Assorted Absurdities of Democracy

Here I commit political blasphemy; I question the fundaments of democracy. It is not really allowed. For that very reason, questioning it is necessary. It is a long article, but it had to be long not to leave too many loose threads.

Introduction

As far as we know, ruling before the old Greeks was more or less a matter of managing private property; whether it was oneself, slaves, land, or goods. This is reasonable and logical. We may react against slavery, etc..., but that is not the point here. The principle remains even if we change some of the objects: you rule what you own. Kings owned whole countries, which were seen in the perspective of (and mainly were) private estate.

Ruling what you own is indeed reasonable. Of course one can discuss who can own, and what can be owned, but that is another question which I do not bring up on this occasion. Note, however, that it is important not to let objections of that nature confuse the point we discuss here.

The Greeks removed certain decisions from the concept of private ownership, to "public" ditto; that is to say, they created public politics in a sense we can recognise today, a discipline about ruling what others own. Thus they sawed the seed to what I would call the "public state": a state for and of all the people (although their definition of "people" differed from what we are used to in our times). To rule it, they (the Greeks) applied resolution by majority, a method they possibly invented. It was inherited by the Romans, and in subsequent European history it was gradually introduced into courts and political assemblies. Since the French revolution it has become the mainstay of the modern concept of democracy. Today the majority principle is almost everywhere taken for granted without further consideration, a part of contemporary orthodox political thinking that may not be questioned.

For the old Germanic peoples majority resolution was alien; they required consensus. The one who disagreed left the collective society, at least for the purpose of the resolution. In English courts consensus is still required by a jury. Maybe a remnant of Saxon influence.

In its modern form, democracy combines majority resolution (often indirect, via representatives) with extreme egalitarianism, which was unknown to previous ages. It is a separate concept with its own absurdities. I will not specifically target egalitarianism and its consequences here and now, but mainly the majority principle, and modern democracy at large. Note that I do not count individual or minority "rights" as parts of democracy, but opposed to it. (For further on this, see the last section below.)

Also be aware that there is a huge difference between theory and practice. As a voter you have no genuine power. What there is, is so diluted that it is negligible. The illusion of power is maintained by indoctrination and deception. The real winners of this system are the parasites; most notably an ever increasing number of politicians and bureaucrats, people who consume enormous resources while producing little or nothing of genuine value.

How about democracy and freedom, two concepts often used together in the rhetoric of politics? They have nothing to do with each other. Tyranny is no less because it is established by vote, dictatorship is no less because it is practised by a parliament. Freedom can never flourish in a democracy; they are mutually excluding phenomena. Repeating them together again and again is a rhetorical trick to make people finally believe they are parts of the same thing. Any foolishness repeated a sufficient amount of times will ascend to the status of "truth" in the mind of the masses.

For a decision to be valid for all, consensus is more sensible than majority resolution. Yet one must remember that almost no decisions need to be valid for everyone. Very few matters, if any, require total conformity. Not even most laws; namely those expressing values instead of genuine justice. Almost everything can (and ought to) be resolved differently by different individuals, families, or groups of people - by those it concerns - without being subject to conform regulation on a public state level. Difference is not dangerous!

Democracy is a system where everyone decides jointly for everybody else, but nobody decides for himself. It is systematised meddling, "poking noses into others' affairs." Not everything concerns everyone. Decisions and choices must be made by those it concerns, without others' meddling. People are not in any way equal, but different.

Contrary to popular belief, a majority is not more likely than a few or a single individual to make good choices, wise judgements, or pass sensible resolutions. Much indicates the opposite. Responsibility dissolves and participants tend to rely on one another rather than thinking independently. There is no natural link between large quantity and high quality.

Power and Responsibility

As I indicated above, a major problem with democracy is that there is no balance between power and responsibility. Shared power means shared responsibility, and shared responsibility tends to become no responsibility at all. Everyone wants power but prefers to leave the responsibility to undefined others.

Elected politicians ought to be personally answerable for what they say or do - to an extent where they are punishable by law for crimes and lies. Start with their electoral promises, which should be kept to the letter (anything else is fraud), continue with a personal liability for public debt they amass, and just go on with their every statement and action. Resigning should give no amnesty.

The voters, who at least theoretically share the power, should not escape either. That is to say, everyone who voted for a winning politician or party should be listed publicly and personally share in the responsibility for what their elected politicians say or do and the harm they cause to those who did not vote on them.

Suffrage

In all contexts voting on oneself is unlawful - or even voting where a personal advantage can be involved. In all contexts, that is, except politics. I would suggest limitations of the right to vote. (A few of these limitations exist or have existed in a few places, but they are very rare.) As you can see, some points below are additive, including one or more of the preceding ones.

These categories should lose their right to vote:

1. Everyone who is a candidate in an election. This is fundamental, no one should be allowed to vote on himself or on his own party.

2. Everyone who is active within the political establishment.

3. Everyone employed by the political administration.

4. Everyone who is employed by a body politics; that is to say everyone employed in the public sector.

5. Everyone who receives any form of economic benefit from public coffers (tax money), whether it is in the form of wage, salary, or public assistance allowance.

Economic Compensation

Elected politicians should receive no economic compensation for their work. It should not be more than that they have time to handle an occupation/profession too. If it is, politics has grown too extensive.

Voting Or Not

I have heard the opinion that if you have not used your right to vote (provided you have one), you may not complain on anything in society, because you have not done what you can to change it. In my opinion, it is the other way around. By active participation in an election, you are morally obliged to accept its outcome and its consequences. Voting implies acceptance of the system, you become part of it.

Not voting, however, puts you outside the system. It implies that you do not accept it; that you want neither part nor lot in it. So, refraining from voting is an indirect vote against the system and in no way an expression of political indifference.

Another possibility is to hand in a blank voting-paper. What would that imply? Acceptance of the system, but inability to find a worthy candidate. This is a position very different from the previous one.

Parallel Majority & Majority In Series

Parallel majority resolution is when there are two or more instances (sometimes called houses), whose members are appointed according to different principles, and where a valid resolution must be passed by the majority of each instance. In the United States, for instance, there is the Senate and the House of Representatives; in Great Britain there is The House of Lords and the House of Commons.

The more instances, the better; and the more differently they are appointed, the better. A one-house system is the worst; the US system is a little better, the British would be even better than that, if the House of Lords would have to consent to every new law. Unfortunately its power is limited, but by being non-democratic, it has the potential of being able to block the worst atrocities from the House of Commons. After all, the Lords can be expected to have a more long-term interest in the country than members of the elected House of Commons, who - as all elected politicians - lack the ability to think beyond the next election.

A majority of each house ensures less total dissent than just a majority of the whole, and they can block one another from at least some political abuse. But why not four houses? Or more? Politics would become slow, and it would be hard to get new laws passed. But that is good, it would keep politics in its right place, preventing it from growing too big.

Majority in series, a more problematic construction, can erode into a minority. This is best explained by an illustrative example.

Say that we have a number of states, all governed by a 51% majority. They form an international organisation, with one vote each in the management. Majority rules there too, and 51% is enough. So, a 51% majority of 51% majorities is sufficient for a resolution. That is 51% of 51%, which equals about 26% of the voters of the member states. A majority that is a minority! The percentage falls with every step that is added.

Rights and Constitutions

Some people count various rights as part of democracy. It can be freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, etc. They are often formalised, either in international conventions or in constitutions.

In my opinion, these rights are no part of democracy but its very opposite. A consistent majority rule would be so unbearable that democracy must be limited, lest everyone would have to conform to majority in every little detail. Few people would stand such an existence. In reality, people have become so accustomed to see these limiting regulations in combination with democracy that they can no longer make the distinction between them.

Despite conventions and various lists as the American Bill of Rights, everything on this planet is suffocated by politics. How come that these attempts to limit political meddling are such a failure? I want to bring up two points.

The first is that politics should not be allowed to regulate politics, democracy not to regulate democracy. Players in a game cannot be allowed to change the rules while the game they play is going on. If they are, the game will soon decline.

The second point has to do with how regulations are written (and the thinking behind it). To the extent that articles of International Conventions or Constitutions deal with limits of politics, they always express it in negative terms. Examples can be found in the Bill of Rights, a part of the Constitution of the United States:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" ... "or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press" ... "The right of the people to keep and bear arms should not be infringed."

Every statement is about what the state may not do against its citizens. It implies that everything that is not forbidden in the text, is allowed; and that means that politics will grow into every area that is not explicitly forbidden, also those which were unimaginable as political objects when the text was written. (For the US Constitution it is easy to imagine such objects. The most striking ones are education and health freedom.)

The sensible way to write is to use a positive phraseology, to state article by article exactly what the state may do to its citizens, concluding with a text stating that everything not provided for in the articles is a forbidden area for law and state. That would, at least in theory, curb the expansion of politics into more areas of life.

Brief Comments on Absurdities

The subject of this article is sensitive; questioning democracy is tantamount to blasphemy. Yet it has to be done. Perhaps I should say that for that very reason it has to be done. It is dangerous when something reaches a position of being taken for granted without reflection.

A common reaction to anti-democratic reasoning is an accusation of Fascism, an emotional reflex, as void of rational thought as is unreflected worship of democracy. They are both branches of the same sick tree (others being Communism, Socialism, and all other political "-isms"), which is the public state "per se", its over-politicising of society and its pushing towards conformity.

Sometimes one can see the concept of "democratic legitimacy", but what does it mean? Only that something is established by direct or indirect majority vote. It is an opinion-based definition of legitimacy, which is uncritically used as a justification for any sort of abuse.

Deprived of its cosmetic framework and the deceptive rhetoric, all that remains of democracy is institutionalised corruption. Funds gained by theft (called "taxation") are used to buy power by buying votes (called "distribution of welfare"). It has nothing to do with justice or any decent purpose whatsoever. It is bribing to gain power - nothing more, nothing less.

Obviously some clarification is needed on positive and negative regulations or rights. A positive regulation states "you may" (ought, must, etc...) do something; a negative states "you must not" (ought not, may not, etc...) do it. Positive and negative have nothing to do with good or bad here.

As we have seen, the State itself should be operated exclusively under positive regulations in order to block unhampered expansion of the political sector. But there are other aspects too.

I do not like the term "the people", because it is merely a statistical abstraction that does not exist in real life, and it implies collectivity too. I will use it here, however, as a matter of convenience.

So, speaking of the public state, who is above whom? Is the state ruled by the people or the people by the state? Who gets rights by whom?

If you receive a right from a state, you implicitly accept that that right was the state's to give - or to withhold, remove, alter, or limit as it sees fit. You receive a privilege. At the same time you recognise yourself as subservient to the state.

A freedom or a right can never be received, only taken. If it is received, it is not a freedom or right, but a privilege, subject to the whim of the one granting it.

A constitution should furnish the state with suitable privileges (positive regulations), not admitting it any form of freedom. If regulations are negative, the constitution will leave niches of freedom for the state to expand into (by the constitution) unregulated areas. By positive regulation only, you keep the state below.

Note that a negative constitutional law for the state is positive for the people (and vice versa), thus creating a privilege. Take this example from the Constitution of the United States:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [...]"

It is negative for the state, it says what it must not do. It is positive for the people, however, since it gives them the privilege of unregulated religion. A dangerous trap. A regulation stating that there must not be any regulation is in itself a regulation, not a freedom. In the United States the freedom of religion is a privilege given by the state. By referring to it in your religious practice, you fully recognise the state's right to regulate religion; and that affects your position if the state should ever alter this article of the Constitution. (And after all, the Constitution is altered by political means.)

So we can conclude: law or regulation to be applied to the state should always be positive, but if applied to the people it should always be negative.

Law can never provide freedom, only privilege. Nothing can ever be free except what the law does not mention at all.

(This article is partly based on material previously published in TMA & Meriondho Leo.)

Related articles:

The Mind of a Politician

Either Health Freedom or Slavery - A Little of Each is not Possible

Discrimination & The Legal Fiction of Private Ownership

Justice, Law & The State As a Self-Contradiction

The Meddler Civilisation

Envy & Fear: Why do People Desire Power?

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