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Chap 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Appendix 1 2 3
Introduction
Plutocracy is governance by the wealthy. Most of America’s many political, economic, and social ills are caused or aggravated by its most fundamental problem: America is not really a democracy but a plutocracy overwhelmingly dominated and operated by a wealthy few. Our government was created by, is populated by, and first and best serves a wealthy elite that holds a perpetual hegemony of power and wealth through the generations, much to the detriment of the rest of the populace.
Elections are left to a marketplace, mass media, and political parties that are mostly owned and operated by the wealthy. Elections, offices, and the favors of government are bought just like any other commodity. Most of the populace is effectively disfranchised and rendered powerless while individual freedom and economic security are increasingly crushed by the twin assaults of ever growing governmental and corporate power.
Applying superficial band aids to our government such as reforming campaign financing, creating term limits, cleaning up scandals, kicking the current “bums” out of office, or struggling with third parties or independent candidates will never fix the problem. The problem is not about people; it is not about who currently occupies political office, “our” party or candidates verses others.
The real problem is the political system itself, the fundamental design and structure of our government. While creating a constitution and government in the name of all of the people and claiming to favor no particular faction, the founders—fifty-five powerful wealthy men—in fact wrote a constitution and created a government that overwhelmingly favored themselves and similar others. It continues to favor similar others—powerful wealthy elites, the plutocrats—through the generations to this day.
Until the fundamental imbalance of political power that overwhelmingly favors the wealthy is corrected, all attempts at repairing our nation’s many ills are doomed to very limited success or outright failure. Correcting this imbalance of power requires a partial redesign of our government.
Most political correctives offered today fail both at overcoming plutocracy and at adequately achieving and securing the freedom of the individual. This book offers for your consideration a partial redesign of the American government that really fixes in just the right way what is really wrong with it.
The government design presented here strikes a judicious balance of political power that, unlike the design of the founders, really does not unduly favor any particular group. It achieves a truly democratic process and the consensus of the entire electorate on our nation’s most important issues. It results in the honest representation of all members of the electorate in the representative branches of government. It mitigates the worst and brings out the best that our market economy has to offer. It achieves and secures the fullest freedom of the individual and liberty in the nation. And it nurtures responsibility and excellence in each of us.
Also, of crucial importance for the existence and success of any truly democratic process involving a busy electorate whose members have varying capability, the democratic process presented here is very convenient. It requires surprisingly little time and effort. And it is simple enough for those who are not politically sophisticated and sophisticated enough for those who are politically astute.
The distribution of power is the most fundamental of all political issues. Good government and a good society require the correct distribution of power as their foundation. Excessive power cannot be held by an elite few, the simple majority, or any other faction of the populace.
Joining direct democracy and representative democracy together in just the right way achieves a correct distribution of power resulting in a government that overcomes the shortcomings of both. Direct democracy is people directly voting on issues. Representative democracy—truly representative democracy!—is people voting in truly free elections for representatives that honestly represent the entire electorate and populace in government.
Most people mistakenly believe that America already practices representative democracy. But it does not. This can be readily seen when our current so-called representative democracy with its extreme concentrations of power and wealth and widespread social injustice is compared by you, dear reader, with the truly representative democracy proposed in this book. Understand that it is by the inclusion of just the right kind and amount of direct democracy that the representative branches of our government (or any government) are rendered truly representative.
By itself, so-called “representative” democracy only results in the tyranny of plutocracy, exploitive governance by the wealthy. But the usually proposed alternative, unlimited majority-rule direct democracy, were it ever tried, would only result in “the tyranny of democracy,” the political, economic, religious, and behavioral tyranny of the simple majority over the rest of the populace. And, examined more closely, this “majority” would really only be a highly organized, doggedly active, radical political minority.
However, limited direct democracy and limited representative democracy joined together and judiciously balanced as described in this book results in a wise amount and just distribution of governmental powers that does not unduly favor any particular group.