Turn Off My Heart

Turn off my heart
Be guided by my brain
My feelings overwhelm
Like a downhill train

Since I—
Since I—

Turn off my heart
I can't go on this way
Think and only think
Don't let my heart betray

Since I—
Since I—

Turn off my heart
I can't afford to feel
There's too much to decide
Must have nerves of steel

Since I saw you fall
Since I stood appalled—

Turn off my heart

Getting Rich Going Bankrupt

You may have noticed that there's at least one guy out there who's got all the money in the world, despite having business after business go bankrupt. How'd he do it? Well, I haven't dug into it all that deeply, but as far as I can tell, the trick to it is something like this:

    1. Start a business
    2. Borrow a ton of money to expand the business
    3. Make a lot of money off the business*
    4. Don't repay the loans used for expansion
    5. Declare bankruptcy for the business.

*Make sure the profits go in your personal pocket as much as possible, not the company's coffers.

A neat trick if you can do it—in a way. And, of course, it's not sustainable, because eventually no one is going to loan you any money.

Still…I can say a neat trick, but I certainly have to qualify it. After all, it's not the neatest solution for everyone. Sure, the person starting and running the business comes out of it really well, but nobody else does. The banks take a financial hit, and thus so do their owners or shareholders. The customers for the business can be left holding the bag on any advance purchases. And then there are the employees, who have to restart their careers through no fault of their own.

I guess on second thought there's nothing neat about it. Unless only one person in the world matters.

Democracy's Fatal Flaw

Front page political cartoon, "The Mascot", New Orleans, for 9 July 1887. "The Politicians' Serpents Tempting Our Democratic Eve"

In my last entry I examined the underlying defect of authoritarianism.  I had a few quotes in it which I'll revisit now.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (pp. 245-6)

and:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." 

- Lord Acton 

How do these all relate?  I'll explain.

Autocrats like to think they're smarter or more special somehow than the rest of us—because if not, there's no justification for their authority.  Whether they're politicians or in some less official position of power, they need an excuse for why they make decisions for the rest of us.  (Or to put it another way, they need to justify taking decision-making away from the rest of us.)

So they pretend, or even have convinced themselves, that they alone are wiser than millions, and then have to justify that belief.  Or try to.

It's a big reason why the USA's founders sought to limit the power of the government, and especially of whoever was atop the executive part of it.  The founders had had their decisions taken away from them and given to those who were certainly less wise, and the founders not only didn't like it, they could see it made authoritarianism unstable.  Some percentage of the population will always be restive, wanting that decision-making back.

So they put checks and balances in place in the Constitution, to try to keep the government under control.

They put the ultimate power, the decision-making, in the hands of the people, as much as they could.

Unfortunately, people aren't perfect, so their constructs, including governments, aren't either.  They're flawed.

Democracy has the same fatal flaw as authoritarianism, actually.  At some point, someone has to have the final say on decisions, and whoever it is won't be perfect.  Or even wise.  Certainly not incorruptible, not always.

Whoever has that authority needs to be reined in.  There need to be checks and balances on them, so they don't just follow their whims or wishful thinking.  Or temptations.

Unfortunately, the same is true of voters.  The problem is, where checks and balances are concerned in the USA and too many other democracies, they're lacking.  No checks, no balances.  Not on the voters.

There's nothing to stop voters from voting for unconscionable candidates, for idiotic ideas, for counterproductive propositions.

Just look at the election that started Hitler off decades ago, eventually bringing down Weimar Germany.  Or look at some more recent elections, in any number of democratic states.  There's nothing stopping voters from looking only at the immediate, and taking their eyes off the long-term.  To look only at what's bothering them right now, and not what is best for all, decades down the road.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power absolutely.  It applies to voters the same as anyone else.

And other than those same voters making sure they have accurate and reliable information, even if unwelcome, to base their decisions on; those voters ensuring they're looking at everyone's needs and not just their own, no matter how pressing; those voters fighting to keep the power they have from leading them to corrupt choices, no matter how tempting…there is no answer.

Voters have to be wise; their power is unchecked.

And I'm sorry about that.  I've thought and thought and thought about this, and I don't have any better solution.  I wish I did.

Then again, the founders didn't either.  Did they?

* * *

I realize it may sound from this like all political systems are flawed, so it doesn't matter which you're under.  The first part is true, but the second is not.

Tyranny, historically, has restricted the rights and choices of individuals.  Communism creates a power vacuum that a tyrant inevitably fills.  Aristocracy ends up being unmerited elitism.

Democracy is still the best choice, if the welfare of the individual matters to you.

But that's best choice, not perfect choice.  With people or politics, there is no perfection, no easy way out.  Only the hard work of learning the issues and the candidates, making the best choice for the long term, not yielding to temptation.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."  If voters stop being vigilant…the price is all too high.