Politics

To begin with I must apologise for any atrocious spelling errors in this or the previous post, as my spellchecker is broken.  That out of the way, I welcome you to politics, in other words, how to run a country while messing it up the least.  As you might imagine if you’ve followed this blog up until this point, my beliefs in politics stem, ultimately, from the foundation of freedom.  You might think, then, that I am an undying supporter of total democracy.

You’d be wrong on that count.  Democracy, unlike the popular misconception, does not equal freedom.  Democracy is simply the replacement of tyranny by one with the tyranny of the majority.  The problem with democracy, and the reason it is so praised, is that the majority of people, by definition, are in the majority.  But do the people in the minority have any say?  No, none whatsoever.

To illustrate my point, here is the story of the day I became completely disillusioned from democracy.  In the Ontario elections last October, a referendum was also held to decide whether to keep Ontario’s current electoral system or replace it with a new one.  The current system was first-past-the-post, in which the candidate with the most votes in an electoral district won that district’s seat in provincial parlament, and the leader of the party with the most seats became premier of Ontario.

The proposal was to change it to a system that was mostly first-past-the-post, but also added candidates from the parties in order to better reflect their actual percentage of the popular vote.  For example, in all of Ontario, the Green Party could recieve 5% of the popular vote, and yet not gain a single one of Ontario’s hundred-and-someodd seats due to the fact that their support is spread out.  This proposal would make the parlament of Ontario better reflect the actual wishes of the people.

The proposal failed.  Perhaps partially because the proposal wasn’t clear, and so many people didn’t understand it, and perhaps partially because it would make an already bloated government even bigger, but my point remains.  Democracy failed to make itself more democratic, and the voices of the minorities fail to be heard.  Democracy doesn’t work.

We are always being told that every vote makes a difference.  This is bullshit.  My votes did not make a difference.  My choice to agree with the refferendum proposal did not help the referendum get passed, and my normal vote, for a candidate, did not elect the candidate I wanted.  I am thus unrepresented in Ontario’s parlament.  I could not even vote for the party that most closely matched my beliefs, because they weren’t running a candidate in my riding.

If you are part of a minority, that rare group that thinks differently from everybody else, you can accomplish fuck-all in a democracy.  Your votes make no difference if it does not help someone get elected to represent you.  And if you happen to be in the majority, there’s no point voting either, because everyone else is just going to vote that way anyway.  The only point in voting would be if you’re not sure which way the majority is headed, and you think a few votes could swing it either way.

In short, there is no freedom in democracy.  That is just an empty lie.  It is nothing more than tyranny of the majority.  And not even that, because the majority of the time, the majority doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about, and so they just go along with the party that they happen to support, no matter what they do.  I personally can not affect the government that makes decisions concerning my life.  That is not freedom.

Alright, I realize what started as a general post on politics turned into a rant on the flaws of democracy.  I shall write about my actual stance on how the country should be run next time in politics.  In case you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a libertarian.  I shall explain why then.