Liberal Democracy: Functional or Obselescent?

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Liberal democracy is a long-time tradition in the West—developing over the centuries in England, the United States, and elsewhere—but is its time almost up? Liberal democracy, once the elegant fusion of personal freedom and responsibility balanced by universal suffrage, is now in crisis: Opportunists robe themselves in holy garb to disguise their self-serving politics; government officials can pay off business buddies with juicy war contracts at taxpayers' and Iraqis' expense; and constitutional checks and balances to ensure a limited scope of power are becoming ignored (e.g., the unitary executive judicial theory). Is it time to throw the baby out with the bath water and adopt a whole new system of governance? Is it time to admit who we are and make our laws actually reflect that: plutocracy? Should we fix the current system, or is it even fixable?

Whether a person in the West is young or old, urban or rural, liberal or conservative, business or labor, extraverted or introverted, one thing he or she most likely accepts is the basic framework of liberal democracy. In the United States, political questions that divide Democrats and Republicans as well as other groups are merely questions of degree, yet they inevitably dwell within the liberal democratic system. How much personal autonomy is too much? To what degree should the majority impose its morality on individuals collectively through the law? How actively can an interested person participate in the civic process? Questions of whether political power is a heritable privilege, whether the federal government should have complete control over the economy, and whether radically different sociopolitical systems should be considered are rarely asked in the public dialogue.

Yet the fact remains that liberal democracy is an ideal. When a president's administration hides crucial facts from the public and Congress, it deteriorates how close the system comes to achieving the ideal. When people act on the interest of themselves and their social circle, it again hampers the ideal.

Perhaps an alternative system that more accurately portrays political realities would be better: plutocracy. Why not rewrite the Constitution so that money really is equivalent to political power? Why go through the motions of popular participation when most people can do nothing more than react to a few bland ideas revealed to them by the media?

Society can be divided into two classes: the politicians and other administrators and then the undifferentiated others. The politicking class could not work and accrue their own capital resources, making them dependent on the welfare of the people. At the same time, the unwashed masses could not run for political office or take an administrative post; these are reserved for the politicians. People could associate into whatever groups they'd like but would then have to give financial and material support to find formal leadership. Polities within the system would have to pay to have representation in the government. The more they can pay, the more representation they can have; this, in turn, means they can legislate to support their interests and bring the revenue from the representational payment back to themselves. Other polities, of course, may prefer to be internally sufficient and invest their funds internally instead of buying extra delegates in the assembly. More effective politicians would look for the constituency that offers them the best deal.

The role of money and wealth would be undeniable as well as perfectly ethical in this system. It avoids the symbolic ritual of a democracy and replaces it with pure interest. If this system were implemented, we could have an interesting future on our hands, folks.

Reformulation.

The basis behind your post is the entire reason the Libretarian party exists. Libretarians basically want to restore freedom to the United States that it was based on. Libretarians want to minimize government intrusion into people's lives. They are sort of like the Republican party in elements of minimal regulation on business and property, and have elements of the Democratic party in the elements of personal freedom. The Libretarian party also does not support many of the government "handouts" and other socialist programs that have become commonplace. Libretarians also want to return many government operations back over to private entities. The idea here is minimal intrusion into people's lives, and minimal taxes.

I vote no action.

This is not the first time that any of this crap has ever happened. There have been times of greater corruption, there have been wars made up by presidents to gain resources in the past, there has been greater bribery, every problem that exists today has existed at another time even worse to some extent. It is just that people tend to overreact and claim that the sky is falling when they see these imperfections.

There is no perfect government, there never will be, and the current system works well enough to deal with the problems that we face. Creating another system would create even worse problems, at the very least we would have economic issues that arise from such a drastic change in government and at the worst we would have even greater problems and an even more imperfect government.

Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst system... except for all the others.

Last edited by medianmistermustard on 30 Mar 2006, 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

Reformulation is a constant, there is always reform.

I vote for logicality and rationalism.

'Twas ever thus. Doubly so when the power lay with the church! Wherever the power is, dark birds will gather. Fawning and plotting courtiers in monarchies, through to corporate clones as the corps get bigger than nations.



I quite like Nevill Shute's multi-vote democracy from "In the Wet" Everyone gets a basic vote, but the more you show yourself an involved, responsible citizen, the more votes you get. If I recall, the qualifications ranged quite widely.



Has to be, you're building it out of human beings...
If you had flawless building blocks, you could build almost any system.




But does having money equate to wisdom? We already know that money talks, and that "free choice" only applies to those who have the money to exercise it.
"The poor man's words are despised, and his words are not heeded" wrote Ecclesiastes a long time ago. Only Labour Unions have had much impact on that, and they can turn and cease operating in the interests of their members.

There's the optimistic view of democracy that all are so wise that all should have a say in the afffirs of the state. (Nonsense of course, along with the idea that all opinions are equally valid, the latter being a necessary legal fiction unbder most democracies)
Then there's the view that since all are corrupt, and that power corrupts, power should be spread around as much as possible. At least under democracy governments can be changed without bloodshed. Any system that might fail on this would need to be VERY good.

If we're being really off the wall, how about an elected dictatorship?

The Great Ruler gets five(four, seven?) years with an unopposed free hand and then there is a plebiscite which can award a life pension, nothing or a firing squad.

Me too, but no-one I've ever voted for has ever got in.


"Senator, you have the vote of every thinking American!"
"That's no use, we need a majority!"

(A reply attributed to Adlai Stevenson: can one be too honest and truthful in politics?)

Personally I don't think that liberal democracy has really been the policy at all. They've wanted it to appear that way, but the elections have been rigged, and the so-called liberals rarely show liberalism. Liberalism is about peace and new ideas that better society as a whole, the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The west, conversely, has always been about militarism, traditionalism with some very sloooooow changes, inequality, cheated elections, a controlled media, exploitation of the poor (with the poor being the masses), and consumerism/capitalism, with an emphesis on shunning "radical new ideas" such as communism, peace, rights for African Americans and women (I know they eventually came, but far too slowly), or gay marriages. There is no separation of church and state. There is not as much ruling power within the people as they would like you to believe. Rather, the west--or at least America--is a dictatorship. It shows all the signs: elections between two parties that are basically the same, elections that are rigged anyway, aggressive foreign policy, totalitarian regime that controls the media, etc. Face it, people: it's not that liberalism's time is over. It's that liberalism's time never really came.