Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Democracy a Bad Thing Part Three “Enlightenment Ends Enter Democracy”

 

Hi.  This Leo Volont.   

This is    Part Three   of my Seven Part Series

Democracy a Bad Thing  This is Chapter “Enlightenment Ends Enter Democracy”

 

We discuss here the largely unspoken rule in Democracy that majorities can be too big, and that we need a lot of losers because they’re the ones we make pay all the bills.  

 

(11)That is where Democracy enters in. At first Universal Suffrage was the farthest thing from their minds.  At first they insisted on property qualifications.  The nascent Capitalists should have locked in their control of Government and obviated all hope for a Democratically installed Leftist government by insisting on Tax Proportional Voting.  Tax Proportional voting, in perfect terms, would be where the Electoral System would recognize as many Votes as  units of Tax Revenue they receive.   Your Tax Receipt would show how many votes you would be entitled to.    You would get whatever power you paid for, you know,  just like now but it would be upfront and above board and honestly administered.   Nothing would be fairer than that, right?  But the Business Class wanted only the Political Power while wishing to shift the Tax Burden to some other class.  

 

(12)So, yeah, the  way it works is all the factions in a Democracy wish to be part of a coalition large enough to win an election all with the understanding of maximizing their returns while minimizing their obligations.   They do not want to owe too much to too many.   That gives Democracy the appearance of a kind of abiding Intuitive Paradox.  We hear all the time about "Land Slides" and "Mandates" and this give us the impression that practically the entire electorate voted unanimously giving a general popular consent.  But then look at the actual numbers.   the Majority count might be a bit larger than 51% but that just means that somebody  miscalculated somewhere and now some superfluous interest group will be side by side  with all the other piglets sucking at the teets  instead of putting their backs to the oars  and helping to pay for everybody else's dance party.   Big Mandates are actually Big Messups.  This is why the Rule of Majority is so important.  Any faction or alliance of factions only needs to get 51% of the Vote to take over the Government.  Democracy is basically the Tyranny of the 51% over the 49.  Played out perfectly the 51% should derive all the benefits while the 49% pay all the bills.

 

(13) But, yeah, why were poor people ever even allowed to get into this game? Why did anybody ever think a Universal Franchise was a good idea?  Well, look at the Demographics during the 19th Century.  The French Physiocrats, you remember, the Economic School that thought all Wealth derived from the land, well, they at least looked correct in their thinking from the demographic perspective back then.  There were a great many independent farmers that had property enough to qualify to vote, but still the Businessmen were relatively few.  So the Business Community must have thought long and hard.  If the Poor People were brought into the franchise, well,  whose side would they vote for?  In language, culture  and manners the Wealthy Businessman was not much above his poor and miserable fellows.  Really, the only difference between a Successful Capitalist and a Miserable Worker, is that the one has on a new suit of cloths.  They could dress up in imitation of the Landed Wealth, but their vulgarity would always give them away.  Just read the Jane Austen Novels to see just how despised and held in contempt the Business Sector had been.   

 

Apparently the Nascent Capitalists thought to turn the Curse of their coarseness and ignorance  into a Blessing.  The Business Classes could fluently speak the language of the Ignorant, and the Aristocracy back then was still then much too proud to adapt by dumbing down as they would do today.   So, yes, back then when our Betters were still openly haughty and proud about it, the Capitalists were able to enjoy an early lead in corralling the vote of the gullible Working Classes.   We would see how important this dynamic was in the establishment of the Human Rights, where basically the idea of Freedom of Speech meant the freedom for the Business Class to publish newspapers and political tracks with which they could manipulate the marginally educated.  

 

(14)There was another reason why the Business Classes didn't have to worry over much in regards to Property Qualification in Voting, you know, that the Poor would rise up and vote as a block to take away their factories.  The reason for this is that it was soon found  that the Politics of Democracy would become contests between Political Parties, and that these Parties would be like private clubs with their membership being  restricted.  While there was no property qualification for voting, it was the exact opposite in regards to having influence in the Political Parties  where money was of primary importance.   Staff must be hired and offices leased for desk space and filing cabinets.  The Calculus involved in hitting exactly 51% of the Vote in order to maximize gains and minimize liabilities requires a great many clerks and consultants running around doing all that figuring and they all needed to be paid.   Marginally educated Workers could not do this kind of calculating for themselves, and they didn't have the money to pay for it to be done for them. 

 

(15) But, yes, even without their own Party, as Universal Suffrage became more of a thing, the Workers clout at the voting booths would give them more and more leverage.  You can imagine how the Political Parties must have seen this.  It would have appeared to them as opportunistic parasitic freeloading, with the Workers trying to hijack elections they weren't paying their fair share for.    Again, the whole point of Democracy, as it was practically understood,  is to derive benefits while shifting  the costs,  and so the Working Vote was always considered prohibitively expensive.  Again, despite what everybody SAYS the truth is that actually nobody really wants to win with Great Landslide Majorities, even if they would brag about them, because it is important to have a lot of Losers because it is the Losers who are expected to Pay all the Bills.  In a Democracy where everybody Wins, nobody Wins.

 

(16) But, okay, if you absolutely had to pander to the poor to get over that 51% hurdle, well, could there still be a way to not give them anything for their vote, you know, to cheat them so they might not notice?   Great minds would be tried in finding ways to have the poor vote without regard to their financial interests.  Up through the 19th Century the University Departments of Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, and Cultural History were still in their infancy and so the politicians really did see Political Will almost entirely in terms of financial self interest and Class Interest.  We can see how dated is the thinking of many modern Leftists when we hear the way they still think "Class" is so central, parroting their idol Marx who was only ignorant because he came before all the New Disciplines flourished up in our Universities.  But our Modern Leftists are ignorant because they chose to actively ignore all the current state of the art scientifically derived Understandings of the Universe and our Human Condition. 

 

(17)But, yes,  the 20th Century brought New Knowledge and New Knowledge brought New Power.  the Working Class would lose much of its  economic leverage in terms of Economic Self Interest because it would be found that the Poor and Marginally Educated could be persuaded to surrender their votes for a variety of other far less expensive causes. Yes, the Great Unwashed Poor were in fact Human Beings and Human Beings really not much better than Animals and the less educated they were, the less religious they were, and the less well read they were, well, all of that would be putting them closer and closer to the Hobbsian Pure State of Nature, wouldn't it?   Well, what could Political Operatives do to manipulate men in this Natural State?  That is a question that opened up a veritable Pandora's Box.    

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