| A lot of what I'm reading seems to be considered with the question "How do I remove you from power" (by the way, I'm having trouble finding the source of that quote. Who's it by, the 5 question thing?). I'm more concerned with 'Where did you get it from?' 'In whose interests do you exercise it?'. After all, the downside to a meritocracy is that when criteria for "merit" become determined by those in power, then the system can easily degenerate into an oligarchy is "merit" becomes synonym of "he's part of our class/group/circle". The problem these days seems to be the divide between the sort of people who become politicians (at least the type of politicians who get into power) and the people they're supposed to represent. Now I stress that if the following is true, it is only true to a certain degree, but I have the impression that we've already reached a state of Oligarchy in some countries (namely the US, but also France where there is a bit of an elite that makes it into politics), and I'm hoping it's clear that when politics becomes a malarkey of handpicked candidates, demagoguery and internal agendas, then it's a bit hard to call it a democracy since the "demos" are out of the loop. If we wanted to "fix" democracy, surely we should, while making sure that we still can get rid of incompetent leaders, be trying to rig the system so we get something else than incompetent or inappropriately selected people in power. But again, that's a problem to look into if we should be fixing democracy. Because that's only half the problem I was talking about. The idea that people are smart enough select their leaders is quite appealing, but as Alex pointed out, Churchill once said that "the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Does anyone disagree with this? If not, can one really support a system where people can't be trusted to choose wisely? On the other hand, can one really go against a system that, for all its imperfection, remains the most stable option we have (or is it)? -- Edward. |