The Democracy and Capitalism ours have morphed into have Failed
PART ONE
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” Winston Churchill.
1
Unfortunately the more Facebook posts I read, mostly from leftist sites, and the more comments I read, mostly by leftists, the more I have to agree with Churchill’s statement. They have a vague emotional concept of what democracy is which dooms their efforts for Utopia to failure. I am an American and I need to start by saying I am not a Democrat or a Republican I am an independent having become so in 1988. I hold both parties in equal contempt and detest both equally. (I have registered a couple of times with a political party in order to vote for a personal acquaintance or a known quantity in a primary.) The two bastions of Western civilization, Europe and the United States also including some others such as Australia and New Zealand being two examples, are headed for disaster along with the rest of the planet. We are heading toward a planetary collapse and it is disheartening to realize that the vast majority of people deny it, ignore it or don’t even see it. Most know we have serious issues but fail to grasp the reality of a planetary collapse. The reason is, of course, it is unthinkable. While it is unthinkable it is possible and at this point very probable. Actually almost inevitable. If something is not 101% impossible it is possible even if only remotely so. On our present path a planetary collapse is not so remote and actually the odds favor it. We are globally interconnected and we, and the West, are facing the majority of conditions that took out Rome and numerous other empires and civilizations. Most people have so many issues on their plates of a personal nature competing for their attention something of that scale is beyond their comprehension and even if comprehensible it is beyond their ability to do anything about it. They may say they agree but shrug and go back to their personal issues. In the US both parties share an equal blame. One side says (metaphorically) 2+2=3 the other side says 2+2=5 (also metaphorically). Actually part of the leftist base actually say 2+2=5 at this time and with conviction I might add. The answer is in the middle as is usually the case in most everything. Like the old song goes “nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” Just because one position is wrong does not mean the exact opposite position is right. There are at least two sides to every story and often many more. There are always more wrong answers than right ones to any problem and more often than not there is only one actual right one. If there is more than one answer that could be considered right one is usually the best. That is the correct one and the one we want and need. Captain Picard on Star Trek TNG said: “sometimes the right thing is not the correct thing“. How true that is. The following is from Kaplan’s “The Coming Anarchy”. It shows that while President Carter did the right thing it was not the correct thing much to the dismay of liberals.
2
“. . . . , President Carter’s well-intentioned human rights policy became a barrier to the sort of action necessary to save over thirty million people from the fist of totalitarianism. While Mr. Carter refused to deal at all with the Mengistu regime because of its gross human rights violations, the Soviets sent East German security experts to Addis Ababa to help Mengistu consolidate his rule. Because we stood on principle and were, therefore, absent as any kind of a countervailing force, it wasn’t just another awful and vicious regime that emerged, but a Stalinist nightmare. Millions were brutally collectivized, and millions more died of famine.”
Hold that thought I am going to revisit it with an example of the right side of the political spectrum doing the right thing but not the correct thing and the disaster it precipitated is being played out now. This one will upset the conservatives.
3
Western civilization is the best humanity has come up with within the timeline of our presently discernible and/or recorded history We can surmise 12,000 years of history beginning with agriculture and organized religion. History gets more detailed with the development of writing about 3,000 BC. Wikipedia says “Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered to be the earliest examples of true writing systems. Both gradually evolved from proto-writing between 3400 and 3100 BCE”. Steven Pinker in his book “The Blank Slate the Modern Denial of Human Nature“ said of Western civilization: “Not only acknowledging human nature compatible with social and moral progress, but it can help explain the obvious progress that has taken place over millennia. Customs that were common throughout history and prehistory-slavery, punishment by mutilation, execution by torture, genocide for convenience, endless blood feuds, the summary killing of strangers, rape as the spoils of war, infanticide as a form of birth control, and the legal ownership of women-have vanished from large parts of the world.” Chapter 9. And in chapter 14: “……part of a long-running expansion of freedom in the West that has granted children their always-present desire for more autonomy than parents are willing to cede. In traditional societies, children were shackled to the family’s land, betrothed in arranged marriages, and under the thumb of the family patriarch. That began to change in medieval Europe, and some historians argue it was the first steppingstone in the extension of rights that we associate with the Enlightenment and that culminated in the abolition of feudalism and slavery.” If we do not stop the present shift to the left and anarchy we will lose all these advancements. I will add if we shift too far right we will also lose all the advancements. We are in danger of becoming like Martin Luther’s drunken peasant: “Human nature is like a drunk peasant. Lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.”
4
We are repeating the errors of the past that have caused all major civilizations to collapse. In our preset collapse the above progress stated by Pinker will be erased and far worse than the original problems will result. If we are to extricate ourselves from the horrendous, dystopian future we are hurtling towards we must look to the past for parallels and from them determine our (humanity’s) errors and make the corrections to find a solution. The Roman Empire is a good case to study as there are so many records and writings of it available. The Roman Empire started out as a Republic as did the United States but due to incompetence, greed, ignorance, complacency, dishonesty, and corruption (describes the present United States.) it collapsed in 27 B.C. and was replaced with the Empire. The Empire is what most people picture in their mind’s eye when Ancient Rome is mentioned. Most people do not realize that the “glory” that we think of that was Rome was the Empire after the Republic fell. That Roman Empire lasted until 476 A.D. However, something else many people do not realize is there were actually two Roman Empires: the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire. “In 286 CE, Emperor Diocletian decided to divide Rome into two sections to try and stabilize the empire.” (Studentsofhistory.com). The Western Empire, the original empire and what we think of as the Roman Empire, was headquartered in Rome and the Eastern Empire was headquartered in Constantinople. The actual capital of the original Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople (present day Istanbul) in 330 A.D. by the Emperor Constantine. Both empires claimed to be THE Roman Empire and each had emperors but the real power was transferred to Constantinople by Constantine. Both Rome and Constantinople had what each considered the true emperor and capitol but Constantinople was, for all practical purposes and in reality, the capitol. After the fall of the Western Empire to barbarians in 476 A.D. the Eastern portion of the Empire lasted another thousand years until 1453 when it fell to the Muslims. It was tottering on the edge for a long time though before the final fall. I hope to discuss this in a bit more detail sometime in the future but I bring this up now to give hope that all is not lost.
5
If the United States and Western culture and Western hemisphere nations play their “cards right” we have the prospects of possibly surviving couple of hundred years more. Enough time to establish a significant enough advancement and presence in space to allow humanity and the progress Pinker described to continue. Europe is rapidly declining in much the same way Ancient Rome declined and ultimately fell but the U.S. does not have to fall with it. The US and the Western hemisphere and most Western culture nations can survive if we can learn from the past and stop the absurd habit humanity has of constantly repeating the errors of the past. We have to take the politics out of it. In other words, in the case of America, take the partisan politics out of the equation. We are going to have to analyze the accumulated thoughts of the brilliant minds of the past and present and overlay them on our problems if we have any hope or chance of survival. The left is a perfect example of absurdity with their desire to change the past. We will make the same errors because we will not have a knowledge of our mistakes. We can’t learn from an altered past. Winston Churchill said: “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see” One such author that attempted to foretell the future by the past was Oswald Spengler and his monumental work “Decline of the West” (Published in 1918). A few of his words from the introduction:
“In this book is attempted for the first time the venture of predetermining history, of following the still untraveled stages in the destiny of Culture, and specifically the only Culture of our time and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfillment – the West European – American.”
“Is there a logic of history? Is there, beyond all the casual and incalculable elements of the separate events, something that we may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity,…..? Does world-history present to the seeing eye certain grand traits, again and again, with sufficient constancy to justify certain conclusions? And if so, what are the limits to which reasoning from such premises may be pushed?”
“Thus our theme, which originally comprised only the limited problem of present-day civilization, broadens itself into a new philosophy – the philosophy of the future, so far as the metaphysically exhausted soil of the West can bear such, and in any case the only philosophy which is within the possibilities of the West European mind in its next stages.”
6
Another book worth mentioning is the “Foundation“ science fiction series by Isaac Asimov. It is the story of humanity after it reaches the stars and sets up a mighty Galactic Empire. His series is the fall of that Empire. In it he too deals with the possibility of scientifically predicting the future by the use of mathematics in a science he called “psychohistory”. He wrote it when World War Two had been in progress for two years. As his inspiration he used the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon. A monumental work and heavy read which he read twice. Most people bog down the first time and many do not finish. Here I quote several short paragraphs from three of the books in the Foundation series explaining psychohistory. Some very interesting thoughts for those that can think.
“The Galactic Empire was falling.
“It was a colossal Empire, stretching across millions of worlds from arm-end to arm-end of the mighty multi-spiral that was the Milky Way. Its fall was colossal, too – and a long one, for it had a long way to go.
“It had been falling for centuries before one man became really aware of that fall. That man was Hari Seldon, the man who represented the one spark of creative effort left among the gathering decay. He developed and brought forth to its highest pitch the science of psychohistory.
“Psychohistory dealt not with man, but man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast a rebound of a billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.
“Hari Seldon plotted the social and economic trends of the time, sighted along the curves and foresaw the continuing and accelerating fall of civilization and the gap of thirty thousand years that must elapse before a struggling new Empire could emerge from the ruins.
“It was too late to stop that fall, but not too late to narrow the gap of barbarism. . .” (Page 1 from “Foundation and Empire“)
“The First Galactic Empire had endured for tens of thousands of years. It had included all the planets of the Galaxy in a centralized rule, sometimes tyrannical, sometimes benevolent, always orderly. Human beings had forgotten that any other form of existence could be.
“All except Hari Seldon.
“Hari Seldon was the last great scientist of the First Empire. It was he who brought the science of psychohistory to its full development. Psychohistory was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behavior reduced to mathematical equations.
“The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses that Seldon worked with was no less than the population of the Galaxy, which in his time was numbered in the quintilians.
“It was Seldon, then, who foresaw, against all common sense and popular belief, that the brilliant Empire which seemed so strong was in the state of irremediable decay and decline. He foresaw (or he solved his equations and interpreted its symbols, which amounts to the same thing) that left to itself, the galaxy would pass through a thirty-thousand year period of misery and anarchy before a unified government would rise once more.” (Page 1 from “Second Foundation“
“The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses that Seldon worked with was no less than the population of all the inhabited millions of worlds of the Galaxy.
“Seldon’s equations told him that, left to itself, the Empire would fall and that thirty thousand years of human misery and agony would elapse before a second Empire would arise from the ruins. And yet, if one could adjust some of the conditions that existed, that Interregnum could be decreased to a single millennium – just one thousand years.”(Page xi from “Foundation’s Edge“)
7
The human race better wake up. We are in a serious situation facing that planetary collapse I mentioned earlier. In the West we have reached such a level of ignorance, stupidity, absurdity, corruption, complacency, weakness and dysfunction we have turned our society into what can only be described as a circus, a freak-show, a sideshow. The Biden administration has literally made it so. He has not appointed one qualified person to any position. Not one. They have all been appointed for identity politics and ideological reasons. If you are in a chess game you want the best player possible not someone picked for ideological reasons. A no-brainer which perfectly sums up the present administration. We living in the West have some extremely hard decisions to make that will make or break humanity for thousands of years, possibly eternity.
8
Western civilization is at stake. Western civilization has become an evil in the opinion of many college professors and leftist intellectuals. Do not confuse a person that is an intellectual with one that is intelligent. Intellectuals deal in theories and are hostile to opinions and facts that run counter to their theories. Often these theories are actually fantasies running counter to reality. An intelligent person deals in facts, reality and logic. All too often these liberal intellectuals have proven even geniuses can be idiots. Historians say Western Civilization can find the seeds of it in the civilizations of Ancient Rome and Greece. Western civilization as we have come to think of it began in earnest 2000 years ago with birth of Christ and the subsequent rise of Christianity but technically the trail of breadcrumbs can be traced back to around 10,000 BC. That is about the time of the development of agriculture and organized religion. Agriculture is the most far reaching development of humanity. It will take us from the first primitive planted fields to, hopefully, the far reaches of the galaxy. Agriculture made a collective life with a fixed location feasible and gave an alternative to the, up to that time, necessary nomadic life. A fixed location made possible the accumulation of a surplus of food for the first time and also a development of “things” which eventually included writing and recording knowledge. Organized religion, business, war and slavery also developed along side agriculture. From that time to the present civilizations and empires have risen and fallen to the now present dominant civilization: Western. It should be painfully apparent to all, with the possible exception of the mentally impaired, Western civilization is now declining. Actually stagnating, disintegrating, collapsing and imploding might be better terms. Both our forms of government and economics have failed to meet the challenges necessary to solve the problems being encountered in a rapidly changing world.
The major Western power, economically, militarily and politically, the United States, went in a short period of time from a loose knit collection of agricultural economies to a united technological powerhouse landing a man on the Moon in less than a decade from the initial conception of the goal to beggar status having to hitch rides to the International Space Station on the shuttles of its former competitors, the Russians. Space is a major feat. As I quoted him before F.A. Hayek said: “…always keep in mind: that there is little question that almost every one of the technical ideals of our experts could be realized within a comparatively short time if to achieve them were made the sole aim of humanity.” The US went from being the leader of the first world to rapidly deteriorating toward third world status. From the leader in industrial capacity to moving closer and closer to falling behind nations that 50 to 60 years ago were largely illiterate, impoverished, starving and had virtually no industrial capacity. We are presently unable to manufacture even our basic necessities for internal use to insure self-sufficiency. This was made painfully evident during the COVID19 pandemic when the majority of smug and/or complacent Americans were rudely awakened to the fact it imported the vast majority of its goods, even pharmaceuticals. Us morons. What else should we call ourselves? From number one in virtually everything: science, medicine, military, education, innovation, standard of living, research, development, to lagging or declining in all those fields. Our form of democracy and capitalism have not just failed but failed miserably and we have become so dysfunctional we no longer have a competitive edge. Name an area we are not behind in or moving in that direction. We somehow think we can regain the “glory days” by doing the same things that precipitated the deterioration. We are beating a dead horse. An old saying from the streets applies to the social democracy and the capitalism ours have morphed into: “when the horse is dead…get off.” I believe in capitalism and democracy. At the present we have neither.
9
Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon series Dilbert, in his humorous book “The Dilbert Future Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century” wrote humorously something that is not so humorous because it is true (Note Individuals is purposely misspelled to induhvidual.):
“If you voted in the most recent election, your vote was watered down by millions of dolts who think the Speaker of the House is part of their Surround Sound stereo system. Every time a new induhvidual is registered, the value of your vote is diluted.
“The crossover point is rapidly approaching. It’ll be much worse when technology makes it easier to register and vote.
“Eventually, you’ll be able to vote over the Internet using your television set remote control. This raises a frightening specter of millions of people watching Beavis & Butthead and voting during the commercials. The easier it is to vote, the lower the average intelligence of the voters will be. I can’t prove this, but under the current system, I have to think a lot of voters get lost on the way to the polling booth. That weeds a lot of induhviduals out. In the future you’ll never be too drunk or too stupid to vote.”
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The reason democracy as we know it fails can be best understood by the following scenario. You have four voters. Three have an IQ of 50 and one has an IQ of 150. It is a no brainer as to which side would carry the election. One person-one vote. The left will use an average to prove the point that the average IQ of the four would be 75. They do not see the value of individuals. Our level of education and intelligence is declining. A book review in the “Books Worth Reading” section of this site of “The Decline of Intelligence in America” by Seymour Itzkoff is well worth the few minutes it will take to read the snippets in the Books Worth Reading section of this site. In order for a technological society to develop and be maintained requires an average IQ of 95 to 97. If it falls below that the requirements for maintenance and the requirements for development are not there and the society begins to decline. This is presently happening in America. The society we have now discriminates against the innovators, the intelligent, the dependable, the responsible and the law-biding. Below are three links to worthwhile articles on this.
http://www2.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/Hunt-full.html
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Our numerous problems are of such staggering proportions they are barely, if at all, comprehensible. We are twenty-two trillion dollars in debt at the time of this writing. (It is now approaching the thirty trillion mark.) (Update: Now it is over 30 trillion.) We have been regularly incurring a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars annually, for the most part, with a nation that wants to replace us as the economic and military super power. We have become dysfunctional due to the polarization of society by two diametrically opposing and for the most part incompatible views. We have an immigration problem that exacerbates our internal dysfunction. We are also taking in a group, many of which hide behind the mask of refugees, that do not believe in our culture and has openly stated they want to destroy it and us. We are suffering from environmental degradation that is beginning to affect the economy and quality of life. We have foolishly not developed a future energy source instead depending on the energy of the past (petroleum). This lack of foresight was a grave mistake made by the Dutch (wind) and the British (steam) that lost their dominance due to that very same blunder. We have depleted much of our internal resources and have allowed China, our main competitor, to globally gobble up resources we will need to maintain our position of leadership or even equality. (Read “Winner Take All” report in “Books Worth Reading” section in this site) A perfect example of our stupidity can be seen in our involvement with Afghanistan. We were there twenty years spending money and losing lives. We lost it to the Taliban a primitive band of thugs. Much of the money we spent was on educating people in our values of social issues. Social issues the Taliban are now imprisoning and executing people for expressing. Liberals are responsible for their deaths and for women being raped due to their being modernized. I am not opposed to modernization but there are other things that must be developed along side of it. It is like building automobiles and not the necessary oil drilling capabilities, refining capacity, gas stations and roads that are essential elements without which automobiles would fail to achieve their functionality. In the US all were developed at the same time each incrementally with the other necessary elements. Afghanistan has large quantities of what are known as “rare earth minerals” among them lithium. Lithium is needed for batteries that power electric cars. When we left China moved right in on them. Another brilliant move or lack of one on our part.
We have gutted our educational system and replaced it with the absurdities of wokeness and as a result we have produced a generation that does not have the ability to critically think and reason and have no useful skills for a global economy. They have replaced thinking with emotional reactions. We let our military superiority lapse and our ability of being able to prevail in a conflict is in doubt. We have one of the most pampered and spoiled populations in human history some of whom are running around in “pussy hats” and masks (antifas) thinking they are oppressed. We have reached the tipping point and most refuse to admit it. If we do not solve these problems we have a very ugly future and we will not solve them by a show of hands. In ancient Greek theater the plays often deteriorated into a hopeless “mess” with no good ending so to make a happy ending the Greeks ended with what they called the “Dues ex machina“ literally translated: ‘God from the machine’. They lowered the “God” from the heavens with a crane like device and he straightened out the hopeless situation humanity had gotten itself into and gave a fairy-tale happily-ever-after ending. FACT CHECK: God exists but there is no crane with a Dues ex machina above Washington DC or the UN. We have to use logic and when we add 2+2 we need to come up with 4. Logic not emotion is what will save the day if it is to be saved. Like the old saying God helps those that help themselves.
12
I read that in 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic over 2,000 years ago: “A democracy is always temporary in nature it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.” Unless we (actually this applies to the entire West) regain control of the government(s) and restore a rapidly deteriorating order soon we will collapse into anarchy then inevitably a dictatorship will emerge. The reason dictatorships arise is because in order to regain control and reestablish safety, security, and stability, once lost, requires very draconian measures that can only be achieved when inefficiency and individual interests take a backseat to society as a whole. Democracy as we have come to practice it is too inefficient and based in catering to the wants, usually selfish, of the individual and not the needs of the whole to accomplish the task. Unless we act we (all Western nations) are going to have totalitarian governments of which there is no avoiding. We are almost at the point that a semi-authoritarian state based on reality and logic would be preferable to the worthless and dysfunctional cluster we have now become. By accepting this as reality we may be able to salvage our culture. Whether recognized or not or acknowledged or not Western culture is what we value. If the transition is peaceful we may be able to avoid collapse and an extreme totalitarian state in the future. (Note Snopes, the accuracy of which is sometimes dubious, said this of the quote by Professor Tyler: “The “Alexander Tyler” quoted . . . . . is actually Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scottish historian/professor….” They also said there is no record of him writing a work titled “The Fall of the Athenian Republic” but all the information I read and any mentions of him did not say he wrote a work by that name but they had him using the wording as a descriptor. Wikipedia has a good entry on him titled: Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee. Interesting read as he did not hold democracy in high esteem and whether he said the words or not they are quite accurate.
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F.A. Hayek in his book “The Road To Serfdom” said: “No doubt an American or English “Fascist” system would greatly differ from the Italian or German models; no doubt, if the transition were effected without violence, we might expect to get a better type of leader. And, if I had to live under a fascist system, I have no doubt that I would rather live under one run by Englishmen or Americans than under one run by anybody else.” He went on to say: “yet all this does not mean, judged on our present standards, our fascist system would in the end prove so very different and much less intolerable than its prototypes. There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of the existing totalitarian systems are not accidental by-products but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to produce.” While this assessment is accurate but gloomy we are in a position of little choice of reexamining our systems and that little is being reduced further by internal lawlessness, external threats and increasing dysfunction in economics and government. Keep in mind I am not advocating a fascist system but a change to the present system. We may be able to mitigate the negative consequences of inevitable change if it is as with the words he used: “effected without violence.” In other words a peaceful transition.
With a major financial collapse, or a disaster caused by any one of a number of possible and potentially irreversible events, some man made and some natural, presently forming on the horizon, the result will be chaos and violence from which a brutal totalitarian state will emerge. We must accept the unavoidable and make a peaceful change and if we do we may be able to shape it and develop a mixed system which would be the best of both capitalist and socialist worlds. If we go into collapse we will get what naturally evolves and it is a 100% guarantee that only those on top will like it. Keep in mind I am not oblivious to the dangers in a larger and less democratic state but we are heading in that direction and unless the vast majority of humanity suddenly has a collective epiphany all at once there is no reversing course. The increasing population, the dwindling resources, environmental degradation, global frictions and the increasing technology make it inevitable. The number one problem is a problem most do not want to acknowledge. It is the problem that must be solved before any other can be adequately resolved. It is the increasing population. We have reached the point where there are 8 billion people on the planet. This is actually a global problem and only one nation, China, has actually tried to seriously address the issue. It failed because of the ignorance of the peasant mentality and the ingrained cultural attitude that the male is the most important sex. Solving almost all other problems can be directly tied to the population numbers. It is a problem that cannot and will not be solved by the democratic procedures of social democracy either internally or internationally. You can cry, scream, foam at the mouth, drool, get delirious, beat your head into the wall and stand in the corner but reality will not be changed.
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Here is a potential solution that may be feasible to prevent a drastic change. A return to the past. The US has two legislative bodies: the Senate and the House. The Senate represents the individual state and is the major instrument in international affairs. The House represents the people and is the major instrument in internal affairs. Our change should be all senators be appointed as was the original intent of the founders of the republic. The replacements should be appointed by qualifications rather than being elected for their glib ability at making wild outrageous promises that the Almighty would find impossible to keep or by the terminal illness of identity politics. The Senate was never to be elected by popular vote. Anyone familiar with American history knows the founders held a free for all democracy in contempt as they considered it to be mob rule. (Incidentally all serious political thinkers, past and present, held or hold democracy in contempt. We actually have a constitutional republic not a democracy. The Constitution originally called for the US Senators to be appointed by the state legislatures but due to incompetence, cronyism, corruption, and the other ills that plagued us the Constitution was changed for their election by popular vote. What is happening now is what the founders foresaw and dreaded and it should be painfully obvious they were right. Reread the quote in section 6 above by Scott Adams on voting. I am not opposed to voting but we need to look at the weaknesses as well as the strengths of whatever we do. The source of your greatest strength is often the source of your greatest weakness.
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As originally conceived the House was to represent the people and the Senate was to represent the state. Both congressmen/women and senators should have knowledge of many subjects. Law for one thing. Many elected officials have been lawyers but representatives need not be lawyers but must have at least a basic understanding of law. They must have some college level courses on the various types of law: civil, criminal, constitutional, business, environmental, and international. If a person has a basic knowledge of law they would be able to ask pertinent questions of advisors and understand the answers. As well as law classes they must have classes in other subjects they will need knowledge of in order to make informed decisions. Classes, such as, but not limited to: history, comparative religions, psychology, sociology, international relations, and economics are musts. Some are more musts than others. They must also have some knowledge in military policies, procedures, organizational structure and tactics as well as internal law enforcement policies and procedures. They need not have degrees just basic courses so when discussing and debating a bill they would have a fundamental knowledge of the subject. It is not necessary to require years of college as many of the subjects such as the various types of laws can be combined into a couple of classes. Law 101 and Law 102 for example.. In plotting a course for a nation, a business venture, or a military campaign, leaders are better off having a broad range of knowledge spread out over many topics. Intricate details can be supplied by the experts they have as advisors in the specific fields. The difference is they would understand the basics. No lobbyist intervention as we have now. If a company wants to make their opinions heard they can do so but no bribes. Violation of public trust should be a capital (death penalty) offense. Don’t like it choose another profession where honesty and compliance are not necessities.. As well as the “bribee” the briber should be right along side of them. Elected representatives need to be able to interpret the data supplied into a sensible, viable, coherent plan. Now they merely need to be a certain age and be a citizen with no other qualifications at all required and it shows in the pitiful performance they now exhibit. To be unkind but accurate most are dumb as rocks. I am almost wholly convinced we have as leaders some of the stupidest and most corrupt human beings on the planet and if humanity is not unique to earth possibly the universe. I say this equally applicable to both parties. This, of course, shows that the intelligence and educational level of the people that put them in charge is stupider and less. For proof I ask how stupid can we be to elect people that are ignorant and totally clueless of what they are responsible for? That are immune from any consequences of being wrong? In the United States a barber needs more credentials than a national elected representative responsible for the lives and well-being of millions of people and trillions of dollars.
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An excellent book on the subject is “Democracy the God That Failed” by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey.) It should be required reading for all elected representatives unfortunately, however, the majority probably do not have the intellectual capacity to understand it. I take issue with some of Hoppe’s ultimate solutions but agree with much of his analysis of the problems. The following are a few paragraphs from it and I hope they stimulate your interest to read it. There are some quotes in The Books Worth Reading section of this site. It is a must for any library.
“After less than one hundred years of democracy and redistribution, the predictable results are in. The “reserve fund” that was inherited from the past is apparently exhausted. For several decades (since the late 1960s or early 1970s), real standards of living have stagnated or even fallen in the West. The “public” debt and the cost of the existing Social Security and health care system have brought on the prospect of an imminent economic meltdown. At the same time, almost every form of undesirable behavior: unemployment, welfare dependency, negligence, recklessness, incivility, psychopathy, hedonism, and crime has increased, and social conflict and societal breakdown have risen to dangerous heights. If current trends continue, it is safe to say that the Western welfare state (social democracy) will collapse just as Eastern (Russian-style) socialism collapsed in the late 1980s.” Page 102
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“……….it is difficult to find many proponents of democracy in the history of political theory. Almost all major thinkers have nothing but contempt for democracy. Even the founding fathers of the U.S., nowadays considered the model of a democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but a mob rule. ………. even among the few theoretical defenders of democracy such as Rousseau, for instance, it is almost impossible to find anyone advocating democracy for anything but extremely small communities (villages and towns). Indeed, in small communities where everyone knows everyone else personally, most people must acknowledge that the position of the “haves” is typically based on their superior personal achievement just as the position of the “have-nots” finds its typical explanation in their personal deficiencies and inferiority. Under these circumstances it is far more difficult to get away with trying to loot other people and their personal property to one’s advantage. In distinct contrast, in large territories encompassing millions or even hundreds of millions of people, where the potential looters do not know their victims, and vice versa, the human desire to enrich oneself at another’s expense is subject to little or no restraint. Page 103/104
In a footnote to that Hoppe added: “John Adams was convinced that every society grows aristocrats as an inevitably as a field of corn will grow some large ears and some small. In a letter to John Taylor he insisted, like Plato and Aristotle, that democracy would ultimately evolve into despotism, and in a letter to Jefferson he declared that “democracy will envy all, contend with all, endeavor to pull down all, and when by chance it happens to get the upper hand for a short time, it will be revengeful, bloody and cruel.” (Footnote page 103)
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“What are a democracy’s migration policies? Once again assuming no more than self-interest (maximizing monetary and psychic income: money and power), democratic rulers tend to maximize current income, which they can appropriate privately, at the expense of capital values, which they cannot appropriate privately. Hence, in accordance with democracies inherent egalitarianism of one-man-one-vote, they tend to pursue a distinctly egalitarian – nondiscriminatory – emigration and immigration policy.
“As far as emigration policy is concerned, this implies that for a democratic ruler it makes little, if any, difference whether productive or unproductive people, geniuses or bums leave the country. They all have one equal vote. In fact, democratic rulers might well be more concerned about the loss of a bum than that of a productive genius. While the loss of the latter would obviously lower the capital value of the country and the loss of the former might actually increase it, a democratic ruler does not own the country. In the short run, which is of the most interest to a democratic ruler, the bum, voting most likely in favor of egalitarian measures, might be more valuable than the productive genius who, as egalitarianism’s prime victim, will more likely vote against the democratic ruler. For the same reason, quite unlike a king a democratic ruler undertakes little to actively expel those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash which drive individual property values down). In fact, such negative externalities – unproductive parasites, bums, and criminals – are likely to be his most reliable supporters. Page 144/14
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“As far as immigration policies are concerned, the incentives and disincentives are likewise distorted, and the results are equally perverse. For a democratic ruler, it also matters little whether bums or geniuses, below or above-average civilized and productive people immigrate into the country. Nor is he much concerned about the distinction between temporary workers (owners of work permits) and permanent, property owning immigrants (naturalized citizens). In fact, bums and unproductive people may well be preferred as residents and citizens, because they create more so-called “social problems,” and democratic rulers thrive on the existence of such problems. Moreover, bums and inferior people will likely support his egalitarian policies, whereas geniuses and superior people will not. The result of this policy of nondiscrimination is forced integration: the forcing of masses of inferior immigrants onto domestic property owners who, if the decision were left to them, would have sharply discriminated and chosen very different neighbors for themselves. Thus, as the best available example of democracy at work, the United States immigration laws of 1965 eliminated all previous “quality” concerns and the explicit preference for European immigrants, replacing them with a policy of almost complete nondiscrimination (multiculturalism) Page 145/146
Now that leads us to the question why have they failed?