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A misunderstanding of the nature of democracy

In 2016, when it came time to decide whether Britain should leave the EU, Prime Minister Cameron didn’t ask experts or MPs, he left it to a referendum. He left it to the people, asking them, “How do you feel? “

Referendums and elections are always decided by emotions, not by human rationality.

Democracy is based on the premise that human emotions reflect an enigmatic ‘free will’, that this ‘free will’ is the ultimate source of authority, and that, in other words, all human beings are equally free, despite their varying levels of intelligence. (From page 71 of Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons)

Originally, the word democracy was coined when Napoleon gathered his militia, or when the factories in the process of capitalist development gathered a large number of workers.

Harari gave a straightforward historical account of the nature of democracy and warned “Democracy is not a solution in itself. If we value it, we must work for it.” 

We exercise our right to vote on the basis of “free will”. And in fact, we elect the national government and ask our representatives to do their jobs for the country and the people. We pay their salaries in the form of the national budget and expect them to do a good job. But if they are happy to be handed meaningless benefits and support money, then they are not doing their job. The campaign pledges of each party in this general election are all about “distributional policies” such as handing out cash benefits to the people.

Rather than being carried away by short-term handouts, we should be saying, “We will put up with this for the betterment of the country and everyone else, so please practice good politics.

Instead of getting money from politicians, we should say: “I want you to work for the people with all your heart and soul, to the best of your ability and we want them to give people an equal opportunity to work and study for the sake of the planet. We’ll do the rest ourselves…”

One could argue that if money is not given to the people, then consumption will not increase and the economy will deteriorate, but that is the opinion of old economics, using the analogy of progress in the last report, “forward and up”.

Please do not treat us, voters,as children.

Let once again shout in a loud voice: “We want you to carry out real politics, not a meaningless scattergun administration to that just please the electorate.

Minoru Hirota, October 22, 2021