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Democracy 2
Jun. 28th, 2016 04:10 pmAh ha ha, you thought I'd forgotten, didn't you? "Tch, typical Zander, another flash in the pan, why can't she get her act together..." Well, that's a tough one, so instead I'm going to ramble about the question "what is government and what is it for?"
Now I know there are some libertarians and anarchists out there who don't think there should be any government at all (except when you need it for something--that's not being snarky, honestly, that's me acknowledging that the libertarian position is not necessarily as absolutist as it's sometimes portrayed as being). And you know I don't agree, so we don't need to take our trolley round that particular aisle today. We're going to assume that government is sometimes a good thing and has a good purpose, and talk about what that is.
Government is there for a number of reasons. One is to do things for people that they can't efficiently do themselves, like build roads. Imagine if you will a world where everyone is solely responsible for building the twenty feet of road in front of their house. You'd end up with a bit of a patchwork, I think. And when you get to drains and sewerage, the mind revolts. So these things need to be done on a community level at very least, so that people using the roads have a consistent and convenient travel experience, and the drains work at least some of the time. Plumbing, as Joyce Grenfell said, is essential to the Better Life. So right away you need a body of some kind to organise and co-ordinate these essential community services, and since they involve buying labour and materials, that body has to be funded in some way. There are various solutions for this, which we'll move on to later.
Another good purpose for government is to speak for a community to other communities, to represent them in some way. Another is to make sure that the community's members have a measure of freedom (not being exploited, imprisoned without cause or otherwise oppressed) and a measure of safety (being protected from both crime and foreign aggression). To a degree these are mutually exclusive, but a balance is possible. Another is to ensure fair trade, both within the community and between it and other communities. There are other priorities, like education, healthcare, provision for the poor, that can be done by individuals but can, if done properly, be done much better at a community level. If a government can be found that will do all these things, then the members of the community don't have to do it all themselves, which means they have time and energy to live their lives and maybe even read a book now and then.
So, there are good reasons to have a government. Which is why, almost always in stories, the first thing a group of stranded humans in a desolate place will ask is "who's going to be in charge?" Or someone will take charge, and the others will either go along with that or raise objections. I seem to remember that about seventy per cent of Heinlein's Number of the Beast consisted of arguments between four occupants of a spaceship about who was going to be captain. So, what sort of government should it be?
The simplest way, of course, is to find the strongest person in the community, who can beat up any of the others all together or one at a time, and make them sole leader. They then go around beating everyone up and taking their money, and spend it--hopefully--on doing the things that government does. When they get old and tired of beating people up, their child becomes leader, and lasts as long as it takes for someone to work out that the kid is a weed and beat them up. There are a few minor drawbacks to this system, but with certain refinements it's lasted a good long while in various places. This is of course monarchy. If there's more than one strong person in the community, you get oligarchy, and so on.
The problem with all these sorts of government is that the government cannot be relied upon to act in the interests of the people. Once the community gets big enough, in fact, it becomes logically impossible to act in the interests of all the people, which is a good argument for smaller communities. Sooner or later, though, people get the urge to try for a system of government that at least has a bash, and the search for democracy is on.
And that's enough for now. More in our next.
Now I know there are some libertarians and anarchists out there who don't think there should be any government at all (except when you need it for something--that's not being snarky, honestly, that's me acknowledging that the libertarian position is not necessarily as absolutist as it's sometimes portrayed as being). And you know I don't agree, so we don't need to take our trolley round that particular aisle today. We're going to assume that government is sometimes a good thing and has a good purpose, and talk about what that is.
Government is there for a number of reasons. One is to do things for people that they can't efficiently do themselves, like build roads. Imagine if you will a world where everyone is solely responsible for building the twenty feet of road in front of their house. You'd end up with a bit of a patchwork, I think. And when you get to drains and sewerage, the mind revolts. So these things need to be done on a community level at very least, so that people using the roads have a consistent and convenient travel experience, and the drains work at least some of the time. Plumbing, as Joyce Grenfell said, is essential to the Better Life. So right away you need a body of some kind to organise and co-ordinate these essential community services, and since they involve buying labour and materials, that body has to be funded in some way. There are various solutions for this, which we'll move on to later.
Another good purpose for government is to speak for a community to other communities, to represent them in some way. Another is to make sure that the community's members have a measure of freedom (not being exploited, imprisoned without cause or otherwise oppressed) and a measure of safety (being protected from both crime and foreign aggression). To a degree these are mutually exclusive, but a balance is possible. Another is to ensure fair trade, both within the community and between it and other communities. There are other priorities, like education, healthcare, provision for the poor, that can be done by individuals but can, if done properly, be done much better at a community level. If a government can be found that will do all these things, then the members of the community don't have to do it all themselves, which means they have time and energy to live their lives and maybe even read a book now and then.
So, there are good reasons to have a government. Which is why, almost always in stories, the first thing a group of stranded humans in a desolate place will ask is "who's going to be in charge?" Or someone will take charge, and the others will either go along with that or raise objections. I seem to remember that about seventy per cent of Heinlein's Number of the Beast consisted of arguments between four occupants of a spaceship about who was going to be captain. So, what sort of government should it be?
The simplest way, of course, is to find the strongest person in the community, who can beat up any of the others all together or one at a time, and make them sole leader. They then go around beating everyone up and taking their money, and spend it--hopefully--on doing the things that government does. When they get old and tired of beating people up, their child becomes leader, and lasts as long as it takes for someone to work out that the kid is a weed and beat them up. There are a few minor drawbacks to this system, but with certain refinements it's lasted a good long while in various places. This is of course monarchy. If there's more than one strong person in the community, you get oligarchy, and so on.
The problem with all these sorts of government is that the government cannot be relied upon to act in the interests of the people. Once the community gets big enough, in fact, it becomes logically impossible to act in the interests of all the people, which is a good argument for smaller communities. Sooner or later, though, people get the urge to try for a system of government that at least has a bash, and the search for democracy is on.
And that's enough for now. More in our next.