Democracy

I attended a very good secondary school but I never managed to qualify to enter a university. I am a self-taught observer and thinker. Consequently, this discourse is not based on any intellectual sources that I have read or studied. It is based solely on what I have personally observed, experienced and suffered during my life both in the United kingdom and in Brazil. It is therefore my opinion only.

The illusion of individual freedom, which the capitalist propaganda machine projects into the popular mind, goes under the name of 'democracy'. The supposed safety of this so-called 'government of the people by the people' is captured well in a popular quotation which paraphrases something like:

You can fool most of the people some of the time;
You can fool some of the people most of the time;
You may fool most of the people most of the time;
But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

But the sad truth is, you don't need to. All you have to do to get your way is to fool more than half of the people at election time. And this happens no more than once every 4 or 5 years (depending on which so-called Western democracy you live in). With their invincible mass-media propaganda machine, the capitalist elite minority has no trouble fooling at least 50% of the common people during the brief run-up to each election.

But this pertains to our familiar representative democracy — the system under which we live today. Before considering this, however, it is expedient to take a systemic look at plain simple direct or participative democracy.

Direct Democracy

Democracy is government of the people by the people. But this definition is incomplete. It needs qualifying in order to make it meaningful. Democracy is specifically government of the people as a whole by the people as a whole. In other words, it pertains to a collective such as a clan or nation. The prime object of its focus is society not the individual. It recognises the individual as a concept, but only as a generic citizen: not as a single and particular sentient being of unique personality, character and aptitude profile. Democracy is unable to deal equally and fairly with individual human beings who are, by nature, very different from each other.

The only sentient entity within society is the real individual human being. A group, collective or nation may be perceived to have a national character or personality, which is known as its zeitgeist. But a zeitgeist isn't sentient. Any and all forms of social collective possess neither individual conscious awareness nor conscience [a sense of right and wrong]. The individual human is the only element of society that has inherent self-awareness and is able to observe, experience and suffer. To my mind it is morally self-evident that the singular object of social concern must be the experience, suffering, survival, comfort and happiness of each and every individual.

Society is a collective comprising a vary large diversity of individuals. But society is not a machine. It does not naturally have the fixed rigid structure of a machine. It does not naturally exhibit the programmed behaviour of a machine; irrespective of what various artificial forms and functions its human powers-that-be may try to impose upon it. It has instead much more the nature of a fluid in motion — like a weather system, oceans of currents, a shape-shifting shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings. It has no central control. Its behaviour is governed by natural laws that govern the way in which its elemental components interact with each other when they meet by chance. The swirling beauty of its global behaviour is a consequence of its natural fractal laws operating at the nanoscopic scale.

Nature of Society

Mathematically, such a phenomenon is known as a complex-dynamical system. And human society — of whatever scale from modern nations with populations of hundreds of millions down to the size of an anthropological community — is a complex-dynamical system. As such, it is governed by nature according to fractal laws, which orchestrate the interactions between each encountering pair of individuals, as and whenever such an interaction occurs.

One defining behaviour of a complex-dynamical system is that the precise form of a large-scale event within its behaviour can evolve according to the precise form or shape of a small remote perturbation. In other words, the very small can give rise to the very large.

The classic example of this is: whether or not a butterfly on a Caribbean island flaps its wings or not at a certain instant determines whether or not a hurricane develops in the Atlantic Ocean several weeks later.

Another defining behaviour is that individual elements [molecules] of a complex-dynamical system can — and are — subject to vastly different circumstances within their respective locations or hinterlands. Consequently, individuals, as they travel their separate paths through time, space and the social order, can — and are — arbitrarily subjected to vastly different sets of events and circumstances over which each has little or no control.

An individual's reason for not being part of the majority can be because he is elderly, infirm, deficient or inept or was in the wrong place at the wrong time in unfavourable circumstances caused by complex-dynamical processes within the socio-economy. His reason is most likely no fault of his own, having no control over it and no choice about changing it.

Individual humans are intrinsically very different from each other — in personality, character and given aptitudes. In addition, the particular observations, experiences and sufferings of each — as he travels his unique path through time, space and the social order — are extrinsically very different from those of others. The combined effect is that the individual members of a society, as they are swirled around within its on-going dynamic, are involuntarily subjected to very different circumstances.

The ebbs & flows of these circumstances are for everybody bound by what is called a complex-dynamical attractor. They can vary enormously for both the same and for different individuals. The attractor for a particular complex-dynamical system can be stable, binding the excursions of these circumstantial ebbs & flows to within benign limits. On the other hand, it can be only meta-stable, allowing extreme ebbs & flows that will eventually result in the system's self-destruction. Which of these human society follows depends solely on the precise form of the fractal rules, which govern all interactive events that take place between individuals.

The universe is a complex-dynamical system with long-term stability. Its fractal rules regulate the interactions between its smallest constituents. It is said that if the Fine Structure Constant [which determines the degree to which the universe's nanoscopic components interact] were only slightly different from 0·007296075, then the universe would collapse, as alluded to in the film "UFO Interference (2018)".

In a natural anthropological community of up to about 150 souls, individuals cannot be other than visible and transparent. Everybody knows everybody else. Consequently, it's difficult or impossible to mask clandestine activity or intent — certainly in the long term. In such a situation, community members interact with each other in an egalitarian mode, governed by natural self-evident rules that cause the community as a whole to operate in an egalitarian mode that follows a benign complex-dynamical attractor.

An egalitarian society the size of an anthropological community can govern itself by direct democracy. That is, the entire adult population discusses and votes up on each and every issue that arises with regard to the operation of the community's socio-economy. The anthropological community is small enough for direct democracy to be physically practicable — even without the use of high technology.

Notwithstanding, an anthropological community operates as a complex-dynamical system. As such, it inherently self-governs according to the self-evident protocol of human conscience, which defines the envelope of behaviour within which binary human interactions may take place.

This is captured well in the following quotations from the Judaeo-Christian Bible: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" — Matthew 7:12 and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." — Matthew 22:39

If this protocol were enforced by each upon himself, then democracy [indeed, government in general] would be unnecessary and irrelevant. The ancients knew this:

Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. — Proverbs 6:6-8

Notwithstanding, democracy could perhaps be useful, on occasions, in particular local circumstances.

Democratic Morality

Notwithstanding, even at this basic idyllic level, democracy isn't perfect. It will now become rapidly evident that it isn't the political mechanism itself that determines whether a system of government be fair and equitable [or not]. Whatever the issue being discussed, each individual is free to vote in either of two ways.

He can vote according to what he, through honest mindful consideration, considers to be in the best interest of everybody.
He can vote according to what he considers to be in his own [or of his extended self's] best interest.

In the first case, he votes in a way which ensures that, whatever benefit the majority gains, it doesn't cause detriment to anybody else. In the second case he is voting selfishly. Consequently he will vote in a measure that may only marginally improve the life and well-being of himself and his own. But this could well be at the cost of creating merry hell for other members of his community who, through no fault of their own, find themselves in very different circumstances over which they have no control and from which they have no escape. So the result is nothing to do with the voting process of majority prevalence. It is solely to do with whether the voter be, by nature, an inclusivist or an exclusivist; benevolent or self-seeking.

It also depends on the voter's perception of what is just or not just. One good example is when, at a much younger age, my judgement on a certain matter was what I can now clearly see to have been unjust.

I had two colleagues called Gil and Gum. Gum and I lived within walking distance of Pub A. Gil lived within walking distance of Pub B. The two pubs were in different towns. Consequently, for us all to meet at Pub A, Gum and I could walk while Gil had to drive about 10 km. For us to meet at Pub B, Gil had a short walk to the pub while Gum and I had to drive 10 km. Please be assured that the driver of the day did not drink alcohol above the legal limit.

I voted that we should meet at each friend's nearest pub in sequence. This seemed to me at the time to be democratically fair. Thus we should meet at Pub A the first Monday, Pub A the second Monday and Pub B the third Monday and repeat this cycle ad infinitum. This meant that Gum and I walked the first and second Mondays and shared a ride in each other's cars the third Monday. But Gil had to drive in his own car to Pub A on the first two Mondays and walk on the third Monday. Gil had to do the 10 km drive twice per 3-week cycle while Gum and I only drove the 10 km once per 6 weeks. So Gil had to drive 4 times the distance that Gum and I had to.

Gil didn't agree. He said we should meet at Pub B on the first and second Mondays and at Pub A on the third Monday. This way Gum and I each drove us both the 10 km to Pub A on the first and second Mondays, while Gil drove the 10 km on the third Monday. Thus each of us drove 10 km.

If we three each voted in his own self-interest, Gil would have to drive 4 times the distance Gum and I drove. Gum and I would have the democratic majority. If we each voted for the best common good, we would each end up driving the same distance, although the majority [Gum and I] would be voting against our own best interests]. This is the only way for direct democracy to work fairly. Each individual should benefit equally according to need. Notwithstanding, if one of us were in hard times and couldn't afford the fuel, then the criteria for a fair vote would have to take this into account.

It is crucial to note that, even with direct democracy, if the majority votes selfishly, it is always the same hapless individuals who are penalised: namely, any who is not a member of the majority.

Voter Qualification

To be qualified to participate in the democratic process, the voter [citizen] must possess an internal conviction to vote according to what he believes to be fair and just. But this isn't all. He must also have studied [mindfully considered and learned] what is and is not just. In the pub scenario above, I honestly thought that because two people [Gum and I] pertained to Pub A, then, as the majority, the majority of meetings should be at our pub. I was morally honest but systemically wrong. I had lacked the political education to qualify me to make a sound judgement.

Almost total lack of voter qualification is endemic in modern democracies. I suspect that the vast majority of voters form their political opinionations through a Friday night beer haze, driven by pure emotion without one iota of mindful consideration. Consequently, asking the average citizen to vote is like employing a bricklayer to fix your car or hiring an accountant to fix a water leak.

This shouldn't be surprising in view of the way in which industry has evolved. I am a programmer. When I was young and applying for a job, I would be interviewed by a more senior programmer. We would 'talk shop' for half an hour, after which he'd know, through his own qualified judgement, whether or not I was up to the job. Years later, when I was in the interviewer's seat, I'd do the same. During the 1970s this all changed. Then, when interviewed for a job, I would be dealt with by a young girl from human resources who wouldn't know a line of code from a bull's foot. She would give me an aptitude test, which I'd invariably fail miserably. The aptitude test was an industry standard developed by experienced programmers? No, by a firm of psychologists, who also probably couldn't tell a line of code from a bull's foot.

Disqualified decision makers are increasingly the norm. They are mere managers, who have no experience of and probably possess none of the knowledge and skills required for the job for which they are 'assessing' the interviewee. This is the way it has always been with the democratic voter. He knows nothing — professionally or otherwise — about the issues that arise in governing a socio-economy.

Modern Society

No matter how 'advanced' or 'civilised' modern society may have become, it is still fundamentally a complex-dynamical system. Although governments forcibly try to impose artificial structure and regulation upon society, the laws of physics are not mocked. They will have their way, the whole of their way and nothing but their way. The only difference is that those immutable laws of physics make society operate in a different mode, which is inevitably nowhere near so benign as the natural one.

Indeed, the mode in which modern society is flagrantly seen to operate is, for most, anything but benign. It bestows health, wealth and happiness upon the exigent, relegating the meek to misery and starvation, while keeping its middle majority in a churning cauldron of stress-laden economic uncertainty. The fact that society still functions at all, and hasn't collapsed altogether, is incontrovertible witness to the amazing resilience of natural complex-dynamical systems.

As a complex-dynamical system, the only way to gain an understanding of modern society is to observe and analyse it from the point of view of its basic element or molecule; namely the individual. But this 'generic citizen' of modern society lives in the fabricated illusion, drip-fed into his mind continually by the great spin machine. To understand how modern society truly behaves towards the 'generic citizen' we must circumvent his illusion in order to acquire a purely systemic view.

So, what precisely is the structure and operation of the regime that is artificially imposed upon the natural complex-dynamics of modern society? Is it autocracy, theocracy, oligarchy, plutocracy, timocracy, democracy, or what? It is an uneasy mixture of all these. I think 'corporate totalitarianism' is probably the best descriptive term for it. That is: totalitarianism operating through a plethora of instances of an obfuscating mechanism known as a limited liability corporation or persona legalis.

Within a modern society, the individual doesn't possess the necessary and sufficient resources to enable him to turn his own labour into his own needs of life. He was long ago forcibly dispossessed of this self-evident individual birthright. Consequently, he must serve somebody who does possess such resources, in return for his vital needs. And, in modern society, that 'somebody' is invariably a persona legalis — a legally formulated artificial psychopath.

A persona legalis is a hierarchical command and control structure, which forms a standard framework, within and upon which is constructed a needs-producing socio-economic machine. A national socio-economy thus comprises a complex-dynamical symbiotic fluid, the component elements [molecules] of which are personae legales.

These are of widely varying size and economic power. In fact, they can range from the size of small family businesses to multinational leviathans. Although some of the small-fry each 'serve' the public directly, the majority operate as mere satellite suppliers of out-sourced goods and services to their leviathan 'customers', on whom they depend for their very existence.

Whereas nature imposes a strict limit on the size of atoms and molecules, human society places no such self-imposing limit on the size of a persona legalis, except for largely toothless anti-trust laws that become effective only when it is necessary to avert a dangerous monopoly. Even then, when broken into pieces, those pieces are usually controlled by the same clique of humans, which means that, systemically, nothing has changed.

Thus, the persona legalis is the real free citizen of modern society. But it is a non-sentient entity with no conscience and a psychopathic modus operandi whose singular objective is to maximise profit by maximising revenue and minimising costs — irrespective of the collateral consequences of disparity, stress and misery suffered by the real sentient human beings that it arbitrarily enslaves or excludes.

A persona legalis has the logical form of a pyramid comprising layers of authority. The bottom layer contains labourers, who are controlled by successive layers of supervisors and managers above them. Layers diminish in size from bottom to top, each successive layer containing fewer individuals. The top layer contains a board of directors above which is the managing director or company president. Command and control flow down the pyramid, with an upward return flow of obedience and deference.

The persona legalis thus has the form and function of an ancient kingdom. It is an authoritarian regime in which democracy has no part. The only difference is that the modern 'serf' is free to change his 'king'. But he has no guarantee that any 'king' will take him. No persona legalis is obliged to employ any particular labourer. He can find himself rejected and destitute, as did the ancient serf for whom the king had no use, ruthlessly abandoned to seek and survive on the charity of his peers.

Unlike society itself, the persona legalis is not a complex-dynamical system: it has the form and function of a machine. Its human components are like the organs of a body that each performs its own specialised sub-function within the whole. Like the engine, gearbox and wheels of a car. It consumes labour, materials and energy and expels saleable products and waste; externalising all collateral social, infrastructure and pollution problems onto society at large. It's one nasty self-seeking 'citizen'.

A persona legalis is legally a person, with the same rights and obligations as any human citizen. Notwithstanding, it obviously isn't a sentient human being with feelings and conscience. To call it a 'person' is therefore misleading. It can be far more accurately understood as a legal transducer through which real human beings can operate collectively under special protection [limited liability] from full responsibility for their actions. It enables them to operate with a substantial measure of impunity.

As Lord Thurlow put it: "Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like."
— John Poynder's Literary Extracts (1844).

Of course the persona legalis has neither body nor soul. It's merely a machine — an abstract transducing machine fabricated from legal statements. It acts as a moral insulator, allowing directors and shareholders to perpetrate, with clear conscience, the socio-economic carnage of disparity and poverty upon ordinary people; just like the archetypal American carpet bomber as he dutifully pulls the lever to rain down napalm that barbecues the little bodies of the screaming defenceless Vietnamese children far below.

As a 'person' the status of a persona legalis is that of a blindly obedient slave, who is wholly owned by its shareholders. Its operational strategies are formulated by its directors, who also have the legal responsibility for it. Its day-to-day operations are orchestrated by managers, the chief of whom is the CEO [Chief Executive Officer]. These are employees like all its other human operatives. Employees are not part of the persona legalis itself. They are mere resources hired from the open market.

As well as acting as a morally-insulating transducer, the persona legalis functions also as an immensely powerful economic amplifier of the CEO's mind and body — just as the ancient kingdom was a powerful bellical amplifier of the king's mind and body as a means of realising his ambitions. In the case of the persona legalis, however, it is the will of the shareholders, as filtered, crystallised and represented by the board of directors, that is amplified and executed.

Consequently, the modus operandi of a persona legalis is that of a representative democracy. The directors, who represent the shareholders, form policies that reflect the collective will of the shareholders. But only a minority of shareholders; because only a minority of shareholders is allowed to vote. So although all shareholders — including the majority that cannot vote — supply the persona legalis's capital, only a minority of them can elect, or otherwise influence, its board of directors. It is like a partial representative democracy with a majority disenfranchised underclass.

Because of the personality types of those who inevitably end up in such positions, this corporate 'representative democracy', rapidly transmutes into an autocracy dominated by an exigent managing director surrounded by a board of sycophants who will exploit their shareholders as much as they do their employees.

In this analogy, the CEO and his hierarchy of managers could be thought of as a kind of 'civil service', which orders and directs the labour force in its work and sees that the persona legalis itself does not violate laws that limit the extent to which it is permitted to exploit and abuse its labourers. The CEO, managers and labourers are in no way part of this corporate 'representative democracy'.

The persona legalis is thus the cage in which the sentient individual — as the active element of a modern society — is wrapped, imprisoned and constrained. How does this artificial container change his situation within his socio-economic environment — his outside world — from what it would be if he were an unencumbered individual within an open natural human society? The difference is that, contrary to modern political propagandas, he is not free: he is a slave.

He does not have allodial right to unilaterally apply his labour and skills to his fair share of his planet's biospherical resources to produce his own needs and luxuries of life. If he were to try, he would be forcibly prevented, criminally prosecuted and punished under the laws of the State. Consequently, in order to acquire his needs of life, he has no choice but to apply for employment, which will, almost invariably, be available to him only via a persona legalis.

Personae legales have absolutely no obligation, either individually or collectively, to employ a particular individual. Furthermore, they have no obligation to account for why they may refuse to employ a particular individual or even to maintain records of applications for employment made to them. On the other hand, any unemployed individual, under threat of State-imposed destitution, is legally obliged to seek employment every day and to prove, on a fortnightly basis, that he has done so.

For a State power to render any individual destitute is a flagrant violation of Article 25 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights made on 10 December 1948.

The individual is thus only permitted to apply his labour gainfully by the arbitrary condescension of a persona legalis, which answers to nobody if it denies him this vital 'privilege'. So whether a given individual be a slave or a vagrant is at the whim of those who control a nation's personae legales. So if he has the luck [and that is exactly what it is] to become employed within the structure of a persona legalis, how does his world appear from where he moves, stands or sits at his work?

An employee does not own any of the planet on which he was born. Consequently, he has no resources through which he is free to turn his labour into his needs of life. In order to survive, he must therefore serve one of the few who do. He must serve a master. Ipso facto he is a slave. The fact that he is paid in cash rather than kind is immaterial: he is still a slave. The fact that he is free to change his master is also immaterial: he must still serve a master in order to live. An employee is a slave.

A child depends on a parent. A slave depends on a master. In ancient Greek, the same word παῖς was used for child and slave. A dependent — especially a child — isn't necessarily obliged to work for his keep. Anciently, a παῖς [child or slave] was considered to be owned by his father or master. Today, a child or employee is not owned by his parents or employer. However, to realise his right to life, an employee has an obligation to work. Consequently, his labour is owned by his employer.

So, in modern society, everyone is born into a life-long debt of labour. The State [hopefully] recognises his right to life, which is predicated upon his biological need for food, clothing and shelter. For this, the law of the State obliges him to seek employment, thus placing upon him a life-long debt of labour. Consequently, to be granted leave to live, he must, if allowed, pay this debt of labour to whomsoever will, from time to time and without obligation, condescend to employ him.

Notwithstanding, it's not the corporate system itself that determines whether the employee fairs well or ill: it's the policy of who is in control. Like as a parent or an ancient master, a persona legalis can be generous or miserly to its employees. And it's this that determines whether the employee fairs well or ill. But a persona legalis is legally bound to prioritise the interests of its shareholders by maximising profit by maximising revenue and minimising costs. And employees are a cost.

A persona legalis will therefore always pay its employees the minimum it can get away with: the minimum that market forces and employment legislation will allow. And since labour is always a buyer's market, the employee will always fair badly.

Thus, above him, the employee sees his manager, who tells him what to do. In my experience, over time, that manager is increasingly, if not wholly, ignorant of the skills, knowledge and technology of the employee's work. He just 'manages'. Below him is nothing but the void of unemployment into which he will fall if circumstances absolutely beyond his control render him 'redundant'. To his sides are his work colleagues. They have no more power than he does. He may converse with them, but only about things relating to work or trivia such as 'life and football'. They are, one and all, kept partitioned and ignorant about the operation of the persona legalis that employs them.

Thus, from the point of view of the employee, the persona legalis is wholly and overtly authoritarian. It is not in any way democratic. And it is the central element of all Western socio-economies. It is what governs and dominates the lives of the people. And it is treated, in law, as a person — just like every human member of the population. But it is vastly more powerful and influential. Collectively therefore, the personae legales are super-citizens who are always and inevitably able to dominate the political landscape of their nation.

In any dispute between a human citizen and a persona legalis, the latter can afford far superior legal representation and is not hurt by legal costs. On the other hand, the human citizen cannot, for the most part, afford legal representation at all and would no doubt be financially ruined if he were to engage a persona legalis in court. Consequently, the persona legalis can, for the most part, break the law with impunity. It is simply a risk/benefit assessment as to whether or not the proportion of occasions it is caught and brought to justice is outweighed by the extra profit gained on the whole by its law-breaking.

Naturally, the collective of personae legales would like their nation to be governed according to an authoritarian model of government after their own kind. But such a model of 'capitalism with no safety valves' could only be forcibly held in place for an extreme authoritarian regime and then, even so, only for a short time before social unrest would explode into open insurrection. The only solution is to provide socio-economic safety valves and delude the vast majority that it is indeed in control.

This is accomplished through a system called 'Representative Democracy', which provides the minimum necessary and sufficient level of social services to maintain the well-being of a sufficiently large majority of the population just a little bit above the threshold of social insurrection.

Representative Democracy

In modern so-called 'democracies', the ordinary citizen is not permitted to vote on specific issues. His only 'democratic' prerogative is to vote for whichever of two or three political personalities he wishes to represent him and his interests within a ridiculously small assembly of individuals who will vote on specific issues on his behalf. If the representative he voted for does not get elected, then his interests are represented in that assembly by one whose views are probably the very opposite of his own. Therefore, as an individual, he is not appropriately represented.

Furthermore, the person who represents him is invariably from a minority upper to middle class of elite-educated lawyers. Their incomes, life-styles and social connections isolate them culturally and economically from most of those they govern. They have no common context of life experiences against which to understand the lot of the poor and unemployed. This is true even of those who may have hailed from working class origins. They as individuals are no longer immersed in a working class context. It no longer impinges upon their daily lives. All the intricate daily ramifications of its hardships and constraints rapidly evaporate from their memories.

Besides, any person of working class origin is very unlikely to have the resources and social connections to become a political candidate. Nor is he likely to be able to muster the finance to mount an election campaign to become a representative.

The Election Process

Every 4 or 5 years, depending on in which Western democracy they reside, all the citizens vote for politicians to represent them in the country's government. Each citizen chooses his desired representative from the two or more candidates that are on offer to him. The different candidates are members of different political parties, each of which promulgates different political views and socio-economic proposals. Each candidate is voted for by a fairly large number of citizens.

A democratic country is divided into small geographic areas, which I shall refer to as constituencies. The population within each constituency votes for a candidate to represent him and his political interests to the government. The candidate within each constituency, who receives the majority of votes, becomes the representative in government for all the voters within his constituency.

The political party with the majority of elected representatives governs the country for the 4 to 5 year term until the next election.

Disproportionate Representation

Not all constituencies are home to the same number of people. Consequently, some representatives represent a lot of people, while others represent only a few. The constituencies with large populations are predominantly industrial areas where the majority are members of the so-called 'working class'. Those with small populations are predominantly countryside and commuter belt areas. These are predominantly home to landowners, farmers and professional commuters.

As a result, there are more 'working class' people per representative than there are landowners, farmers and professional people. The latter are therefore far better represented within government than labourers. It therefore requires far less upper class people than working class people to vote in a majority government. The kind of government that best serves the interests of landowners, farmers and professionals is therefore always most likely to prevail.

Furthermore, an incumbent government has the power to use another ploy called gerrymandering to further secure its re-election. They can adjust the boundaries of the constituencies to increase the segregation of working class people from the upper classes. Alternatively they can re-draw the boundaries to split working class areas to split concentrations of working class people between different constituencies so that they become minorities in each one.

So how does this 'democratic' system of government look from the point-of-view of the basic element of the complex-dynamical ocean of humanity that we call society; namely, from the point-of-view of each single individual sentient citizen? In the list below, I show the situation in the prevalent case where the incumbent government represents the interests of the upper/middle class.

Please note: I use the word toff to signify the upper and middle classes of citizens that comprise landowners, farmers and professionals. I use the word pleb to signify citizens of lower so-called 'working' class, which includes the unemployed and the welfare-dependent infirm, deficient and inept. My use of these terms is solely for brevity and does not imply any offence or demeaning intent. It's just like using a letter in algebra as a shorthand for representing the name of a real-world quantity.

A toff, who lives in a constituency with a toff majority, is represented by someone, who is sympathetic to his views and interests, to a government that is also sympathetic to his views and interests.
A toff, who lives in a constituency with a pleb majority, is 'represented' by someone, who is not sympathetic to his views and interests, but to a government that is sympathetic to his views and interests.
A pleb, who lives in a constituency with a pleb majority, is represented by someone, who is sympathetic to his views and interests, but to a government that is not sympathetic to his views and interests.
A pleb, who lives in a constituency with a toff majority, is 'represented' by someone, who is not sympathetic to his views and interests, to a government that is also not sympathetic to his views and interests.

Obviously, in this case, representative democracy only provides true representation for toffs living in toff constituencies, which are bound to be only a small minority of the national population. Toffs living in pleb constituencies are not sympathetically represented. That representation is nevertheless to a sympathetic government. Besides, socio-economic norms and elite gerrymandering will ensure that such toffs are invariably a very small minority in such constituencies. Plebs who live in a pleb constituency may be positively represented but to a non-sympathetic government. Least well represented are the plebs who live in toff constituencies, who, as in my own case, are only grudgingly represented to an unsympathetic government.

I have never been democratically represented. The member of parliament for my area has always been a staunch Tory. His views are the diametric opposite from mine. Whenever I enter into correspondence with him, I get the typical meaningless politician's reply which has no value whatsoever.

So representative democracy is far from what one could rightly call a fair system. It is inherently divisive. It separates people against each other by gathering them into opposing factions, granting favour to the majority while disfavouring all minorities. This creates an adversarial mentality, which eventually spills out into open conflict.

Government of a Minority

Thus, a government that truly represents only a small minority of the population, is given the omnipotent power to enact laws which affect everybody, including the poor and unemployed, for whose views and interests it has no sympathy.

An example is the savings limit penalty. Those who enacted it have no personal experience of its effects and ramifications upon the life of somebody like me. They simply have no mental context within which to model its effects upon the lives of those upon whom they forcibly impose it.

This is not democracy. At best it serves a minority self-interest; at worst, it is the idle admiration of a political celebrity. Despite this, the capitalist elite has always managed to sell it as 'true democracy' in which the dispossessed individual is convinced that he has freedom, control, opportunity and property. Thus from the misery of his suburban existence, the average citizen becomes so convinced of his freedom that he will vigorously defend and — where opportunity presents itself — will himself practice the principles and policies of those who enslave him.

Western 'representative' democracy is not true democracy. It is simply a mechanism for expediting what a deluded majority sees as its own self interest. It is a Tyranny of The Majority. But, since the mind of this majority is shaped by the mass-media propaganda machine of an elite minority, it is really a Tyranny of The Elite. It is their means of subjugating the masses. This is no different from the ancient feudalism from which this 'democracy' supposedly freed us.

Socio-Political Ignorance

Democracy is government of the people by the people. Consequently, it demands and requires a morally educated population. It can be fair and equitable only when each person is equally informed and adept in matters affecting society, and votes on every issue according to what, in clear conscience, he judges to be best for the common good. This requirement is scalable: its basic functionality is the same from national government down to the residential condominium.

The reality, however, is that most people are not experts in matters affecting society, and each in fact votes according to what he perceives will best fulfil his own personal self-interest. So modern representative democracy is government of the people by a selfish majority who, rather than judge policies responsibly, simply follow like sheep the elitist political opinion vomited upon them daily by the great spin-machine. The result is that, in order to provide the selfish majority with the slightest betterment, any minority can, by collateral effect, end up suffering undeserved misery.

Democracy is a system of government under which the majority of voters in the majority of constituencies get essentially what they think they want, while those who don't fit can go eat shit.

I would again cite the example of the savings limit penalty that is imposed upon the poor. It is seen as saving public money, which is in turn seen as a prelude to reducing tax for the majority taxpayer. But such selfishness always takes a short-term view. In fact, the savings limit penalty locks the poor into poverty by preventing them from accumulating the means of getting themselves off welfare dependency back into economic self-sufficiency. The taxpayer thus ends up having to support them forever. Selfishness is always counter-productive in the long run.

An Instrument of Disparity

Human society today is in such a sorry mess of oppression, exploitation, disparity and poverty because artificial laws of hierarchical control have been forcibly super-imposed upon its natural complex-dynamical functionality by exigent self-appointed powers-that-be. This well debunks the quip of the popular right-wing press, which asserts that: "I've got a job, so if you don't have one: it must be your own bloody fault", which certainly doesn't stack up with the natural laws of complex-dynamics.

But by what mechanism do the powers-that-be maintain socio-economic disparity? The answer is: money — specifically, the modus operandi of the monetary system. Money: or more precisely, monetary value, is a paradox. It's nothing other than an arbitrary yardstick, of capricious elasticity, used by those with economic power to compare an immense diversity of like against unlike, in terms of one single dysfunctional universal measure that has no basis or counterpart in physical reality.

Pragmatic observation demonstrates clearly to me that money has little or no bearing on work, virtue or merit. On the contrary, I can see it relentlessly expediting its indisputable purpose of concentrating wealth, generated by a deluded many, into the laps of a devious few. If money be a measure of anything, it is simply a measure of hegemony, which, to my mind, has neither social morality nor economic virtue.

It Isn't Democracy's Fault

A caring king or a benign dictator governs his people with equity. An evil king or a tyrannical dictator enslaves his people in misery. When each citizen of a democracy votes for policies that suit his own selfish ambitions, without concern for the catastrophic collateral effects those policies may have on some of his fellow citizens, then disparity will reign. For democracy to be fair and benign, each must vote for policies he truly believes will create conditions that are fair and satisfactory for everybody.

However, it is not the political system, as such, that causes them to vote this way. The people can fare well or fare badly, irrespectively of whether they are governed by decree or by democracy. The fault is with the selfish character of who governs, be it the king or the people. Under modern western democracy, this selfish character is embedded within the public mind by the industrial elite who employ modern mass-media to constantly drip-feed the public with their own selfish attitudes, thus turning democracy into oligarchy. And it is this oligarchy that owns and controls all the resources of the planet, giving only to those for whom it currently has need, the means to turn their labour into their needs of life. This oligarchy thus owns and controls access to the tree of life, which it uses for its own selfish ends.

And this has resulted in the unmitigated socio-economic mess in which all of us are forced to try to maintain our miserable biological existences today.

Democracy Could Work

But for it to do so, four conditions must be met.

Hierarchical control stymies the working of the natural laws of human interaction. So the hierarchical rule of [artificial] law must be removed.
The influence and power of the over-exigent must be moderated. So the size of a democratic unit must not exceed that of an anthropological community.
Everybody must judge each issue for the purpose of the common good. Any judgement must be resolved so that not one individual is harmed or oppressed by it. This requires unconditionally that each must 'love his neighbour as himself'.
Additionally, everybody who is governed must be personally known by those who govern. In other words, everybody must know everybody else, including their particular circumstances, strengths, weaknesses and difficulties. Everybody must share a common social and economic context.

The field of influence of the true democratic process cannot therefore extend beyond the bounds of the natural anthropological community. Inter-community affairs must be governed by a different protocol.

Chapter 11: The Way They Govern

Footnote: Democracy