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[FearfulJesuit]

On Aristocracy

I am not a democrat.

   By this I do not mean that I do not belong to the counterpart of the Republicans. I am also not a Democrat, but this is because I prefer to pick and choose my opinions on an individual basis, rather than buying into a prepackaged platform. What I mean by stating that I am not a democrat is that I am not a democrat in the same sense that Voltaire was not a democrat; I do not buy into the philosophy that the masses are necessarily the best group to govern.

   Democracy is, of course, a noble idea, but I think it suffers from the same problem as Marxism: it assumes that people are by nature good, and that the masses are even better; they will be well-informed and thoughtful, and weigh pragmatic needs with the highest ideals to produce the best course of action. If man were good, we would either be well on our way to a communist paradise by now, or be partaking of libertarianism’s bounty. We are not. By nature, man will act in his own self-interest, even or perhaps especially if it oppresses others. This is obvious from a casual study of history; if an empire does not oppress its people, its seeming charity towards them is all too often another means towards stability. The democratic process, on both the left and the right, produces demagogues, and there is no shortage of people to fill the role; we usually call them “politicians”. The principled politician is a rare figure; more often, a compromise must be reached between the politician’s own canny goals and the gifts he must make to his electorate (whether that be, on the left, gay marriage and Obamacare, or, on the right, anti-immigration laws and the Defense of Marriage Act.)

   The simple problem, with many issues, is that the people are not always qualified to make decisions about them. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that a foreign country has a dictator. This dictator cannot spell the word “insurance”, yet he has the final say on health policy; he cannot distinguish between religious marriage in church and the civil contract by the same name, but bans gay marriage; there is an influx of immigrants into the country to do work that no native citizen has ever done out of choice, yet he bans immigration because “immigrants take our jobs”; he has not the faintest idea of how to balance a budget and continues to add government programs. Would we not say that the dictator is wholly unqualified to run his country, insofar as a dictator can be? Then why should our answer change when we replace the word “dictator” with “the people”?

   The problem, then, is: who, if not the people, is qualified to run the government? If we accept that man is basically bad (the hypothesis upon which our thesis rests), then the answer is certainly not “nobody”- anarchy is a Bad Thing. I submit that the answer, insofar as there is one, is “aristocracy”.

   The concept of aristocracy, of course, must be modified. The feudal idea of aristocracy is bankrupt. What we should be looking at as a model, really, is Great Britain in the latter half of the 19th century. In the latter half of the 19th century, the highly educated and qualified British gentry helped the economy grow to fantastic levels, increased life expectancy, reduced working hours, instituted water and housing codes, and protected the civil liberties of their people (as indeed any government worth its salt must do). America itself has never had a tradition of great landholding families; the aristocracy, as it is, would best be chosen according to the merit system in a system not unlike that of Imperial China. Now I am not so naïve as to believe this would solve all our problems; problems will remain. But progress is not about removing all problems, so much as it is about reducing their impact. I leave you, then, with this proposal: that rule for the people may be better when it is not always by them.

[mainiac]

The industrial revolution helped the British economy grow in the 19th century, along with the French, German, American, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and other economies.

And actually Madisonian democracy, i.e. the model that most of the world goes on (although not most of the commonwealth countries) is based on the idea that people aren't good but you can manipulate them into good behavoir.  Read the federalist papers sometime.

[IronyOwl]

An extremely lopsided essay. Essentially, it consists of two parts: X Is Bad, and Y Is Good. In this case, X is Democracy, Y is Aristocracy.

You go to a fair amount of trouble to explain why democracy is bad; you'll notice it comprises around 3/4 of the essay. Your premise for why aristocracy is good, however, is based on an unexplained historical claim- "late 19th century Britain was awesome" sums it up nicely.

You similarly mention that you're not talking about a traditional aristocracy, but don't really explain what you mean. You say that it should be a "meritocracy," and mention "highly educated and qualified gentry" as your example base, but otherwise give no insight into what that would mean or why it would work. You might as well say they'd be "good."

Needless to say, this makes the title rather misleading- it's far more an essay on why democracy doesn't work than on why aristocracy does.

Also a bit pompous and formal for being so simplistic and short, but generally well-written.

[Ahasver]

The industrial revolution helped the British economy grow in the 19th century, along with the French, German, American, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and other economies.

It may have made the country wealthier but it also brought about a wildly unrestrained form of capitalism that made life expectancy, civil liberties, housing, and working hours horrendous until the late 19th century when Gladstone and Disraeli came around.

But I do think that the value of said "aristocratic politicians" is a bit inflated by the sharp decline in the quality of life that they superseded.

[Knight of Fools]

The problem with an aristocracy is that, inevitably, corruption will occur as the aristocrats desire more and more power.  The only thing that would keep them from doing that is fear of the law and/or fear of the people.  If they own the law and the armies, the people would have no say in what's going on.  Education and "merits" are not sufficient to make one person or a group of people morally and emotionally able to hand large amounts of power.

There is no "magical" government that solves everything, since the government is basically inept at a lot of what it does (With very notable exceptions).  It would take a lot more than your essay to convince me of that.  The problem is that there is no competition: They get their taxes whether or not their services are adequate, and are only happy to tax you more in spite of whether you think they're doing a good job or not.

The only thing that will make a better government is a better people - As education and needed information are increasingly available, people can be taught to make their own decisions.  The problem is, most people want others to make the decisions for them, resulting in idolization of individuals who have more charisma than everyone else, even among the educated.  Knowing what's going on and being critical about everything, even if it's coming from your favorite politician/celebrity, and having sound moral qualities is key to having a better country, not a different way of running things, since, in theory, everything works.  In practice, though, hardly anything stands up to what ingenuity mankind can come up with to screw it up.


Also, assuming this is written for a class, unless your teacher is a hard-core liberal, you may run into some problems with the one-sided example of a dictator doing several conservative things.  It doesn't bug me, since I figured that you were just providing an example (That may or may not have expressed your views), but the commentary would be torn apart by a teacher with moderate or conservative leanings, especially after the claims made in the first paragraph.  Be careful with choosing hot political items and associating them with dictators, since it could go either way with your teacher, even if they agree.

I hope that helped.  Again, I kind of assumed that you were writing this for a class.  Your teacher will probably be softer on you than this forum, since you can gear your essay towards a specific person.

[mainiac]

More specifically then just saying "read the Federalist Papers", I'll advise you to read Federalist Paper number 10
In particular:

It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

It's important to understand that the indecisiveness and halfway actions of the Madisonian republican system are a feature, not a bug.  It's fault tolerance.

Political philosophy is a fascinating subject and it would be foolish to ignore the big names.  At the very least read Federalist number 10.  Hopefully, you can at least read some of the highlights of the Leviathan (Hobbes) followed by Locke's rebuttal in Two Treatises of Government so you can understand the intellectual background.  Democracy wasn't an idea entered into lightly, but something debated hotly for hundreds of years and then carefully considered by the founding fathers.

Or possibly, you just think that China is doing better then America.  In that case, I want to point out to you the myth of Asia's miracle before you assume that this is due to dictatorships rather then a plain old vanilla case of economic catch up.

[Knight of Fools]

That was very enlightening, thank you.

What I understood from the second article: Here in the States, we already have reached a point where input is diminishing in terms of output, so pouring more and more money into education and machinery won't have such a huge effect on our economy as it is/was in Asia.

What I inferred is if we really wanted to improve our economy, we'd have to concentrate on higher efficiency (More value from output, increasing the effects of input) and, perhaps, access to more resources (So we can produce more and export more) - Though the second part was only touched very briefly in Krugman's paper.  It was more a look at the Why of Asian, not the How of America's future economy.

Very good - It's nice to know why Asia's economy is so huge, and it also explains why Japan generally has higher marks in mathematics than the US.  It may have more to do with the people's attitude, but the fact that they put a lot more money into it (Comparatively) doesn't hurt, either.

Correct me if I'm wrong, though.  My mind sometimes gets jumbled by all the technical speak and tight adherence to college essay writing forms.