THE CHANGING FACE OF DEMOCRACY

Friday, January 20, 2017 - 09:20

Hard line communism did not work and now democracy as we know it is about to change.

With the Trump inauguration looming it is pertinent to reflect on the changing face of democracy. With the advent of social media people don’t have to wait for elections to make their thoughts known. Now everyone can subscribe to a democratic principle of one person one vote and then reject this if your side does not win.

Of course we don’t have the one person one vote anyway in the USA since there is the Electoral College where the smaller states get a larger advantage such as in Australia where Tasmania with its 400,000 citizens gets the same number of senators as NSW with 6 million. Yet this is the system everyone signed up to and accepted it so if now it doesn’t work your way, you are either in support of democracy or against it.

With population shifts to urban dwelling, the general “think” must move to the left where people can become greener and protect animal rights never having had any exposure to a farm or having to think how that packaged meat finishes up on the shelves. The same attitude supports more welfare and on one person one vote yet again, the majority as a whole will vote for whatever or whoever will give them more. That is democracy as we know it.

Add to this concept of democracy the simple fact that it is predicted how within 20 years up to 80% of people’s jobs will have been replaced by machines. That and the current trialing of a Universal Basic Income to pay those replaced. Back again to democracy and it is easy to see how a majority of people depending on welfare will vote for anyone giving them more welfare and extending this, at some point the whole system has to break down.

The hypothesis therefore becomes that since we already see that in the USA a large portion of the public refuse to accept the results of their own democratic process and this can only get worse, the process will be under pressure and must change if government is to be able to continue….