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A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that v

by zvikara 18y ago

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

noonespecial 18y ago
I've heard this many times but I always felt that a stable reaction was possible by limiting the size of the public treasury. Citizen's resistance to taxation seems to be a reasonable force capable of doing just this. I feel differently now because it has morphed, via healthcare, into a moral issue versus a strictly financial one. People have grown into the idea that a person has a right to have any amount of money spent to prolong their lives, even for a few weeks. Previously this was impossible. Death was almost always quick and cheap because there was only so much medicine could do. Science is changing this rapidly. You can imagine how this would lead to the collapse predicted with a simple thought experiment. What if every person could, at the end of their life, press a magic "science button" and get one extra year? What if this button cost $100 million to press?
- hugh 18y ago
  My preferred solution to this problem (bear with me for a while, since this is a pet theory I only unload very rarely): Many democracies (e.g. the US, UK, Australia) have bicameral legislatures in which legislation must be passed by both houses, but where one of the houses no longer properly serves its original purpose. In the US and Australia the role of the Senate was to represent the voice of the individual states -- this doesn't happen any more and it just winds up filled with the same parties as the other house in slightly different numbers. In the UK the House of Lords was supposed to represent the interests of the nobility, but that's no longer seen as a desirable goal anyway. I'm not totally sure about the details of the systems in other countries. Anyway, my suggestion is to keep the House of Representatives in its present form and replace the nonfunctional upper house with a "House of Taxpayers", in which the representatives are elected by voting among the nation's taxpayers with each taxpayer's vote being worth an amount proportional to the amount of tax they pay. This would ensure that any law being passed by the legislature would have to be approved both by all the people who might benefit from it (the House of Reps) and the people who would have to pay for it (the House of Tax). It might also have the added benefit of encouraging the lower classes to shift more of the tax burden onto themselves in order to have more say in how it's spent. It's probably not practical to pioneer this kind of constitutional reform in any existing democracy, but I certainly think it should be considered by anyone setting up a constitution for a new one.
  - noonespecial 18y ago
    We've already got one. Its called the lobby. It works all too well.
  - gaius 18y ago
    In the UK the House of Lords was supposed to represent the interests of the nobility, but that's no longer seen as a desirable goal anyway. The House of Commons necessarily can't see any further than the next election, at most 5 years out. The House of Lords is full of people who know (or used to anyway) that any problems they create, their own grandchildren would have to sort out. Regardless of anyone's feelings about heredity, that was a very valuable capability and it has now largely been lost.
    - hugh 18y ago
      Good point, I'd never thought of it that way. I still don't think the benefits are worth the costs, but that's certainly a benefit.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Interesting. In the U.S., the House of Representatives is specifically supposed to represent the taxpayers while the Senate represents the states (as you noted) For those of you concerned with runaway spending, the founders specifically charged the House with the pocketbook. What happens, however, over time the House begins to realize that while you don't have taxation without representation (unless you're DC -- long story) you sure as heck can end up with completely disproportionate representation to the amount you are paying. Or in other words I can get taxed $1 and you can get taxed $1 Million and we still have the same representation. To me this feels more like a prison system than a progressive one. If you proportionately had representation in the "House of Taxpayers" according to how much skin they had in the game, increases in taxes would amount to re-districting, and would be done with the utmost care. Very interesting idea. On first glance, I like it.

by zvikara 18y ago

noonespecial 18y ago

I've heard this many times but I always felt that a stable reaction was possible by limiting the size of the public treasury. Citizen's resistance to taxation seems to be a reasonable force capable of doing just this. I feel differently now because it has morphed, via healthcare, into a moral issue versus a strictly financial one. People have grown into the idea that a person has a right to have any amount of money spent to prolong their lives, even for a few weeks. Previously this was impossible. Death was almost always quick and cheap because there was only so much medicine could do. Science is changing this rapidly. You can imagine how this would lead to the collapse predicted with a simple thought experiment. What if every person could, at the end of their life, press a magic "science button" and get one extra year? What if this button cost $100 million to press?

hugh 18y ago
My preferred solution to this problem (bear with me for a while, since this is a pet theory I only unload very rarely): Many democracies (e.g. the US, UK, Australia) have bicameral legislatures in which legislation must be passed by both houses, but where one of the houses no longer properly serves its original purpose. In the US and Australia the role of the Senate was to represent the voice of the individual states -- this doesn't happen any more and it just winds up filled with the same parties as the other house in slightly different numbers. In the UK the House of Lords was supposed to represent the interests of the nobility, but that's no longer seen as a desirable goal anyway. I'm not totally sure about the details of the systems in other countries. Anyway, my suggestion is to keep the House of Representatives in its present form and replace the nonfunctional upper house with a "House of Taxpayers", in which the representatives are elected by voting among the nation's taxpayers with each taxpayer's vote being worth an amount proportional to the amount of tax they pay. This would ensure that any law being passed by the legislature would have to be approved both by all the people who might benefit from it (the House of Reps) and the people who would have to pay for it (the House of Tax). It might also have the added benefit of encouraging the lower classes to shift more of the tax burden onto themselves in order to have more say in how it's spent. It's probably not practical to pioneer this kind of constitutional reform in any existing democracy, but I certainly think it should be considered by anyone setting up a constitution for a new one.
- noonespecial 18y ago
  We've already got one. Its called the lobby. It works all too well.
- gaius 18y ago
  In the UK the House of Lords was supposed to represent the interests of the nobility, but that's no longer seen as a desirable goal anyway. The House of Commons necessarily can't see any further than the next election, at most 5 years out. The House of Lords is full of people who know (or used to anyway) that any problems they create, their own grandchildren would have to sort out. Regardless of anyone's feelings about heredity, that was a very valuable capability and it has now largely been lost.
  - hugh 18y ago
    Good point, I'd never thought of it that way. I still don't think the benefits are worth the costs, but that's certainly a benefit.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Interesting. In the U.S., the House of Representatives is specifically supposed to represent the taxpayers while the Senate represents the states (as you noted) For those of you concerned with runaway spending, the founders specifically charged the House with the pocketbook. What happens, however, over time the House begins to realize that while you don't have taxation without representation (unless you're DC -- long story) you sure as heck can end up with completely disproportionate representation to the amount you are paying. Or in other words I can get taxed $1 and you can get taxed $1 Million and we still have the same representation. To me this feels more like a prison system than a progressive one. If you proportionately had representation in the "House of Taxpayers" according to how much skin they had in the game, increases in taxes would amount to re-districting, and would be done with the utmost care. Very interesting idea. On first glance, I like it.