A disgruntled, cursory and pretty damn flippant review of political systems and why they suck.

2012-01-24T18:50:00.000-08:00

What is the point of politics? In my opinion at least, it's to try and figure out what the bestthing to do is.

To do this you need a society where ideas flow freely and areconsidered on their merits, based on evidence.

This is a brief list of systems that have been created to try and makesure this happens. They all suck.

Fascism

What?: Strength through working together under a set of rigidprinciples. If you stray, you get cut off. Tends to emphasise nationalism andpride in shared characteristics (race, faith, nationality).

Sucks: Discourages criticism, encouraging corruption and blind adherenceto possible stupid principles.

Where: Formerly Italy and Germany. Didn’t work out.

Communism

What?: Everyone should work together towards the same goals and shareeverything for the greater good of everyone.

Sucks: Massively corruptible due to tragedy of the commons – if aperson doesn’t sacrifice for the greater good, they get huge benefits fromeveryone else’s hard work while not working themselves. The only way to stopthat is by monitoring and repressing everyone. People tend to disappear.

Where: China, Cuba, USSR, Vietnam (sorta).

Theocracy

What?: Rule by one or more gods (as interpreted by his earthlyrepresentatives of course).

Sucks: Doesn’t matter if you believe in a god, you have to admit a lotof baaaaad things have been done by powerful people claiming to represent one.This gives them authority over an entire country. Joy.

Where: Some nations in the middle east, Africa and Asian. Generally developingnations and usually based on Islamic religion.

Meritocracy

What?: The smartest people are in charge. Measured by IQ, scientific prowessor something similar.

Sucks: Just because they’re smart, doesn’t mean they’re correct. Tendsto encourage people to be clever over being correct – imagine if we treated ‘smart’the same way we treat ‘pretty’ now. Kinda misses the point.

Where: Nowhere. Last about 30 minutes before someone tries to takeover.

Anarchy

What?: Anyone can do whatever they want. No government, police or anyrestrictions whatsoever.

Sucks: Tragedy of the commons again. Even if 99% of people behavewonderfully (they won’t), that 1% is going to own everyone else unless you fightthem. Welcome to gang warfare.

Where: Nowhere.

Democracy

What?: We elect people to look after the big decisions for us, eitherby represent our opinions or based on what they said they would do if weelected them. Decisions are made by majority of votes.

Sucks: The majority can very easily be wrong. And by setting uppoliticians to deal with the big questions, people lose interest andinvolvement in the issues as stake, which makes them very easy to influence.Politics becomes a marketing challenge.

Where: Pretty much everywhere.

Dictatorship

What?: Do what the leader says.

Sucks: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If the leader’s happinesscan be improved by enslaving everyone and there’s no way of challenging them,then why wouldn’t they do it?

Where: North Korea.

Oligarchy

What?: A group of people lead based on authority (think a villagecouncil or group of Lord).

Sucks: Slightly better than a dictatorship, but not much. Instead ofenslaving you for one person’s interests, they need to agree on what they allcare about before they enslave you. Absolute power divided between 5 people isn’tmuch less corrupting.

Where: Business.

Libertarianism

What?: People can do whatever they want as long as they obey the (veryminimal) laws. Individuals are totallyresponsible for their own actions and their circumstances. If you’re rich, youdeserve it because you earned it. If you’re poor, you deserve it because youdidn’t work hard enough.

Sucks: Ignores certain realities such as everyone not being born equal,concentration of wealth, social biases and human irrationality so that richpeople can feel better about refusing to give anything back.

Where: The USA.

Social Liberalism

What?: People should be allowed to do what they want as long as theydon’t hurt anyone else or limit their opportunities.

Sucks: This results in a surprising amount of restrictions that canoften stray into ‘protecting’ people, whether they like it or not. Feels repressiveand often involves a shit-load of paperwork.

Where: The majority democratic countries.

Social Conservatism

What?: People should be able to do what they want as long as they don’tdo anything I don’t like or disagree with. This results in a lot ofcontradictions and always favours the dominant group (ie. Old, rich, white, male).

Sucks: Rich, old, white men don’t like anything fun. Often also don’tlike anything they don’t understand which increases exponentially as they getolder, and can include things like race, culture and sexual orientation.

Where: A minority of democratic nations.

So what’s the answer then, smartarse?

The core problem with every one of these systems is the same: people.People suck.

Or more accurately, people cansuck. And since humanity’s psychology is entirely based in a single principle –survival – people who do suck tend tobe drawn to power. Politics offers power.

So what’s the answer then? Make people better.

Any one of these systems would work perfectly if the people within itwere perfect. It’s often been said that a benevolent dictator would be the idealform of government – someone who is in total control but is never selfish,never corrupt, never greedy and never wrong. But that person does not exist,and thanks to the old rule about power corrupting, they would last very longeven if they did exist.

What we need is for every individual involved in politics (ie. All ofus whether we like it or not) to be better. More intelligent, more aware, moreeducated, more rational, more compassionate.

Unless we can achieve this, no system we come up with will workproperly.

The good news,

is that we’re getting better. Our education system, access toinformation, communication methods and awareness of others is well beyond whatour ancestors could ever have imagined. We are (broadly speaking) more ethicalthan any prior generation.

The bad news

is that we are are far, farbehind our technology and this makes us dangerous. Right now a person withabsolutely no care about the needs of others can get behind the wheel of onetonne of car. So we have accidents. A person who thinks of others only as toolsto achieve his ends can become a CEO, hell is more likely to become a CEO. So we have corporate abuses. Andpeople who have never known anything other than privilege and power becomepoliticians. And so we have repression.

We need to think more about why we do things rather than simply what wecan do. Until we apply reasonable standards of evidence to our own opinions andactions, we can’t reasonably expect others to as well. But if we do, we automaticallyencourage others through our example and can collectively create structuresthat encourage and benefit this sort of rationality.

We are already doing this.

We need to do better.

And we can.

The Palunawack Chronicles

A disgruntled, cursory and pretty damn flippant review of political systems and why they suck.