Democracy gives the power of government to the average person. At least this is the intent. With free elections, people choose their leaders. Presumably they base their selection upon the leader’s vision for the country. For every platform, every decision, voters want to know, “What’s in it for me?”.
Potential leaders base their platforms upon this selection criteria. Thus, they orchestrate a campaign that they think will get them elected. Because of this, campaigns resonate with promises of better lives, safer societies, happier constituents; that is, to safeguard the status quo. These promises target the voters and target one election. Thus, leaders only address immediate needs. Such a prescription leads to allocations as in the following graph (derived here);
In consequence, governments lock themselves into a perpetual series of short term advances to placate voters/individuals. Further, governments must maintain previous advances as no voter considers reducing their lifestyle. Hence, governments have a growing maintenance obligation, a diminishing ability to empower discoveries and no interest in preparing for the future. After all, there’s no benefit to solving a future problem as the problem may never arise or the problem will arise to the consternation of later governments. So, hundreds of years of democracy has resulted with individuals having perhaps the most luxurious lifestyles known but who live in a society with little thought or interest in a future past the next election and no interest past their lifetimes.
Certainly governments have the ability to redirect allocations, but only if they are so directed. How much are voters willing to forego to enable those yet born to perhaps enjoy a better life? Does democracy choke future’s potential?
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Hi Mark. I found this link from growthmadness.org.
Your point about the limitations of democratic governments is well-made. Yes, our continual quest for luxuries have given our national governments a bias for pandering to citizens’ food, comfort and security. We urgently need to reverse this bias in order to make meaningful headway towards conserving our environment.
In this connection, I would like your considered opinion to a proposal that I mooted at growthmadness.org this morning. I copy-paste it below:
“A lot of really intelligent people — sincere ones — are getting taken in by the “green growth” logic. It is difficult to convince people that NEGATIVE GROWTH is the way forward; people, businesses and governments are so used to their lifestyles, business styles, economic styles etc that they will bend logic every which way to avoid seeing how insidious ANY kind of economic growth can be!
John, I’m mooting an idea here: we are creating or identifying a political niche here that is currently not occupied by anybody at all. It is currently a vaccuum that can be occupied by those who demand negative growth. Can we not seek legitimacy by forming a POLITICAL PARTY CUTTING ACROSS NATIONAL BOUNDARIES?
Because to mitigate climate change, ALL major governments will need to roll-back growth of the last few decades and cool down their economies… otherwise, they will never cease to argue over which nation should make the first cuts.
What say? Can we do it? How to go forward on this?”
I wonder if we can take this forward, Mark.
Warm Regards,
Krish
PS: I also blog at http://backfoot.rediffiland.com
Good points. Extend your timeline. With civilization changing to be more
agrarian how will this affect our future. Yes, I agree that people will be
more self-efficient. How many people? Also, what’s the result from a
reduction in intellect-type stuff? For instance, global problems would still arise but
people would be ignorant of them.
I like your visions of a slower paced, friendlier village. How do you
convince people to adopt this lifestyle?
Mark