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

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

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

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

Fascism

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

Sucks: Discourages criticism, encouraging corruption and blind adherence to possibly stupid principles.

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

Communism

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

Sucks: Massively corruptible due to tragedy of the commons – if a person doesn’t sacrifice for the greater good, they get huge benefits from everyone else’s hard work while not working themselves. The only way to stop that 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 earthly representatives, of course).

Sucks: Doesn’t matter if you believe in a god, you have to admit a lot of 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 Asia. Generally developing nations and usually based on Islamic religion.

Meritocracy

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

Sucks: Just because they’re smart, doesn’t mean they’re correct. Tends to 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.

Anarchy

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

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

Where: Nowhere. Lasts about 30 minutes before someone tries to take over.

Democracy

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

Sucks: The majority can very easily be wrong. And by setting up politicians to deal with the big questions, people tend to lose interest and involvement in the issues at 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 happiness can 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 village council or group of lords).

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

Where: Business.

Libertarianism

What?: People can do whatever they want as long as they obey the (very minimal) laws. Individuals are totally responsible for their own actions and their circumstances. If you’re rich, you deserve it because you earned it. If you’re poor, you deserve it because you didn’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 rich people 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 they don’t hurt anyone else or limit their opportunities.

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

Where: The majority of democratic countries.

Social Conservatism

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

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

Where: A minority of democratic nations.

So what’s the answer then, smart arse?

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

Or more accurately, people can suck. And since humanity’s psychology is entirely based in a single principle – survival – people who do suck tend to be 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 it were perfect. It’s often been said that a benevolent dictator would be the ideal form 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 wouldn't last very long even if they did.

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

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

The good news,

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

The bad news

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

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

We are already doing this.

We need to do better.

And we can.