Wednesday 19 June 2013

There is nothing wrong with democracy

Society is a good thing and for that reason it is better to have a proportional voting system so that the people can get what they want. If there is a first past the post (fptp) system in place then the political arena will be dominated by just two parties which leads to many problems perhaps best exemplified by cronyism whereby a small group of people control parliament to their own ends. It is not good for the democratic process to be dominated by two political parties because the government is meant to serve the people and by definition the people are not instinctively aligned to a two-party system. The two-party system emerges due to tactical voting and the reality that the political system is not serving the people. It is because the people are frustrated that they must vote for a party they do not like. Fptp frustrates the voter for no good reason. It is good to have a government because then we have an objective system of property rights and an objective law. Anarchy would entail a collection of businesses and charities seeking to impose their interests on everyone else. Whilst this has a naive appeal in the end we need to have an objective system of law which can have only one source (in each country). Otherwise every argument will find no resolution and there will be no peace. Society provides security which means that without it there would be anarchy... without government there are no rules and there can be no civilisation. It is because society (and government) is good that a proportional system of voting is preferable. Whilst fptp does provide some kind of government it is needlessly frustrating to the people because we end up with a two-party oligarchy whereby the interests of the people are easily ignored. Government with democracy is better than unaccountable government so we can say that pr is preferable to fptp. Democracy is bad only if government is bad which it isn't (it is the only source of objective property rights) so democracy is good and fptp is bad for that reason.

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