by Jenab » Wed 31 Aug 2005, 13:11:29
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('born2respawn', 'N')othing innately wrong with hierarchies, just how they appear. If a group of farmers picks someone with a proven expertise to lead them, it's a meritocracy, and provided everyone's on a more or less level footing to begin with, their leader can be recalled automatically. Everyone just ignores what they say.
Of course, on a larger scale I'm happy with democracy as it's ticking over, although I'd redefine what exactly the government would have any business doing.
When most people set out to design a government, they begin by acknowledging the flaws of certain previous efforts, usually the flaws of the governments with which they are most familiar, but then proceed to design the same flaws right back into their own system, with adjustments of minor details that apparently obscure from the designer the nature of what he's doing.
A fundamental error that I notice again and again is a desire to prevent any authority from being final or ultimate, and the usual way of doing that is holding elections. But most people are fools, or, if that's too harsh a description, bovines. Herd animals without the intelligence or the ambition to know the actual political forces around them. They are easily distracted and placated with diversions of one sort or another, and, while they are being amused, some unscrupulous minority, often the worst of men, takes their power away from them. Their elected officials' hands are tied with public debts and their tongues are tied by a media owned by rascals who are jealous of their usurped political power.
Avoiding that error requires NOT avoiding a settlement of where ultimate authority, one not obliged to please a majority of bovines, will rest. I personally favor a King and a hereditary aristocracy.
Jerry Abbott