This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Will The Self Cannibalization Of Democracy Only Be Stopped Through A Revolution Of Ideas?
The Editor-in-Chief of the otherwise quiet and non-descript Global Custodian magazine has written what can pass for an extremely controversial if not outright revolutionary essay on the topic of democracy, and specifically how our current regime has cannibalized itself, and is in dire need of a "revolution." Dominic Hobson says: "In a market, the cumulative expenditure of the modestly endowed easily trumps the expenditure of the rick. And even the rich are ultimately answerable to the market: They became rich by satisfying customers, and will remain rich only so long as they (or their investments) continue to satisfy consumers. Consumer sovereignty is far more powerful a constraint on the rich than political sovereignty. Indeed, even the erosion of the rich by democracy is ultimately self-defeating, for it eliminates that class of men and women in public life who are under no financial pressure to remain at their posts, pursuing policies in which they no longer believe. It is no coincidence that the democratization of politics has been accompanied by a decline in resignations on points of principle or of honor. The vast majority of modern politicians simply needs the money. But even the restoration of a rentier political class would not be enough to restore the blessings of good government. As long as politicians must compete for votes, they cannot govern honestly, or even disinterestedly. They cannot reverse decisions or policies that have proved unworkable. They must persist, even in intellectual error, and cannot escape a certain narrowness of vision. To release politicians from this predicament, a revolution is required. That revolution must be one not of blood, but of constitutional and political ideas. It must put an end to democracy without limits, before the prosperity of the species is destroyed and liberty extinguished...The only lasting solution to the plague of unlimited democracy is to attack democracy at its moral foundation: the political equality of the citizen." Well, the Greeks seem to have been wrong about a whole lot of other things. Is it so alien to ponder whether they also screwed up the most taken for granted concept of modern society as well?
Democracy Devours Itself
»
- 10456 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Max Planck, the great German physicist, thought that democracy was to blame for the rise of Hitler (referring to democracy as "the ascent of the rule of the crowds"; see "The Demon and the Quantum" by Robert Scully). Planck believed that the aristocracy and the intellectuals would have never allowed a demagogue to gain power.
Planck's son was hung by Hitler after taking part in the Valkyrie plot.
And it was aristocracy which gave rise to modern democracy, after centuries of living under the same inbreed idiots, lotsof people started thinking they could do better. As I said, there is no perfect system. We just keep pushing the limits of whatever we have until it breaks down and hopefully we learn a few more lessons for the next time.
A big part of what is currently wrong with democracy is that it doesn't have an actual budgeting process. The system is designed to overspend by buying enough votes to pass enormous bills that can only be vetoed in whole by the president. This serves to create debt in order to store capital, as government debt is the primary investment vehicle. A possible solution would be to break the spending bills down to their constituent items and have every legislator assign a percentage value to each item and then re-assemble them in order of preference. The president would draw the line at what would be funded. This would divide responsibility, allowing the legislature to prioritize, while giving the president final authority over total spending. Since making the cut would be graded on a curve, there would be much less incentive to trade favors and the percentage system would allow legislators to fine tune their granting of favors to other legislators and lobbyists. As the specific projects on the divide would much smaller than the constituency being asked to pay for them, it would limit the political incentive to overspend.
If we are going to put up with an income tax, for instance, we should at least be able to direct where our taxes go. What's one more form to fill out?
Big on the wars? Direct your taxes into "Defense." Wanna help pay the interest on the debt? Pony it on up! Congressional salaries? The poor babies. . .
(puking noises from the other room)
Where would you budget your, uh, contributions?
the department of the interior
This reminds me of Fareed Zakaria's "The Future of Freedom", which is on the SOUTHCOM reading list. Some of the same ideas about how democracy is not the same as liberty and indeed can (and does) conflict with it.
We had a revolution that can't be beat. You seen any revolutionaries in your lifetime that were worth a damn or could be trusted? We got a Constitution and a Republic. Trashing the Constitution lost us the Republic. Restoring the Constitution will get us the Republic back. It ain't rocket science.
It took only 3 years with that fantastic Constitution before George Washington used the army to collect new taxes!
I didn't notice any mention of this elsewhere: the US isn't a democracy
The founding fathers cherished individual liberty, but feared an open democracy because they understood the dangers of it. tyranny of the majority, demagogues, keys to the treasury, intellectual and moral laziness
that's why the US was set up as a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. They had a good system, but over the decades, their carefully crafted safe guards have been disabled or corrupted. No law or document can make up for ethics, morality, and sound judgement. Now the wolves are at the door. Do the sheeple keep watching New Jersey Idol, or do they do the hard boring work to fixing this mess. There is not much time.
wanna send a message?
elect Jim Traficant to every single seat in the House of Pigs.
every single one.
don't matter if it's against the "rules". farcism is as farcism does.
"do the right thing" was played over the moment spike lee moved to central park.
Yes! I wasn't going to vote, but you're on!
The founders never imagined that what passes for interpretation of the law today, where the judge decides what's right according to the dictates of his own personal conscience, then declares it "constitutional," would ever come to pass. But it seems to be the inevitable outcome of judges who are accountable to no one. When four out of five justices can't find a right to bear arms in the 2nd amendment, and prohibition of state violation of this right in the 14th, we're screwed.
This guy is all over the place, cannibalizing his own argument.
Regulation is bad, but one of the causes of the financial crisis was inadequate regulation?
He mocks the idea of any conception of society beyond the individual, and yet lauds the ethereal "market" as the cure to all ills? Where is this mysterious and magical bazaar where I can barter with 6 billion other invididuals to maximize my utility?
The biggest hole in his argument, perhaps, is in effectively saying most people are too stupid to have the vote and yet claiming at the same time that our actions as consumers are somehow more enlightened.
Hey Hobson, Friedman called- he wants his bullshit back.
It's too bad he layered on the usual market ideologue nonsense, because buried somewhere in there is an attempt at discussing the genuine problem of ballooning entitlements in many Western countries. I think.
Great article. Little to add. Anyone who hasn't seen Idiocracy should do so, not because it's funny, but because it's basically a documentary.
Over 2300 years ago, Aristotle got it right. Frankly I'm also starting to see some limited benefits of the otherwise ridiculous concept of heritable royalty. Put simply, if you wouldn't trust someone to manage your finances and watch your children, it's hard to see why you should trust them to vote. Look around you and see how many people you would extend that level of trust to.
Put simply-simply put. Your proposed test-well put. Milestones
If you wouldn't trust someone to manage your finances and watch your children, it's hard to see why you should trust them to lord over you, your family and your fellow countrymen.
Elitist scum thinking. Democracy might be suitable for selecting Prom queen.
Why did we need popularity contests again?
Oh, yeah. Because we need scum bastards who get off on power and pomp to tell the little people what to do. People who wouldn't even be able to pick their nose, let alone the duopolistic D or R.
The author is right. Unlimited democracy is a terrible idea. Maybe democracies should have some sort of written document that puts severe constraints on what the politicians can do. This document should ideally be very difficult to change and written in clear, plain English. I'm sure that whoever's in charge of interpreting it won't invent some nonsense hermeneutic to basically act like the document says the precise opposite of what the words themselves say.
That's a great idea! We should try that here in the USA!
I've said this many times in comments: Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment (which made Senators directly elected rather than appointed by state legislatures as was the intention of the Founding Fathers and the original Constitution).
It's very simple. Go back to the original Constitution. Get rid of all the pluralistic populist additions that have been added to the Constitution over the years to buy votes. While we're at it, repeal the Twenty-sixth Amendment (which gave children the right to vote).
I'd like one addition to the Constitution, however. Let's have a national referendum system like California's ballot initiatives. Want to start a war in a time of non-crisis? Let's all vote on it, not leave it up to Congress. Want to stop illegal migrants from Mexico? Let's all vote on it -- if the people vote overwhelmingly to stop it (and they will) then the migration will be ended. Let's stop leaving such essential decisions to corrupt politicians and elitist judges.
Did you see this already?
http://mises.org/media/1710
Hey, I'm on board. Seventeenth is a quick win for the states and the people. Much harder to corrupt 50 state legislatures than 100 people in the poshest of loony bins, thousands of miles away.
we can host an american idol, but call it american putin and the most popular idol gets to be our next dictator.
* (1st post ... wrong place)
Term limits may or may not work. The best thing we can do is make congress spend 10 months a year in their districts and only 2 months in DC. That will limit the lobbying and encourage constituent work
That's sort of how it worked for a long time until air conditioning ruined everything, allowing politicians to essentially take up permanent residence. Instead of Cap-and-Trade how about we outlaw AC in DC and kill two birds with one stone? Less activity in Washington has to be a net positive plus it will save energy and save money. Back In Black!
Outa sight...
Democracies always fail. Like the FED and fiat currencies it's only a matter of time before they blow up.
Time to trot out the history of great countries:
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
q From bondage to spiritual faith;
q From spiritual faith to great courage;
q From courage to liberty;
q From liberty to abundance;
q From abundance to complacency;
q From complacency to apathy;
q From apathy to dependence;
q From dependency back into bondage.”
Moronic article. Politicians don't compete for votes, they compete for coporate money, with which they buy votes. It is absurd to think the solution is to get rid of voting. Just get rid of the money.
The current system is full of wealthy, greedy, egomaniacs who can't live on 100K a year (not to mention the perks and great retirement package). Get the money out of the system, and you might find people willing to serve, not for the money, but for the service.
As warned about for some time... EURUSD daily chart is bullish.
http://stockmarket618.wordpress.com/about
He is advocating Minarchism....or the smallest government necessary. As close to anarchy as can safely be accomplished. The idea is that the government has a military force large enough only to defend the nation domestically, and it has the power of contract resolution. Thats it. The rest is taken care of in the market...both financial markets and the market of ideas. So no more legislature, lobbyists, or regulation, except for that which is imposed by individuals on themselves or their industries.
Sounds crazy or at least hard to imagine...but its worth the time to imagine what it would be like if it worked...then focus on fixing why it wouldn't work....
I haven't read his article [yet], so I'm only responding to your comment. Personally, I don't find "minimalist government" difficult to imagine at all. Furthermore, I go would go further, and basically non-governmentalize the remaining two functions you describe.
Though I refuse to advocate forcing people to arm themselves, I would advocate every kind of voluntary encouragement to convince people to arm themselves, become safe and proficient with their weapons, and huddle with their neighbors to formulate effective strategy and tactics to respond to various possible threats.
As for physical assault, theft and contract disputes, these can and should be resolved by something akin to "courts of indivdiuals" chosen TOTALLY at random (with zero exclusions whatsoever, except for individuals involved in the conflict directly or [first-order] indirectly). The burden of proof must remain high, say "beyond a reasonable doubt" for all but contract disputes (and pretty close even for that).
The key point in all of these conversations is, no matter whether a system has elements of "democracy" or "representation" or even pure "individual ruler" or not, that the PRIME DIRECTIVE that can NEVER be violated in any way, is respect for individual rights (life, liberty, and the individual's produced/earned property). If this prime directive is respected, it matters little who administers day to day "business".
Almost all humans are massively, technically, clinically insane. This insanity must end, or the world will only become a worse and worse disaster as the predators-that-be apply ever-increasing levels of technology to assure their goal of permanent enslavement of mankind. The most important type of insanity to lose is the overwhelmingly common failing to distinguish real from fiction. Even though organizations (government, corporations, and all other organizations) are called "fictitious entities" in law, few humans outside the predator class recognize this. The few humans who do fully understand this realize quite clearly that "any action that is unethical for an individual to take on his own behalf, is just as unethical to take on behalf of any fictitious entity". If even a large minority of humans (in any region) was sane enough to clearly understand this, the predators-that-be would be eliminated in days.
Wake up humans --- get sane! To quote something I wrote in ancient times (1988):
Sanity is seeing what's in front of your face, and not seeing what isn't.
It's impossible to be exact and complete in a one sentence soundbite, but hey. Think about it, and get real. That's the fundamental solution.
Really this is a great post from an expert and thank you very much for sharing this valuable information with us................ windows vps | cheap vps | cheap hosting | forex vps