles in peer-reviewed journals. I used Wikipedia to cite statistics on well established general facts. Wikipedia is unlikely to be wrong about random technical information and is superior to print sources in this regard because it is continuously updated. Con tries to challenge my sources by seriously asserting that I might have altered the Wikipedia article on monarchy and by noting that trivial fact that Hoppe is trying to criticize democracy. Should I use pro-democracy sources in an anti-democracy debate? Con himself uses very few sources and makes historical claims that are not backed by anything. He has a total of seven external citations to back his entire argument, some of which are irrelevant (the Constitution as an example of a social contract, the dictionary) and one of which ironically is Wikipedia.Sources:http://www.debate.org...