Modified guest commentary. The position of The Price of Liberty, under Mama Liberty and now the current proprietors, is unchanged. Democracy is an evil and degenerate successor to republics, and soon slide into mob rule and then tyranny (an autocracy of some type). We do not say that democracies are not tyrannical: it is still the old libertarian parable of the lamb and two wolves voting on what to eat for lunch.
Modern democracies have a very distinct engine driving corruption within them, and it’s not what you’d expect. There are many drivers of government corruption, of course, but this one empowers corruption in ways that others do not and cannot.
Democracies and democratic republics, (always just a slightly more tolerable flavor of evil government) especially now, involve professional politicians. An even greater evil than many alternatives.
And politicians, to put it very directly, are the winners of popularity contests. In fact, if we’re to be honest about it, modern elections might best be described as a type of beauty pageant, or a “popularity pageant.” Actually, it might be interesting to have a fancy Greek name for that, turning democracy into something corresponding to pageant-ocracy. (Rule by the most popular, the most personable!)
(So, does that turn your stomach like it does ours?)
Be that as it may, our modern rule-of-pageant-winners affects even the political parties which control the various contestants (by providing or denying the funding they need to win). The party overlords prefer winners to losers, after all. (Regardless of what these overlords, the men and women behind the curtain, want.)
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Democracies and their engines of corruption
Modified guest commentary. The position of The Price of Liberty, under Mama Liberty and now the current proprietors, is unchanged. Democracy is an evil and degenerate successor to republics, and soon slide into mob rule and then tyranny (an autocracy of some type). We do not say that democracies are not tyrannical: it is still the old libertarian parable of the lamb and two wolves voting on what to eat for lunch.
Modern democracies have a very distinct engine driving corruption within them, and it’s not what you’d expect. There are many drivers of government corruption, of course, but this one empowers corruption in ways that others do not and cannot.
Democracies and democratic republics, (always just a slightly more tolerable flavor of evil government) especially now, involve professional politicians. An even greater evil than many alternatives.
And politicians, to put it very directly, are the winners of popularity contests. In fact, if we’re to be honest about it, modern elections might best be described as a type of beauty pageant, or a “popularity pageant.” Actually, it might be interesting to have a fancy Greek name for that, turning democracy into something corresponding to pageant-ocracy. (Rule by the most popular, the most personable!)
(So, does that turn your stomach like it does ours?)
Be that as it may, our modern rule-of-pageant-winners affects even the political parties which control the various contestants (by providing or denying the funding they need to win). The party overlords prefer winners to losers, after all. (Regardless of what these overlords, the men and women behind the curtain, want.)
Continue reading →