On alternative forms of representative government:Part 1: Democracy's shortcomings

What factors make for the best government, one that best represents the interests of the people while also protecting them, their rights and their property? And, perhaps even more importantly, how can a gov't continue to work well, minimizing the waste, decay, corruption, and abuse that inevitably comes to infest every gov't?

History has shown that democracy itself is insufficient for good government. In theory, the people can vote out bad politicians, but this is hardly the case in practice, because the politicians are very adept at stacking the deck. Here in the US, campaign finance laws which the politicos tell us is to keep out special interests and PAC's, in fact has the direct (and, some say, directly intended) effect of making it very difficult for grass-roots organizations and challengers, and nearly impossible for third-parties, to effectively challenge an incumbent.

In a blatant act of antidemocratic unfairness, the Dems & Repubs have also rigged many state and local election laws to require third party candidates to gather many times more signatures than candidates for the two major oligarchies--er, parties. In addition, many election boards are stacked with Dem & Repub party hacks who will vigorously challenge any non-establishment candidates. In my home state of Illinois, a few years back a Libertarian candidate was denied placement on the ballot after the Board of Elections (filled with party hacks) arbitrarily declared more than 60% of the 60,638 petition signatures to be invalid. (You can read further about this travesty here.)

Incumbents have further cemented their positions by barring criticism of them, in blatant defiance of the First Amendment, within 30-60 days of an election. This was the intention of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act, which like many other bills, was sold to the public as being for their benefit when it is in fact a direct assault on some of our most basic and essential liberties.

The result of all this? Congressional incumbents now have a re-election rate of >98%. This is not democracy. This has got to change.

Even beyond the atrocious degree of stacking the deck for elected positions, it is also the case that in most governments, most gov't positions are unelected. Either the person is hired through some process, or appointed. Governments in the US and around the world are known to be places where a person can work all their life with a pretty darned good amount of job security. (Many gov't workers are unionized, but even beyond this, govt's tend to be very monolithic institutions.) This combination of being unelected and hard to fire leads to several ill results. First, it creates a much lower standard of accountability than you find in the results-driven private sector. Second, it encourages gross inefficiency, since there are few if any incentives to increase productivity beyond the minimum required to do the job. And third, this encourages gov't workers and agencies to maintain the status quo; not only is gov't monolithic, but it is self-perpetuating in being monolithic.

One of the biggest hazards of democracies though, at least of unrestrained ("pure") democracies, is the hazard of the tyranny of the majority. This is the phenomenon where a majority of the population can vote to take away the property or rights of a minority. One common characterization of this is the phrase, "two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch." Often, people willingly support such democratic tyrannies, either because they hope to profit from it somehow, or to see a despised minority put (or kept) in their place. Aside from the obvious immorality of the tyranny of the majority (at least from the minority's point of view), there is another big problem with it, and that is that we are all minorities in some fashion. Beyond the common racial or ethnic minorities, there are religious minorities (including atheists and agnostics), economic minorities (ironically it is often the rich who are singled out here), political minorities, cultural minorities, corporate minorities (big companies often use the legislative process to make things difficult for their smaller competitors), linguistic minorities, foreign minorities, etc. etc. etc. If you think about it hard enough, you probably fit into one or more of the above categories who are at risk for having your earnings, property or liberties taken away by the majority. I would conjecture, in fact, that it is only an exceedingly small minority of us who are in the majority in every respect. :-)

So what does all this say about democracy? Is it an evil to be condemned? No. Rather, it is a strong force to be controlled. My personal views on democracy are akin to Winston Churchill's; to paraphrase a quote of his, "democracy is the worst form of government...except for all the rest." Democracy, however, comes in many forms and sizes. In the next part, I will argue the case for my preferred form of government, which might best be called a minarchist democratic republic.