The Debate (Week 29); Democracy or Dictatorships, which is more effective?

Quite a difficult question for this debate, personally I don't think there is really a big difference between these two political hierarchies, but let's go to answering the questions presented.

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Democracy or dictatorship: Which is better for stability and progress?

I see this in a different way than many people, a dictatorship is a system where one guy holds all of the power, supposedly. In reality this is not true, a dictator has a lot of henchmen, people who are willing to enforce the view of the leaders, because the dictator is actually just the figure head, he has plenty of people around him who also wield huge amounts of power, and of course this clique of people control the military or police or whatever security forces are present in the country. Democracy on the other hand is supposed to be a fair representation of the desires of the people. This, of course is far from true, what we call democracy is in the best of cases just a dictatorship of a majority, the guys who got the most votes win, even if it was only by one vote. And even then all you do get is a few people who have the power to represent the people, but based on their personal views hardly that of the people who voted for them.

To me neither system is good, I think both do have certain virtues, but both are extremely vulnerable to corruption. But just for the sake of this debate I will go with dictatorship. However you look at it, for a dictator to be and stay in power he has to have the approval of a large percentage of the population or else he would not be able to govern. And being a dictator, not having a parliament or congress to hinder him, he probably will get things done. OK, I would rather have a change of government every year with nobody being able to be reelected, but no politician would approve that.

How does democracy help a country move forward compared to a dictatorship?

I live in Honduras, we have had dictatorships, democracy, and interim governments by the hundreds through 200 years. Not once has there been any noticeable change in the structure of the country, we are mainly a country of a very few haves and a lot of have nots. no single government has ever had any significant impact in the development of the nation. Of course things have been built, laws have been set, relations with foreign countries and entities have been established, but I would say neither dictatorship or democracy has been a major player in the well being of this country. Actually every government has had to do what the elites and foreign corporations and governments have wanted them to do. So to me neither democracy or dictatorships have been a motor for development.

Can a dictatorship handle tough times better than a democracy?

Probably, a strong hand will have more latitude in what laws to put in place to try and solve tough problems in tough times. Plus a dictator will probably enforce what he sees as the way out of a problem through his security services. Democracies tend to be rather soft when faced with tough problems, and the debates in congress or parliament will go on forever until the problem solves itself or until it is too late to solve it.

Why is personal freedom important for a country to grow under different types of governments?

What is personal freedom? I have lived here for 62 years and i have always felt myself free, under dictators or under a duly elected government. Granted, when I was young the army would forcefully recruit young men wherever they found them and it was a two year service, those were the only days when I felt my freedom threatened, I mean you had to be on the lookout, nobody wanted to join the army, the pay was ridiculous plus the food was bad. Nowadays there is no recruiting and the army turns people away because the pay is not that bad, the food is now quite good, plus you do nothing while in the army, just the boot camp is tough. So I really do not know what not having freedom would be like, I have been to Costa Rica and Guatemala and both are quite free, friends in Nicaragua which is actually a dictatorship also tell me there is enough freedom there. So maybe freedom has a lot of different presentations.

Well, as you can see I do not really approve of either democracy or dictatorship, but then what would we have? Anarchists want no government, but that is the ideal of communism too, a place where the workers own the means of production without a government hindering them. Sounds good except when you think that no government would also mean no borders, no laws, I mean it gets so complicated that there is really no answer. Then we have libertarians whose real goal is that most things are controlled by private enterprises, does nobody notice we already have that? That is exactly why the number of billionaires has exploded in the last thirty years. unfortunately the number of poor people has also increased to huge quantities.

In the end the truth is all political systems are just stepping stones for the few in detriment of the many. And no, I have no answers, I also only have questions. Well that was a long answer to what should be a simple question, but to me it was very difficult to answer and even then I don't think I did too good.