CHAPTER ONE; HAS DEMOCRACY FAILED ?
Venue; Inside a local Bar, The Citizen (a Bartender) is serving two of his Customers; Critic and the Politician both sitting at the counter...., across on the far side Observer is drinking while reading a newspaper....
Critic; You guys...., I wonder where you are taking our country, your indecisiveness, unnecessary discussions...., aargh whichever you say no matter if it's good or bad your party supports it; whatever they say no matter how good it is your party oppose it..., in the end nothing gets done...., and you know who pays for it?
Politician; the other side have no morals..., what they do is for the detriment of our country, we all pay for their unsupportive behaviors.
Critic; what do you mean we all pay for it, you guys the politicians continue to get paid from our hard earned cash through taxes, you don't pay for it..., you are the only winners with one big looser (our country) and the person who pays for your inefficiencies is the citizen over there..., it's about time we stop these utopian ideas of everyone having a say..., these endless discussions with nothing being done needs to end....
Politician; My friend, Power to the People is the Way to go..., everyone needs to have a say in decisions which involves them..., as you might well know power corrupts and if we are to let centralized people decide what's good for us. isn't that gambling our future?
Critic; What future? Is there any light at the end of this democratic tunnel? You must agree with me the rise of extremist parties, populism, endless protests, poor economic performance of some democracies...., All this messiness is not heaven but hell.... , and contrast to that there are some nondemocratic countries which are doing far better in those fronts
(
Observer approached the counter and takes a sit besides Critic)
Observer; better on those fronts at the cost of what?
Critic; Who are you?!!! Or your practicing your democratic right to bulge on other people's conversations!!!
Observer; sorry again to bulge in.. but I could not let this slide..., it's hard to equate economic growth and equality, social rights of people..., the checks and balances.. and what not....
By the way is economic growth a substitute for checks and balances, equality and social justice? Must we have one and not the other? We might say this kind of democracy is not working... , but does it mean democracy is bad, do we need to go from one extreme to the other or should we talk about rectifying what's not working rather than saying the whole thing is bad.
Critic; talk..., talk... , talk just talking with no action that's what is failing our citizen over here.. endless debates with nothing to show at the end... do you call that working, there are some countries which does not have this time-wasting inefficiency way of doing things.... , and those nations... if anything, they do get things done. Some very good people have argued that, even ancient Rome achieved more under the autocratic Caesars than it did under democratic rule.
Observer; I don't mean we or rather the politicians should continue with their endless debates and politics of division; what am suggesting is to have a democracy which is real for the people and by the people.. democracy which is efficient and gets things done efficiently.
Critic; no way? you cannot have it both ways... , It's not in democracy nature to be fast in important decision makings, not to have many unnecessary discussions, not be expensive, avoid opportunistic nature of these politicians, be far from corruptions...
Politician; aarrgh, give me a break..
Critic; am not finished yet... , and worse of all, we might think it's good to involve the citizen here in every decision making..., but is that an informed decision, or rather is it really the decisions of the citizen or the politicians and their political parties?
Politician; what are you saying? That we are not the people's representatives?
Critic; you might call yourself representatives by name, but in reality, you are just representing your own self-interests..., and most times what you do is short term just to please the voters, and even worse for you guys to lie just to get more votes is a second nature....
Observer; am with you Critic, what we have now is not working, but as I said before can't we have the good without the bad..., you have pointed some of democracy shortcomings which you say cannot be rectified due to its making...., that we have to take the rough with the smooth... Something which I do not agree with...
Critic; Am sure you know about Plato's Book Republic…, whereby Socrates raises a number of objections to democracy, claiming that democracy is a danger due to excessive freedom. He also argues that in a system in which everyone has a right to rule all sorts of selfish people who care nothing for the people but are only motivated by their own personal desires are able to attain power. He concludes that democracy risks bringing critics, tyrants, and demagogues to power. He also claims that democracies have leaders without proper skills or morals and that it is quite unlikely that the best equipped to rule will come to power… Though I might not agree wholeheartedly about that observation but what is currently happening…, the populists, the incapable's in power and the endless mob rules and protests..., one cannot stop wondering if...., just maybe Socrates had a point...
Observer; let me also quote Winston Churchill famous remark "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise, Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
Politician; Indeed, rule by the people is the only way....
Critic; rule by the people...., give me a break man, these democratic regimes we now have are anything but "rule of the people"
Citizen; but I think even the feeling of being involved and participation is worthwhile.... Such a feeling avoids a lot of conflicts which might have otherwise occurred.
Critic; having such a feeling at what costs, should we keep on putting a lot of resources in this lie. Yes it avoids conflicts until the other side feels unrepresented and forgotten, then we get endless protests and rule of the mob rather than rule of the people
Politician; I think no one in their right mind can question or rather oppose rule of the people or the many...
Critic; a better question is...., does such thing exists; better yet can it exist? Tell me please.... or all the power mongers and the demagogues use it to push their own self greedy interests... what a better way of putting lipstick on a pig..., and you know the ingenuity about this fraud? they can always blame the citizen for casting their vote wrongly thus this other guy asking them to vote for them, and not that other guy.... little does the citizen know that it's the same script and only the cast is different, thus these shenanigans go on by just changing the bottles while the wine remaining the same
Observer; Yes, we can have a better system than what we currently have..., a system which is real for the people and by the people.
Critic; if we reiterate the Story of the Doctor and Shop Owner in the Plato's Republic
"The sweet shop owner can make the argument against the doctor that "he gives you bitter syrups and pokes holes on you, cuts your skin and take your blood," but he (the shop owner) can offer you many sweets and candies. Surely no one with their right mind would vote for the doctor..., would they?"
Now should we carry on embracing the system which makes it harder for the doctors to do their jobs and let the sweet shop owners destroy our lives...
Politician; So, you had rather we put in power some unknown quantity who can at any time turn against us..., and whenever that happens, do we have the power to tell them to step down? Or once the mistake is made its ours to live with for the rest of our miserable lives.
Critic; so, we should continue to gamble our future and put our lives at stake..., let our lives be decided by the people whom most of the times are uninformed? One man once said, "
The best Argument against Democracy is a Five Minutes Talk with an Average Voter"
Politician; come on man the average uninformed voter chooses people like us to represent him in different decisions (and I don't see ourselves as uninformed),
Critic; so, in the end it's not real democracy rather than power to the people, it's power to the selected few... , representative democracy, but then..., one wonders the real people these so-called representatives do represent...
Observer; I think we can all agree the purpose of democracy is not the problem
Critic; what purposes are those? As recently you guys have been all over the place, I don't even think you know what is what anymore...
Observer; I think not many will argue against the choosing and replacing the government through free and fair elections; the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; protection of the human rights of all citizens.... but I can see the unasked question from the Critic which makes the all notion about democracy sometimes hard to swallow, does what majority always wants good for the majority let alone minority?
Critic; And if those majority are uninformed in such decision making...., I tell you, that's a recipe for disaster....
Observer; indeed, and that's takes me to my next point....
