Wednesday, October 26, 2011

If Democracy Is To Survive

If we all are allowed to live our own lives as we choose and one of the choices is to do anything to make money, this is what is likely to happen: in financial transactions those who will do anything for money will come out ahead. They will accumulate money. They will use their money to influence government, and use their money to buy specialized knowledge of how to do this best, even create a science to do this and call it public relations, advertising, and lobbying. Finally they will have almost all the money and complete control of the government. Equality between people is gone.

Extreme inequality in individual lives follows from complete equality of ways of life. Those who do anything for money destroy the lives of those who don't. Eventually, without property or money, they become slaves, their freedom entirely gone.

Making money at any cost is a game with no life outside playing of it. If there were, there would be better and worse ways for getting whatever there was outside, assuming it was good and you wanted it. If there is love or friendship or sympathy or beauty or truth out there, then playing some way and not others is going to reduce your chances of getting it. For example, the winner of the do anything for money life will be the loser in the life of winning love, at least some people say so. The point is, if democracy is to allow unconditional free choice of roles, it cannot allow anything outside the game to enter into the game to make one role or side seem to be better than another. It is against the dominant religion of democracy, the habit of saying everyone is right and every way of life is right.

While the religion of democracy is practiced, words of tolerance repeated and judgement suspended, the reality is that equality goes, freedom goes, fraternity goes, and democracy too, since a class structure is being established on the basis of disregard of the winning class for the losing class.

Making money at any cost is the one way of life that cannot be allowed if democracy is to survive. Really, it's not too hard to see.