Based on your description of democracy I can't help but wonder what country you are discussing? You are definitely not talking about the United States. We live under a corrupt fascist oligarchy whose primary objective is constant war. Our media is populated by members of the security services. Our internet is censored. Members of congress are not permitted to write bills or offer amendments. Democracy requires free speech above all.
The US doesn't rank that high on democracy and freedom indices though, so I am not surprised by your experience. There was even a Princeton study which concluded that the US was an oligarchy rather than a democracy: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Having followed US society and politics for several decades I can relate to that description. There is definitely a lot of problems in the US political system, such as candidate selection almost exclusively being determined by the rich donor class making up 1% of the population.
But of course plenty of democracies work well and I don't think the US experience suggests that democracy is a bad idea. I see a lot of fans of the Chinese communist party who use the US experience to argue democracy is bad. Unfortunately that is a negative about the high international profile of the US. Bad things that happen in the US reflects negatively on the whole West as the US is the most visible representative of Western society in the world thanks to Hollywood and other media being US dominated.
What is a "democratic decision making process?" Is that where we are permitted to send preprinted ballots through the mail to confirm a preselected member of the ruling class who will thenceforth make economic decisions on our behalf? Because if you think that is somehow democratic, then we have different definitions.
The free market allows people to make decisions for themselves. Everyone gets a vote at runtime. That is the only democratic decision making process I know of.
I am talking about working democracy. I don't think we should define democracy as whatever variant is dysfunctional. I think what you are describing is a very dysfunctional form of democracy. In fact what you describe seems to be oligarchy and not democracy.
In a working democracy there is an open and pluralist debate with a good selection of candidates who represent well policies that common people actually want, rather than say the interests of a small elite. You have well informed debates to help you select candidates without being flooded by lies and propaganda that manipulates people.
Yes, you can make individual purchase decision in a free market, but plenty of important decisions in life are not purchase decisions. The free market represents individual decisions as I described. That is not the same as democracy which is about collective decision making. It is about many people together making decisions that influence the whole group rather than single individuals.
You can surely argue you prefer individual decision making, but lets not redefine common terms such as democracy to mean individual decision making. If everybody invents their own vocabulary and assign unique meanings to words it will be very hard for people to communicate and discussion different ideas.
If you don't like democracy, you can just state that. You don't need to redefine it to mean something entirely different that you happen to like.
There is no "democratic process" in collectivism. Economic decisions are taken by members of the ruling class, the uneducated few, who will not suffer, and for reasons of religious zeal (climate change) or political maneuvering (destroy Russia). One only has to look at the disastrous effects of economic decisions made by ignorant EU bureaucrats that are already leading to widespread poverty and loss of basic human rights. That doesn't happen under a free market.
It is just a word to make it easy to distinguish between making individual selfish decision or decision for the common good of a group. You can mentally replace every instance where I use the word "collectivism" with whatever word you prefer to describe looking after the common good of people using a democratic decision making process. It is not that important to me what word you prefer to use as long as you understand the point I am making.
Anyway I think I made it quite clear in the article from the way I used the word "collectivism" that I was not referring to Soviet style oligarchy and elite rule. I don't think you can satisfy the common good if you don't have a democratic system. How do you know what benefits most people if the people have no voice? It makes no sense.
I am personally opposed to EU in its current incarnation, but even I think you are grossly exaggerating how bad EU is. EU has been a major driver of deregulation and privatization across Europe and other neoliberal ideas which has undermined the interests of common people national sovereignty. Yet, I don't think the EU should be abandoned but rather the ambitions of the EU project scaled back. I don't believe in a United States of Europe. It is a bad idea to try to unite all European countries into one massive superstate.
The free market doesn't really have anything to do with human rights. A free market describes an economic system not a political system. Whether you have basic human rights or not comes down to the political system, not the economic system. Even dictatorships can have free markets. Singapore is a quite a free market oriented society, but not particularly democratic and not a perfect human rights record.
Based on your description of democracy I can't help but wonder what country you are discussing? You are definitely not talking about the United States. We live under a corrupt fascist oligarchy whose primary objective is constant war. Our media is populated by members of the security services. Our internet is censored. Members of congress are not permitted to write bills or offer amendments. Democracy requires free speech above all.
The US doesn't rank that high on democracy and freedom indices though, so I am not surprised by your experience. There was even a Princeton study which concluded that the US was an oligarchy rather than a democracy: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Having followed US society and politics for several decades I can relate to that description. There is definitely a lot of problems in the US political system, such as candidate selection almost exclusively being determined by the rich donor class making up 1% of the population.
But of course plenty of democracies work well and I don't think the US experience suggests that democracy is a bad idea. I see a lot of fans of the Chinese communist party who use the US experience to argue democracy is bad. Unfortunately that is a negative about the high international profile of the US. Bad things that happen in the US reflects negatively on the whole West as the US is the most visible representative of Western society in the world thanks to Hollywood and other media being US dominated.
What is a "democratic decision making process?" Is that where we are permitted to send preprinted ballots through the mail to confirm a preselected member of the ruling class who will thenceforth make economic decisions on our behalf? Because if you think that is somehow democratic, then we have different definitions.
The free market allows people to make decisions for themselves. Everyone gets a vote at runtime. That is the only democratic decision making process I know of.
I am talking about working democracy. I don't think we should define democracy as whatever variant is dysfunctional. I think what you are describing is a very dysfunctional form of democracy. In fact what you describe seems to be oligarchy and not democracy.
In a working democracy there is an open and pluralist debate with a good selection of candidates who represent well policies that common people actually want, rather than say the interests of a small elite. You have well informed debates to help you select candidates without being flooded by lies and propaganda that manipulates people.
Yes, you can make individual purchase decision in a free market, but plenty of important decisions in life are not purchase decisions. The free market represents individual decisions as I described. That is not the same as democracy which is about collective decision making. It is about many people together making decisions that influence the whole group rather than single individuals.
You can surely argue you prefer individual decision making, but lets not redefine common terms such as democracy to mean individual decision making. If everybody invents their own vocabulary and assign unique meanings to words it will be very hard for people to communicate and discussion different ideas.
If you don't like democracy, you can just state that. You don't need to redefine it to mean something entirely different that you happen to like.
There is no "democratic process" in collectivism. Economic decisions are taken by members of the ruling class, the uneducated few, who will not suffer, and for reasons of religious zeal (climate change) or political maneuvering (destroy Russia). One only has to look at the disastrous effects of economic decisions made by ignorant EU bureaucrats that are already leading to widespread poverty and loss of basic human rights. That doesn't happen under a free market.
It is just a word to make it easy to distinguish between making individual selfish decision or decision for the common good of a group. You can mentally replace every instance where I use the word "collectivism" with whatever word you prefer to describe looking after the common good of people using a democratic decision making process. It is not that important to me what word you prefer to use as long as you understand the point I am making.
Anyway I think I made it quite clear in the article from the way I used the word "collectivism" that I was not referring to Soviet style oligarchy and elite rule. I don't think you can satisfy the common good if you don't have a democratic system. How do you know what benefits most people if the people have no voice? It makes no sense.
I am personally opposed to EU in its current incarnation, but even I think you are grossly exaggerating how bad EU is. EU has been a major driver of deregulation and privatization across Europe and other neoliberal ideas which has undermined the interests of common people national sovereignty. Yet, I don't think the EU should be abandoned but rather the ambitions of the EU project scaled back. I don't believe in a United States of Europe. It is a bad idea to try to unite all European countries into one massive superstate.
The free market doesn't really have anything to do with human rights. A free market describes an economic system not a political system. Whether you have basic human rights or not comes down to the political system, not the economic system. Even dictatorships can have free markets. Singapore is a quite a free market oriented society, but not particularly democratic and not a perfect human rights record.