The parliamentary democratic elections are predominately a contest of promises. Promises to give more than what is actually on hand. The only situation where this deception can work slickly is when the tax collected from a minority of producers is sufficient to spread across majority of eligible voters. Parliamentary leaders are essentially professional risk assessors and fund managers; calculating and speculating the marginalised voters’ response to their election promises. The only difference from private sector is that state funds are collected with force and management fee is quite exuberant.
Human societies, like other creations of nature, are evolving all the time; from simple to more complex ones. Then a time comes when they become too complex and can not withstand their own burden. They break down to simpler forms, if they are lucky. Alternatively they vanish and give chance for others to attempt. Our parliamentary democratic system is no exception.
This Socio-Political-Economic model of industrialised economies is not dead yet. It is merely approaching its advanced stage and getting exhausted. Very much like the American Empire at the present, but has not attained the status of old British or Greek Empires.
This system of governance; which is over a century old in many countries, relies on heavy taxes, numerous ‘social welfare’ schemes and economic subsidies. This extremely powerful and successful political system is like an old warrior, with plenty of victory medals on its chest is not willing to go down without a fight.
During the last two centuries, due to an explosion in the human population and availability of newfound natural resources especially cheap oil and coal, creating surplus production, almost any system could have managed to stay afloat.
A point comes in the life cycle of each such economy, when the expenditure grows faster than the revenue. Then popular governments are unable to meet their election promises such as providing cheap food, electricity, public health and mass education. Giving more and taking less can work for a while, sometimes even for 100-200 years, but not for ever.
All such governments, without exception, start borrowing to spend and increase private and public debt until there is no one left to lend to them. By that time the total debt is beyond their capacity to repay honestly. Instead of defaulting and accepting their failure, they resort to printing paper notes with photos of dead leaders or presidents.
It is not a clerical mistake or calculation error by the central bankers that money supply is ever increasing in all countries since its creation. Neither is it a coincidence that all the major world trade partners are running their printing presses round the clock and debasing their own currencies. It is quite sensible for the current rulers to pass on the debt to the future ones if they can get away with it.
Printing money is not painless but there is no other easy way out. This excessive money supply creates inflation and eventually hyperinflation. The public gets upset when they realise their standard of living is dropping. Their real wages are going down whilst cost of living, especially the food prices go up.
Occasionally these baffled citizens are forced to march on the streets demanding the replacement of the government that they themselves elected to the high office. It is almost like admitting that they made a mistake in the last election or they do not believe in next elections. They want their elected governments to bring the food prices down as if the governments can pass a law to print more food.
The angry voters are not prepared to listen to the truth. Not knowing the rationale behind this scenario, they want to hear answers that sound good to them. They listen to the candidate who promises to change the current system and remove the undesirable facts such as poverty, unemployment etc. Sometimes biggest liar gets the job.
The voters may not get what they want but usually get what they deserve. Either they get an army dictator or a new democratic government headed by someone who promises something more wonderful thus avoiding their collision with reality. The new incumbent promises to meet their list of demands.
On the other hand, voters have no desire to know who will pay for all these freebies and where the money will come from. If voters want less than what they pay to the government, why do they need someone to govern them?
If someone highlights the mathematical impossibility in spending more than their tax revenue, one is eliminated from the list of elected parliamentarians. It is democracy after all. Democratically contesting political parties, and to some extent elected government is only answerable to the current pool of voters. To keep the present voters happy and under control, quite often, these governments have to borrow from future generations by selling national assets, both above and underground.
There are some other symptoms of this decaying model of governance. You might already be noticing the degeneration of human rights, increase in police and military presence and diminishing freedom of media in various parts of the world. These symptoms suddenly get lot worse when these ‘popular governments’ don’t have means to support their popular boondoggles.
Sometimes, these do-gooder politicians are so religiously convinced about their duty to improve the lives of their citizens as well as those of other sovereign countries, that they send their armies to spread their message of democracy. Taking risk to financially go broke and even borrows from their non democratic enemies. Their public and private debt increases beyond their ability to pay it back.
Can these governments cut back from the present level of expenditure? How would their voting citizens receive this? Would the tax paying citizens prefer to evade taxes and help themselves? Will there be a peaceful transition or bloody revolution? Who knows!
