Democracy, Tyranny and the Market Sytem

Dear Friends,

It seems to me that there are ways to make things that work well and ways to make things that work poorly. When a means is chosen that has a historical track record, of making things that work well, things have a much better likelihood of working well then if a means that has only resulted in poorly working things, is chosen.

Making a board from a trunk is an example. If we use a means that has proven itself to work we will get better results than if we use a means that has not worked in the past. If I use a sawmill, rip saw or hewing axe the results will be much more satisfactory than if I use a die grinder. No matter how much I like using a die grinder it will never produce boards as efficiently or as uniformly as the means that have worked in the past.

No matter how much I might like the idea of using a die grinder, to hew boards from oak stems, it will be frustrating and a waste of time. Even if I reasoned that it would work better because the work of grinding is less degrading than sawing. If my personal bias or bigotry is such that I eschew the use of all saws and axes on moral and ethical grounds it still doesn’t negate the fact that a saw or axe works better for fabricating boards from logs.

Everything is this way. From shoveling coal to operating a remote controlled armature doing laparoscopic surgery there are ways that work, have proven themselves to work and will always work and there are ways that have not worked in the past, have proven themselves not to work and never will work no matter how many times they are tried. No matter how much we might want a means to work, if it doesn’t it doesn’t, and will never.

This is as true in the affairs of humanity as it is milling or shoveling. History shows us that before a democratically elected government becomes feasible the people musty have been inculcated in a market economy. That is the means that has worked in the past works now and will always work, but history also teaches us that alternate means to the market system haven’t worked, have proven themselves not to work and will never work.

In fact they have failed catastrophically. Every time an alternate to the market system has been tried it has killed directly and indirectly huge swaths of people. Usually with the intent to turn people from God through famine, instilling worship of the beloved leader with propaganda, mismanagement of the economy because there is no way a political entity can manage an economy and outright slaying their political enemies in the most gruesome manner possible to scare the masses into submission.

The market system works because it is as close to an organic system as humans can create. The market system is organic in many ways, it is basically an emergent phenomenon just as is life, the market system is dynamic just as is an ecosystem, the market system is growth oriented and most of all the market system is civilizing.

If we want a democratic republic, form of government, instead of tyranny, then the means that will work is introducing a market system into that civilization. Once a generation or two has passed functioning in a market system then democratic reform must take place. The rising wealth in a society, that engages in a market system, gives people more connection to the society. More connection to the society makes people more civilized because that connection is in fact a stake in the outcome of the society. So people want a say in what they see as their personal interests… civic affairs.

This civilization, due to connectedness to society, is lacking in a society that is based on raw political power, like a tribal feudal system. Under this type of system, people are connected to their tribe or faction, than to society, so it makes far more sense for a person to protect the privileges of his or her tribe or class then to have an over arching concept of connectedness to society at large.

So in this context doesn’t it make sense for the US government to be asking more about the economic policies of people it is giving money to, than to dwell on a single issue, democracy? But I have not seen a single report on the economic policies of the Libyan rebels, or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or the faction(s) that will soon be toppling the governments of Syria and Yemen. This question is more important then the democracy question because it trumps it. Without a market based economy democracy cannot work.