Democrazy Part 2: Represent This.

So, last Democrazy post (which is here by the way), I complained how the entire process of asking the mob what the best decision is, is flawed.

Now today I'll be speaking about how Representative Democracies (the most common type in use today) are an even worse case.

So lets start with some basic background. A Representative Democracy is one where the people elect 'representatives' in order to take the decisions for them. So you have a parliament, or an important individual - and the people choose who gets the very important position of taking care of them.


Now this has a huge amount of problems, most of them stemming from the fact that the Representatives are human and may have ulterior motives. So lets start enumerating the problem shall we?


1. People are Sheep

This is a fundamental problem especially with political parties. You generally have a number of 'die-hard' voters who will always vote for a particular political party, even if the party leader was caught eating puppies and drinking the blood of orphans. This happens ALL the time and EVERYWHERE. For US readers think about "Red States" and "Blue States", for Maltese readers you should all know what I'm talking about.


Now this generally isn't much of a problem, these values even out and then its all up to the 'floating voters' to decide. However, this ends up forcing a two-party political system, which is horrible. Think about it, with many votes always guaranteed for a particular party, in certain cases, floating voters won't have enough number to get a seat for a member who isn't one of the parties. Malta has never had a parliamentary seat which wasn't given to one of the two main parties. Having two parties makes things stagnant and it always turns into "At least THEY'RE not in power".


2. Doing it for the vote


Alright, in theory its allright. You serve a term, and then if people liked what you did, you get more votes and get another term (or whatever). Unfortunately this then turns into a tactical decision to determine what gives you the most votes - and not by making the majority happen. Lets give an example. Hunting in Malta is all about shooting small birds as they fly over the island - we don't have any large game and you're not expected to eat what you shoot. Now its practiced by a subset of the population. However, the amount of people who find hunting offensive, brutal or just plain unsporting is larger than the amount of people who enjoy hunting. So you would expect that hunting is heavily regulated - since the will of the majority dictates it.


However, the hunting 'group' and their families and friends are worth quite a bit of votes, no politician wants to lose this amount of votes, so nobody will touch this issue with a standard 5 foot pole. There would be a net voting loss if hunting was regulated, as the people who think hunting is brutal are still going to vote for the party if it continues. Note I'm not making an argument against hunting here - I'm using it as an example of how 'tactical vote collecting' works.


3. Lobbying, Bribes and the Puppet Masters


I could talk about this topic until I turn blue in the face. Since these people take important decisions, its a good idea to target them, since if you get one of these people on your side, you can shift decisions and laws.


And its done (totally legally) through the use of lobbies. And in many cases, the lobbying will be all in favour of a small subset, and all against the general public. I can bring up tons upon tons of laws which only came into play because some large company wanted them to be implemented. Most overly-active copyright laws for example, animal testing for cosmetics still legal in Europe, the fact that the new Maltese Power-Station will pollute the crap out of the island...


4. They may have ulterior motives. This happens especially in countries with a large corporate presence. These people have a tendency to be rich, and so they buy stocks/shares in companies or in resources. Nobody wants their s/s to lose money, so better ensure that since you're in a position of power - you give little pushes to ensure that your money keeps growing.


5. They play dirty. I will give two examples of this - Secrecy and Riders.


Secrecy is pretty much censoring or withholding information which they know would cause an outcry (and loss of votes) if they became public. Tons of examples of this, wikileaks is one example of hiding information which can cause a ton of damage. And for the latter, the ACTA agreement is a perfect example of it. Few people knew what was going to be about exactly - simply because it had so many clauses which the public would hate if they knew about it. So better hide it away, then bully smaller countries to adopt it (yes that was the plan).


Riders are another example of a mess which is actually legal in certain countries. They work like this: Lets say you have an idea which will be shot down in parliament - lets say you want a law which "Forces Llamas to be shaved twice weekly". So, you wait until someone else is writing a bill for something important or time critical say - "Giving more money to the people in region X who have been hit by an earthquake". You know that this bill will pass quickly, and urgently, so you add your little clause to the main bill, even though it has nothing to do with llamas or shaving. However the main bill will have to pass, since its urgent and if its rejected you waste more time - so the whole thing passes, and you get your clause put in. No I am not joking about it, this childish act is actually legal in certain countries. 


Meh. If you don't agree, feel free to discuss.

Llama