On Democracy

Democracy, it has been said, is the worst form of government except for all the others.

I don't know about the others, but let me tell you. Democracy is really really stupid.

It's a great idea in theory, but so were Socialism, Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative, not the movies, although Episodes 1-3 certainly qualify for this list), and Betamax. Democracy is a great idea in which men and women choose their own destinies, where the laws that affect the populace are chosen by the populace.

The people who decided Democracy was awesome failed to remember that the populace is, by and large, pretty stupid. In Athens, hailed as the first Democracy, only the rich landed men over forty were allowed to vote, experienced politicians and philosophers all. In the United States, a country that prides itself on its democratic fervor, the founding fathers wanted only landed white males to vote. Men they felt were educated, intelligent and more likely to make choices beneficial for all. In fact, soon after the formation of our fair country, several of the founding fathers thought they had been too inclusive with voting rights, that the country would be overwhelmed by the rule of the uneducated masses, that the masses would vote selfishly only for what was best for them and not what was best for all.

And the founding fathers, of course, were unselfish and noble men who never gave a thought to their own personal finances when rebelling against taxes. Who, of course, did not keep their own fortunes in mind when they crafted the country themselves.

Some might say here that the expansion of voting rights nullifies selfishness. When everyone votes, if everyone votes for what is best for them, the will of the majority will be fulfilled.

I'm going to give you a small example here. Not long ago, there was a very controversial ruling in California. Proposition 8.

Before I talk about my example, I should explain a bit about the referendum system in California for those of you who aren't from the US or just can't find yourselves to care about the legal system of our fair state. Most states have their laws made by legislators who are voted into office by the people. In California, a lot of our laws work on the referendum system, where laws are put directly before the people and the people choose what is best for them.

Yeah, it's stupid. You'll see why in a second. Proposition 8 was a hugely controversial topic that was watched from all over the country. Prop 8 was about the outlawing of same-sex marriage in the state and it passed, meaning that gay marriage is outlawed in a state that contains San Francisco (I know, ridiculous right?)

But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about today is Prop 2. Prop 2 was on the same ballot, and it was about a matter slightly less dear to our hearts. It was about the legal size of chicken cages.

Here you have everyone in the state voting for the size of chicken cages, in a state with some of the most populated urban areas of the country. What does your average wannabe Hollywood actress know about the size of chicken cages? Your average cubicle worker? Yet you have these people voting on new laws based only on the information they have from commercials for and against Prop 2. How many people can make an informed decision about chicken cages based on biased media? How many people would actually care enough to research about the proper size of chicken cages by themselves?

Rule by the mob is too easily influenced by fear, by propaganda. Democracy simply puts the people with the best advertisements in control. There is too little logic and too much emotion in the masses, too few people who actually make decisions that aren't influenced by personal position or emotional commercials.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on Democracy. I'd like to think so. Especially in America (and I'm not proud of this) voters aren't educated enough about the issues they vote on. We're simply too absorbed with our everyday lives to seriously look at all the issues we vote on. So thus the fault lies with America and not the system.

In America, we are all Kings and Queens. We are all Presidents, all signers of bills and approvers of legislature. Should we be figureheads, mere signers of the pieces of paper politicians put in front of us?

In a Democracy, it is the responsibility of every voter to educate themselves, to know the real impacts of what we vote on, not the slanted views of commercials.

That's why Democracy is such a stupid system. It depends on the minds of every voter to be logical, to be unswayed by selfishness and emotional pleas, or at least the minds of the majority of voters.

And that's just not the way things work. Democracy, like Socialism, is a system based on how the world should be. It just doesn't work.

It's a beautiful idea in theory though.

On Government

WARNING: This is not an authoritative thesis. This is just my own musings and almost certainly refutable by any college student actually taking a class on governmental philosophy.

I touched on this topic a bit yesterday, so I'll go a bit more in depth here.

The essence of government is the giving up of individual liberty for safety. By giving up the right to decide everything for ourselves, we also gain the security of knowing that certain things will be provided for us. Things like welfare spring to mind, though there are other examples, such as civil liberties.

The first government, most likely, was some kind of oligarchy. Some leader of a band received the allegiance of his followers in exchange for the increased availability of food. A coordinated, decisive band of hunters were much more likely to bring down prey than a lone tracker.

The need for a leader in this band is not immediately self-evident. If they all know what they're doing, then shouldn't they share the food equally?

That's only until you consider how much man instinctively likes to argue. We love to do it. We are also selfish bastards. Both of those are the driving forces behind why Socialism really doesn't work that well. We like having stuff, especially food. And if we work slightly harder than anyone else, we feel like we should get the lion's share. And if two people feel like that they did more work than the other, fighting ensues and probably ends up with injury for one or the other.

Humanity needs an alpha male, an Ubermensch, someone who can tell everyone else to shut up and eat what's in front of them. We need some one person in charge, at least when we roamed the land in small groups. The autocratic system works pretty well in small groups, with the autocrat always taking the lion's share, but assuring food for all. Even with the death of the roaming lifestyle, autocrats of small towns of farmers works well. The autocrat can spend all his time exclusively working out how to coordinate the town in defense, or simply how to run it daily because he doesn't need to farm food for himself. With more consistent farming practices, as farms became more and more self-sufficient, the need for a coordinator of people fades, and people become largely self-sufficient governmentally as well, though the need for a community persists, in case of hard times. Thus the autocrat is reduced to a nominal position, or removed together as farms depend once in a long while on each others' goodwill.

However, as humanity clumped in bigger and bigger groups, neither simple self-sufficiency nor autocracy would work. Self-sufficiency no longer worked because there were no people who could specialize in making better products than the farms could create themselves. People like cobblers, blacksmiths, specialized trades that required food but did not make it themselves. Farmers needed to trade with the tradesmen, and the tradesmen needed food from farmers. Again, coordination was needed.

However, you couldn't simply have a true autocracy (here, I mean not just a government where only one person has all power, but a government made entirely of one person) with larger amounts of people. True autocracy requires each individual to personally give up some of what they have to the autocrat. However, bigger is merely smaller on a bigger scale. Bigger is different.

Here's an example I've heard. Say you're an actor or an actress and you say to yourself that you will answer every single piece of fan mail you ever receive personally. At first, this isn't too hard. Just an hour a day as the letters trickle in. You get to have personal conversations with your fans. But then you star in a movie and the amount of mail triples. No problem. You just spend three hours a day. That's not too different. Suddenly, your movie becomes a cult classic and you get twelve times the mail. No problem, you'll just spend.... wait. You now receive so much fan mail that it would take thirty six hours a day to reply. Even if you just take the time to write thank you notes, you have to spend twenty hours a day replying, and you still have to do things like sleep and act, so that's out of the question. Even if you have form letters and all you do is sign, it still takes you ten hours. Which is doable, but only barely. And you're not really doing what you promised to do, are you?

The way in which governing becomes different with the first stage of bigger is simple. First of all, you can no longer know approximately what everyone is doing, because there's so many of them. You can't organize people any more. Secondly, there are now a shitload of them and only one of you. How do you enforce your law now? As long as you could physically cow the majority of your tribe or village one on one that was all right. But with enough people unhappy with you, there's nothing you can do.

Thus gives way to the second form of government. "Democracy" (or really, oligarchy.) We see this happening in Ancient Greece, with the rise of Athens. Democracy, the rule of the people, is the most selfish of the governments. Democracy requires every single person to want to participate in the ruling of everything.

And lemme tell you, Democracy is a stupid system.

(More on that topic tomorrow. That is one I know MUCH more about.)