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![[1108] Republics](/comics/2019-08-22-1108-republics.png "[1108] Republics")
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- Caption: Republic of […]
- Caption: People’s Republic of […]
- Caption: People’s Democratic Republic of […]
- Caption: Peaceful and Serene People’s Democratic Republic of […]
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I love […], sure they have atrocities on a biweekly basis but where else can we get affordable electronics and cheap consumables? Plus, isn’t Glorious Leader […] so very meme-able? He wore a hat once, that was quite silly!
Got that right! It’s a pretty hard and fast rule that no country that bothers calling itself a “democratic republic” is one.
The more adjectives a country uses in its official name, the more of a shithole ((c) D. Trump) the country is. #Facts
Boy am I glad I don’t live in San Marino
And if you want to see a really good quality of life, check out kingdoms, such as the United Kingdom and Qatar, or Principalities, such as Liechtenstein and Monaco, or the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
Maybe this whole “people’s power” thing is over rated…
@ bhum:
What about San Marino? It’s basically an Italian town on a hill.
MaxArt wrote:
San Marino, officially the Republic of San Marino, also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino […]
The foundation of prosperity is strong personal property law (and rule of law in general). If the fruit of your labor can be snatched up by any jerk with a badge or a title, the only sane action is to hide it or not produce at all. As government becomes more concerned with dividing the pie than encouraging making more pie, corruption and stagnation follow like night after day.
Fun fact. I have far far far more respect for horrible countries that skip the propaganda and call themselves “Evil Dictatorship of Oppressivia”.
There does tend to be a certain end result of countries that name themselves like that.
“People’s Democratic Dictatorship” appears in the Chinese constitution. 1/3 of the way…
Gneraly, the key to a high QoL for the everyday citizen is a democracy, where the people keeping the powerful in power, and thus the people getting indirectly paid to keep them in power, make up much of the population. In a military-backed dictatorship, the money pays off the army, and the populace get nothing.
CGP Grey- The Rules for Rulers.
And of course, propaganda motivates citizen employees who must also be pleased but are not worthy of the big payouts.
Brett Bellmore wrote:
Well, there are a few exceptions to this supposedly “hard and fast” rule: the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.
…and then there’s the crud that went on with the Galactic Republic.
Difficult subject:
(1) Socialist/Communist countries are in truth just Oligarchies, which are worse at exploiting the ‘working class’ than anything else
(2) The free market system, while better, clearly does have unjust and unstable elements.
(3) The party system of liberal countries tears the citizens apart. It is one of the main reasons people from left and right yell at each other & often violently oppose each other.
It’s a bit tricky to work out a better society or government, but we’ll eventually find a way.
At some point you realize the adjectives are less political descriptors and more like D&D modifiers. “My country is a Democratic Constitutional Republic, so I do +5 against Socialism and +2 vs Soviet Ice Bears” or some such
You forgot “People’s Glorious Revolutionary Republic of…”
Arent wrote:
Not if we land under a single government first. At that point, most of the impetus to try new things goes out the window.
Monopolies, of anything, rarely, if ever, outproduce competing systems.
That goes for buyers, sellers, and rulers.
@ Turrosh Mak:
So true.
@ SeanR:
And yet I run into so many people younger than me who think all our problems would be solved by a borderless one-state-world under a single “enlightened” government — bonus points for “of the working class”.
Sigh.
Communism or food, you don’t get both. It’s not food’s fault, or the people’s fault, it’s Communism’s fault.
And what the Grave of the Fireflies in going on in the last panel? Did they already eat Cloud, or was he press-ganged by the military before Sandra could do so, leaving them to starve fatally?
Vicious Sand wrote:
You forgot killed because he couldn’t meet his monthly quota, ya know, “for the people”
Killjoy- That’s just naievity about barbarianism, and successful misinterpretation of the stability of the global food production. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a one-world currency- which we don’t have so that A can be played off against B while transferring to C and getting more when you buy from D to send to A. If the working class ever rose up, you could start taking bets on which would happen first: the robot war machines, or the robot worker.
This is very true. But a cautionary note: When leaving the American Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman what form of government they had settled on. “A republic, Madam,” replied Franklin, “*if you can keep it*.” A republic (and, for that matter, a democratic monarchy) requires certain things- acts, shared beliefs, and more- from its people. Those aren’t always present.
So, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland is a shithole? Good, thanks to know. Note the “is”? That’s the one still out there. Just think about that, please.
Thats why all of them should be reorganized into firs Galactic Empire…
Arent wrote:
Which liberal countries are you talking about?
By which I mean…. this comment here feels VERY American, in that the USA is one of the countries where the “Left vs Right” thing tends to have this strong of an effect.
If you have a reasonable voting system, and good journalism/media, then this effect isn’t *too* hard to avoid.
There’s a few exceptions, but it does seem like most countries that call themselves the “People’s Demcratic Republic” of whatever are actually just dictatorships.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting a one-world currency- which we don’t have so that A can be played off against B”
Actually there is, which is that the world economy isn’t sufficiently integrated to support one currency well. There’s a whole economic theory of “optimal currency area”, with Robert Mundell as a leading name. The EU didn’t meet the conditions for it, and many countries in the eurozone have been suffering because of it.
The shorthand is that you want fiscal union as well as monetary union, along with banking and labor market unification. The USA is decent: most government spending is federal, same level that the dollar is managed on; welfare is largely federal, banks are regulated and insured by the federal level; also labor mobility is fairly high (regions can still suffer bad pricing, but people can escape.) The only one the EU has is labor mobility, which is somewhat inhibited by different languages and cultures.
The whole world was on one currency for a while with the gold standard. It didn’t last long, because it didn’t work well as economies diverged. With floating currencies, a region in recession can have all prices lowered automatically by currency decline; with a single money, price stickiness prevents easy adaptation.
Brett Bellmore wrote:
Sure ’bout that?
SeanR wrote:
We’re trying for 2000 years now (Platos criticism of republics & tyrannies is still pretty up to date), so it might seem bleak, but bear with humanity another 1000 years… 😉
ninegardens wrote:
The problem is that political parties compete over mandates/jobs/power. It is much easier to defame the other part of society than to convince them by doing a good job.
Yes, if you have “good journalism” you can avoid that effect a little. But journalists are biased. If a newspaper says it is unbiased that’s already the first dishonesty.
@ Arent:
Well, there is Anarchism. But 1. People of every political spectrum see it as an oxymoron. 2. Frequently gets crushed by said spectrum due to having organized polity and military (see: Spanish Civil War and Black Army of Ukraine).
OK, Novil, you are not a marxist, we get it! 😛 Well, nobody is perfect… 🙁
ninegardens wrote:
“Liberal” means something different on our side of the big pond. He’s probably not using it not as synonym for “somewhat leftist” but for rather as opposed to “suppressive”.
Currently there’s a tendency in many of those non-suppressive countries to over-emphasise the differences in people’s opinions.
Personally, I don’t think the underlying difference are any stronger than they used to be. Or that they are less pronounced in a suppressive country.
Suppressive countries just do a “better” job in stuffing things under the rug. In a modern style democracy with all the media (including internet) every single voice can make itself be heard, without the the immediate thread of being violently silenced.
While that’s – in my humble opinion – generally a good thing, this doesn’t mean that every single of those voices has good arguments for their cause or is telling the truth.
That’s a general misconception of most extremists: You sure have the right to tell everybody your point of view. You don’t have the right that people listen to you, let alone accept your arguments.
Also known as the People’s Republic of Tyranny.
Vicious Sand wrote:
People’s Democratic Republic of China has both communism AND food, thank you very much. In fact it’s one of, out of all the countries I’ve seen/lived in and that ‘s a lot, where food is the cheapest or easiest to grab. Now North Korea that’d be another story, even if they were not so stupidly bound by out of date rulers, the country can only produce, at best (perfect weather etc..) about 80% of it’s needs.
Equating food and political system isn’t the problem anymore. Equating food and politicians, otoh, is still pretty much today’s special, cf. Venezuela.
@ Arent:
As long as you’re aware that your sources are biased, I think it’s OK. Every single sentient being has their own perspective, everything anybody says is always a “subjective” point of view.
If you want objectivity you should try to verify your sources. Like, there’s so many media out there … instead of choosing who fits your own opinion best, why not having a look at several of them?
Hit the head of the nail squarely with this one! Accurate AF in my POV.
What’s the difference of “republic of” and “peoples republic of”?
Same as jacket and straitjacket.
Well… this is depressing.
I’m going to skip the socio/political stuff and just say that of the vast amount of strips and pages in the many comics I read on and offline, this is the greatest emotional response I have felt in a strip without dialogue, which is doubly impressive given that it is a standalone strip and not a cliffhanger or climax from a long running arc. The facial expressions really convey the struggle and loss. Thank you for making amazing art.
Wow, that’s intense, but sadly accurate. And the art is fantastic.
@ Arent:
That’s not fully accurate. While different parties competing is to be expected as they want power, different political systems cause different interactions – the two-party system like in the US makes parties become much like football teams, where they are always at each other’s throats, and try to rely on popularity. It’s why in the US it’s far more important that a candidate is “likable” than “competent”.
Multiple party system on the other hand doesn’t usually have a party have a huge chunk of the vote most of the time (it happens, but rarely for long) so they need to form coalition governments with the other parties in order to run things – in other words, they are forced to cooperate.
There are trade-offs for both, of course. With two-party your choices are very limited and you get the level of divide we see in teh US right now, but since all the power is usually in the current ruling party, it’s easy to make decisions. Multiple-party on the other hand may have them deliberating and arguing for long periods of time, causing gridlock, but ultimately will produce a decision that has had many more points of view discussed and taken into account.
“United” Kingdom. Suuuuuuure.
Not even close to unity, and we have a Queen.
One shudders to think about what a “Glorious People’s Republic” would be like…
@ Malberry:
I, for my part, would prefer a the system as defined by the German constitution over how it’s currently practiced. If you’d follow that constitution by the letter, each delegate should base their decisions SOLELY on their own “conscience” – and not on the will of their faction or political party.
It would probably more closely resemble the public will and might silence a few people who tend to complain about “compromises” as if it were a bad thing.
On the other hand it would make politics a lot more … interesting – in terms of “you never really know what happens next”. And it would probably require a LOT more work for the average MP, since they would have to find own answers to every little question.
And people wonder why I get anxious every time an American insists that the United States are not a Democracy but a Federal Republic…
noname wrote:
Thank you, yes. People who fastidiously feel the need to mention this distinction, usually do as a reply to someone talking about legitimate democratic processes and I’m like, “so what you are saying is that those processes are undesirable?”
Clairefields wrote:
IIRC, the OTHER one was the German Democratic Republic, so the naming issue applied for it as well. The English name for modern Germany (and old West Germany) was the Federal Republic, so maybe the rule only applies to the English name?
ninegardens wrote:
It seems to be particularly strong in the US at the moment, but it’s not the only country which has had this effect. Seems to be something that’s developed in the past couple of decades rather than being endemic to the system – bipartisanship used to be less “once in a blue moon” than it is now.
Swedish Chef wrote:
China got there by dumping communism as an economic system
@ Draxynnic:
US is special in the sense that you have a very indirect, “winner takes all” system, which tends to favor larger parties; above that, most of your states are sure bets for one of the sides. Thus the only “important” votes are those few undecided once who happen to live in a swing state.
If you don’t live in a swing state you can vote what ever you want, and it won’t matter much, since the vast majority of your neighbors will vote like they did the last few decades. If you do live in a swing state, but have a strong tendency towards one side or the other, your vote doesn’t really matter either 😉
OK. That’s probably put way too harsh … but you get my idea.
Such a system is probably pretty frustrating to live in and it’s no surprise that it tends to polarize … after all those few votes that DO count must be won, one way or the other.
(Disclaimer: I don’t live in the US, and maybe it’s just my prejudice speaking.)