You know, I’ve heard people say, “In a perfect world, Communism would be a great form of government, but the fact of the matter is...it’s not a perfect world. So Communism doesn’t work.” It’s funny that people say this who live in a so called Democracy. And let me tell you something about Democracy: “In a perfect world, Democracy would be a great form of government, but the fact of the matter is...it’s not a perfect world. So Democracy doesn’t work.”
Democracy is probably the stupidest, most inefficient government available.
Look at it this way. Let’s take an imaginary guy who works at an imaginary job. I think we’ll call him Mark. So Mark works in his boring cubicle, and he’s 100% certain that there are better ways to run this company. It’s so inefficient and wasteful and all the employees hate their job. Furthermore, his boss is an idiot. (Or so says Mark...who knows...maybe his boss is an idiot, maybe not). Next door to Mark’s cubicle is Chris. And Chris is an idiot (at least in Mark’s opinion) and has no business working at McDonalds, much less this workplace. On Mark’s other side is Bennie. Now Bennie’s not an idiot, but he is incredibly lazy, and Mark is constantly having to pick up the slack for him. Then there’s Kathy, she’s a vindictive bitch who wants everybody to be just as miserable as he is. Sure, there’s a couple cool people at the office, but for every intelligent, hardworking employee, there’s about 5 total goons.
Let’s say Mark’s boss oversees 40 people. So let’s switch up their workplace and call it a democracy. Suddenly, all the employees get to vote once per year to decide who their boss is. And that boss must put all major issues to a vote. How much do you think anyone there would accomplish? How likely do you think it is that the right person would be chosen to be the boss? Sure, Mark’s a discerning, intelligent guy...but most of his coworkers...not so much. Furthermore, don’t you think the sales department will vote to give everyone in the sales department a raise (to the detriment of some other part of the company?) but luckily...the sales department won’t win because the accounting department is actually the largest department...so they pretty much run the show -- giving themselves raises and almost always picking the new boss from their own ranks. I’m pretty sure this would descend into insanity until eventually someone came out on top and declared themselves the new, permanent boss. It could happen in many different ways:
Perhaps the sales department doesn’t like what the accounting department is doing, teams up with the human resources department and votes in a new boss, who then creates a motion to make himself the permanent boss, which is promptly voted into existence by the sales/HR union.
Perhaps the smartest folks in the office (from many different departments) realize that they have the best ideas and start meeting together to discuss these ideas. They eventually form a committee...and the boss takes notice of their ideas and commitment and starts favoring their opinions over the opinions of the masses. Soon, all the new bosses are chosen from the ranks of the committee until eventually it’s decided that one member of the community is the smartest with the best ideas, and is elected permanent boss.
Or conversely, people realize that the committee should just be in charge without a boss.
Another option is in a year following having a great boss, a turd is elected. Uh oh...what do we do? We’re stuck with this guy for a year! Well...not if we stage a coup and reinstate the last boss.
It would happen. It would happen because on the large scale democracy doesn’t work. It’s too flawed because humanity is too flawed. Allowing people to govern themselves would not work.
People have said over and over that democracy only lasts as long as it takes for one group of people to realize that they can vote themselves all the money and power. That happened hundreds of years ago in America. The best example of democracy that anyone has seen in the last decade is a little show called “Survivor.” Each week, they chose one person to eliminate from the group. One person that is either holding the others back or becoming too powerful. One by one, they are all eliminated until all the power and all the money goes to one person. And how much do they get on that show? A million bucks? And what are there, thirty contestants? A million dollars split thirty ways is still a heckuvalot of cash. Is it totally implausible that all thirty of them get together and say, hey guys...let’s decide on an order to vote each other out and then the guy (or girl) we chose to win just splits all the money with all of us evenly.
I bet you just thought “that would never happen.” And you’re very very right.
How is that not happening right now in America? The conservatives vote to decrease taxes on the rich -- flatten out the tax bracket so that everyone carries a similar share of the weight. It makes sense, we all live here. We’re all enjoying the same freedoms. Why not everybody pay the same amount? But then the liberals (representing the poor) say “wait wait wait! They have WAY more money than us! You should tax them more because they can afford it and we can’t. You’d be breaking our backs and they would barely notice! And hey, that makes sense too...so cough it up rich guys. But the rich guys say, “Woah, woah, woah! We worked hard for this money! The reason we have more money is because we busted our ass while those poor guys were goofing off!” Something like the story of the ants and the grasshopper if I remember my childhood correctly. And the poor counter with, “No! You’re able to make more money because you had more opportunities in your life. Either you got lucky or your rich parents helped to ensure you would follow in their rich footsteps.”
Gah! Holy crap! I don’t know which way to think anymore, do you?
Historically, democracies are pretty new. America was the first official democracy, starting in 1776. Other nations have followed our brilliant example and the world is becoming a far better place as a result.
Oh, wait? We weren’t the first democracy? Greece and Rome were democracies? Huh...well how’d that turn out for them?
The Greeks were conquered and the Romans democracy...well, some guy just kinda declared himself Caesar and that was the end of that.
People are just too greedy and selfish to rule themselves. People need to BE ruled in order to stay in line. People will always try to make a mad-grab for power. ALWAYS. If power is distributed perfectly evenly, it will take people a millisecond to start grouping themselves into larger and larger cliques so that they have more power and influence. Likely, those groups will continue and continue conglomerating until you’re left with two opposing factions. Within each of those factions, many people will be clamoring to rise to the top and become the more influential person within that faction. The leaders of both groups will concurrently be attempting to reduce their opponent’s ability to take part in decision making and reduce the likelihood of their own party members of ever switching sides.
Does that sound familiar? Yup, you guessed it...I was talking about “Survivor.”
Thank God we don’t live in a democracy.
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