Purple Prince posted:

The immortal philosopher god-king sounds good: unfortunately we can't invent them because the inventors would bring their own biases to the process.

Superman seems like he'd be a pretty good god-king to be honest, and given he's an alien he's not likely to fall prey to the same biases as an AI overlord. Failing that, maybe we should get started on making humanity into a proper superorganism with a hive mind?

I think the assumption in the debate is that democracy is perfectible, though, and evidence would suggest that democracy is probably the least-perfectible of all political systems. This is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand you don't get the benefits of a benevolent dictatorship; on the other you don't get the problems of a genocidal single-party state.

So we're arguing how you could improve democracy: I don't think the problem with American democracy is that it lacks points of entry into the process. There's a ton of ways to get involved in democratic processes in the UK and America, and it's pretty easy for any citizen of those countries to 'have a say'. Whether it effects any meaningful change is another story. The problem with both of these countries isn't that politicians don't listen to the people (they do, albeit in a distorted way), the problem is that they listen to the people that mattern to them and don't govern in the interests of the people.

An autocratic regime is free to abuse the population, but they're also free to take unpopular and necessary decisions that most people don't understand the rationale behind.

Ultimately, what is the goal of a state: to be responsive to the population's wants, or to provide them with what they need?