Aren’t you all a bit fed up with politics? With all the tribalism and lies? All the false promises and hypocrisy?
Aren’t you pig sick with the way we are being governed?
So let’s wipe the slate clean and go back to the beginning to decide what system you would ideally like to put in place.
I’ll even give you all a vote: Options 1-7 1 vote each.
Option 1 – A Monarch
Well it worked for thousands of years. A hereditary monarch who would rule the land. They would have a court of aristocrats and advisors. They would make all the decisions.
Upside – it could be quick and decisive in decision making.
Downside – The monarch might make decisions based on what was best for them and their aristocratic buddies.
The monarch might be a useless idiot, power mad or otherwise unsuitable for office.
It could become a tyranny.
The people would have no say.
There could be runaway nepotism and patronage.
Option 2 – A President
Well that is something else that is tried and tested. We elect a President for a term. Everyone votes. They put together a team of advisors to run the country.
Upside – it would produce quick decisive actions.
We could get rid of them after a term if we didn’t like it.
Downside – we might not be able to get rid of them once they are in power.
They would have all the nepotism of a monarch.
They might turn out to be a power-mad, narcissistic psychopath.
It could become a tyranny.
The power might go to their head and they could end up starting wars and victimising ethnic groups and there would be no means of stopping them
The people would have no say after the election.
Most of the people are too ignorant or ill-educated to have an intelligent view on who to vote for and what they represent.
The media would not be unbiased and would skew the result.
Option 3 – Democratic Capitalism via an elected government
We elect politicians to govern the country. Everyone votes. There are political parties who represent slightly different views. The one with the most elected members forms the government. The rest form the opposition.
Upside – We get to elect them and kick them out.
They run the country in order to make a profit.
The country might prosper and become powerful.
Downside – They lie to get elected and then don’t do what they said they would.
You rarely get the party that you want.
They would favour the wealthy and wealth producers and everyone else would suffer.
Public services would be underfunded and not function
Privatisation would siphon money into the pockets of the rich.
Decisions are slow.
The government is hamstrung by the wealthy and those with vested interests.
There is still nepotism and corruption.
The people would have no say after the election.
Most of the people are too ignorant or ill-educated to have an intelligent view on who to vote for and what they represent.
The media would not be unbiased and would skew the result.
Option 4 – Democratic Socialism via an elected government
We elect a socialist government. Everyone has a vote.
Upside – They would create a fairer society.
There would be excellent public services
Nationalised industries would not be profit making – all profits would be ploughed back it to the services to make them better
We can kick them out if they fail.
Downside – They might lie to get into power
They might be nepotism and corruption.
The wealthy might withdraw investment and damage the economy.
Outside capitalist powers would attempt to undermine and destabilise.
There could be a loss of incentive to work harder.
Decisions would be slow.
The people would have no say after the election.
Most of the people are too ignorant or ill-educated to have an intelligent view on who to vote for and what they represent.
The media would not be unbiased and would skew the result.
Option 5 – A Communist One Party State
Everyone would get a vote but there is only one party to vote for.
Upside – It might be decisive.
There would be no opposition.
Everyone would be equal.
All needs would be catered for.
The State would run everything.
It would be efficient.
Downside – It could deteriorate into a tyranny.
The State might take too much control over individuals.
There might not be incentive to work.
The State would control the media.
You might end up with a police state.
They might persecute the elite or intelligentsia.
The State would have too much power.
The people would have no say in what happens.
Option 6 – No Party Democracy with restricted voting
Do away with all political parties. Only independents can stand.
Limit funding for campaigns and fund them from government.
Only people with a certificate of political competence can vote.
The media is controlled for bias.
Upside – We do away with adversarial politics
Only the knowledgeable vote so the gullible sheeple are excluded.
We focus on the good of the country and not power for a political party.
It might encourage people to become more knowledgeable.
We can kick them out.
Downside – A lot of people are disenfranchised.
They might lie to get elected.
There could still be nepotism and corruption.
It could be less decisive.
They’d form groups anyway.
How would you decide who got to vote?
Who controls the media?
Option 7 – Proper Democracy.
Politicians are elected to argue and debate. Votes are carried out by the people electronically as with Talent Shows. Everyone gets a vote.
Upside – It is true democracy.
The people are empowered to make decisions on everything.
It bypasses all the nepotism, corruption and vested interests.
Downside – The people voting might not fully understand the issues.
Bad decisions might be made that aren’t in the country’s interest.
People would have to follow the debates in order to vote and that would take time.
OK – I’ve had enough! That was all off the top of my head. It probably needs a lot of thinking about. But I merely hoped to stimulate some thought and debate!
I avoid politics like the plague…😒
But we’re all subject to it aren’t we?
Yeah but i try my best to avoid it, especially USA politics
I know – but I do find it scary. The stuff that is going on is affecting us all.
The last time I looked at my calendar, it read 2018!
Democratic Socialism and Communism are as everybody knows from back in the midst of the worst eras of last century and they were a disaster for all concerned. We haven’t had a Monarchy in the west that actually runs a country for several hundred years.
If there’s one thing that we must never have in politics are career politicians, such as all that unqualified rubbish that now bogs down the Labour Party. These clowns lost my vote and also for a number of other people too that I know.
Let me give a prime example of this, namely, Rebecca Long-Bailey – shadow business minister. Presumably, her wealth of experience in running a pawn shop, working in a call centre and preparing documents for property conveyancing is qualification enough to run the economy. Give me a break, Jeremy. F*** off, Jeremy, your choice of shadow cabinet people is an embarrassment and imminent disaster.
David – and you think the mess the Tories are making of the police, schools, health service social services and councils is great? You think that austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich is the way forward? You think privatisation to put billions in the pockets of rich chums is fair? You think that giving the DUP a few billion is great? Or that they are handling Brexit well? The Tories are digging us in a hole while lining their own pockets. I’ve never known such a right-wing bunch of heinous scum. Boris as foreign secretary – we’d be better off with Coco the Clown. Do you think the Tories aren’t career politicians with businesses on the side?
As I remember it the socialists brought in the NHS and an era of fairness with wage increases and equality. Scandinavia isn’t doing too bad either.
But the article was about looking at all the possible choices and starting a debate. Thanks for contributing.
I completely disagree with every single word you have just said.
Labour are a slimey bunch of utter self-interested idiots, many of whom are completely unequipped either by experience or education.
You have simply recited the mission statement of the leftist idiots that I dislike most within the Labour Party. You have personally experienced nothing whatsoever of any of these alleged shortcomings.
Please, only the rich doing any decent business get a tax cut, but only after paying tax and achieving a certain level of income. I think you have a level of ignorance towards this. I don’t think you’re quite mastered the arithmetic. I’m poor, at least I consider myself to be but I don’t see myself hit with austerity per se. But I don’t expect huge handouts either. There’s enough people who just floated in here Religion first that get very well looked after. I’m not coloured, uneducated, Islamic with a gaggle of kids, so I’m well down the totem pole.
People, usually the older set, very set in their old school ways just simply don’t understand that CCTV cameras do most of our policing for us nowadays. We don’t need swarms of plods plodding our streets. And if anybody wants to check that we aren’t actually short of any plods on the street, they’d only need to attend a march given by the football supporters league against terrorism.
What wasn’t helpful to the Police was to decriminalise Cannabis to grade C, then some bozo 80-odd year old House of Lords dynosaurs upgrade to catagory B, with the Police having to suddenly deal with all the dope offences. How are they expected to cope. How many do they need to tackle the thousands and thousands of Pakistani and Chinese drug dealers, who ALWAYS pretend to “no speaky Engrish”.
Takes time to train Police and if you care to take a closer look this is being addressed.
There’s no shortage of Police, NHS, social services people where I live in Edinburgh city. So I really don’t know about where you refer to on this. My guess is an area stowed out stupid with excess immigration difficulties which I do know exists in some English cities. But that’s their problem.
I think you’ll find that there’s more than “they” involved in the handling of Brexit, such as the several thousand EU people. Considering the complexities it’s all going rather well and I have no concerns about it at all. The sooner the better as far as I am concerned. I hate the EU, it’s a corrupt monster.
I have no problem with any money going into Northern Ireland politics. Something needs to get it going and if it’s money, so what? Money makes stuff work.
I also don’t buy into your anti-Boris rubbish. The guy is seriously educated and I can only wish that Labour had just a slice of that in it’s ranks. Boris is also in case you didn’t notice, extremely popular abroad and that is the mainstay of his job. Quite how you missed that is beyond me. You’re so broiled up in deluded hope that you can no longer smell the roses.
No, I don’t think the Tories are career politicians with businesses on the side. You obviously know nothing about business! You try it, running business and being an MP.
What a bloody stupid comment. Your argument just flushed down with your bullshit.
As for this right-wing heinous scum you’re never known. You lie even to yourselfr – leave that to Jew-baiter Corbyn and white-hater Abbott. And Blair for killing over 10 million people.
If you really want to fix stuff, get these stupid wooly-headed libtards to stop giving away millions and millions of our money every year to every tin-pot nation that puts out it’s begging bowl. All run by tyrants from hell.
The socialists brought in the NHS? Oh Really! So there was no such earlier attempts on a smaller scale? You really don’t know your own countries history. How embarrassing for you.
And then you go on to say Scandinavia isn’t dong too bad either. Really? Does this statement include Sweden? You know, Sweden, the Scandinavian country that has just recently been lost to the sudden explosive ingress of Islam, where the major city of Malmo, for example, has been entirely taken over. It’s a disaster zone. You don’t half talk the most utter shite.
Your’e offering up the very reasons why myself and millions of others no longer have anything to do with that fucking Labour. The adjoiner “Party” is no longer applicable because there isn’t one.
David – thanks for your input – straight out of the Fascist Weekly. Are you really Tommy Robinson in disguise?
Sweden lost to Islam? Really? You believe that?
You haven’t been hit by austerity? Really?? Well perhaps you haven’t personally been hit by crime, been ill lately, have older relatives in social care, younger kids in education, been using gas, electricity or petrol, been abroad recently, had your salary frozen, your pension reduced, bought any goods or food or travelled anywhere.
Are you blind? Do you not see the mess in every one of the public services? Police, prisons, schools, NHS, social care, local government, libraries, all decimated. And you really think that all the superwealthy needed more money in tax cuts to stash away in their offshore tax havens?
You stick with bumbling Boris and the heinous right-wing scum fleecing everyone for all they are worth. You must enjoy being screwed and taken for a fool.
As for me I’ll look for something a lot fairer, more caring and compassionate. I don’t like being screwed over by the wealthy.
Oh – and enjoy your Brexit – another opportunity for the rich kids to screw every in the name of nationalistic jingoism. I like to look and think more globally.
I don’t like Islam, nor Christianity or any other organised religion, but I don’t have your great Islamophobia thankfully. I haven’t fallen for that right-wing propaganda.
Opher, I see you questioned in disbelief the menace of Islam in Sweden.
For your information today Swedish Police issued a public warning to all women instructing them not to go out late to avoid being raped. This would have been unimaginable just five years ago.
Just give me something where we can boot all those suckers out of office AT LEAST every four years!!! Don’t care what you call it.
How about every 4 weeks?
Hm… How long does it take a politician to become corrupt?
I don’t know Cheryl. A lot are corrupt from the start but there are many genuine people who go into politics to make a real difference. We shouldn’t forget those.
I’m actually just glad to see an article on politics that isn’t all “Trump is awful” or “Trump is amazing” or just general abuse in one way or another.
Thank you for that 🙂
What’s the best form of government? Good question. I’d like to say “democracy” but there are too many idiots who get to vote, and there’s too much corruption (aka lobbying) going on. How to change it? I’m not sure I have any answers. Maybe someone else does.
But as a leftist libertarian who can see the left in the US is clearly cannibalising itself, I’m very worried about what happens next, without solid left-right axes in place.
Cheers Lee – I’m not sure there has ever been a Left-right axes in America. The left has been so vilified it doesn’t exist. It seems to me that America is always centre-right.
I agree, Opher. I feel like that, too.
The key to getting real politicians who care is to have a media that is honest and a system that is transparent. I can’t help thinking that we are horribly manipulated by a wealthy establishment who like crooked politicians.
I think it probably depends where you’re living and what you’re watching / reading. Certainly the US is more to the right of New Zealand, where I’m located, and it’s interesting to me comparing the differences and similarities between our countries.
But I would also comment that Hollywood and the majority of news sources, social media sites and tech companies are left-leaning, sometimes significantly so. One of the reasons I switched browsers (to duckduckgo) and deleted my Facebook account was because of the echo chamber I was getting. I wanted to hear a variety of viewpoints and opinions. I feel we can only thoroughly understand issues when we hear a variety of perspectives – even some we might find distasteful. I’m particularly interested in finding my own ideological blindspots and understanding them, as well as the blindspots of others.
Thanks again for a thoughtful post.
Lee – I thoroughly agree with your stance. I too welcome a range of views as long as they refrain from rudeness and personal abuse. Unfortunately I do attract a few obnoxious trolls. One reason I set up the blog was to stimulate intelligent discussion on controversial issues and that means listening too and making intelligent responses to a variety of views. Sometimes we achieve that.
Thanks for contributing so well.