How To Curb The Power Of Democracy

You have to admit it: Democracy is messy. Everyone gets a say in all matters, even the poor and uneducated. We toss and turn in the sea of public opinion, some informed, some ill-formed, some completely uninformed. What the masses want is not always the desire of those in power, or those with wealth. If you wanted to control or diminish the power of Democracy, what could you do?

First, I think you would posit something called a Free Market. You would imbue it with the power of a god – make it all encompassing, pure, and always correct. Posit that the God Market perfectly rewards those who work hard, and likewise punishes those who are negligent in their production or attention. Posit that the God Market is Strongly Efficient: the values It determines, whether they be salaries or prices or rewards of any sort, they are exactly the correct salaries or prices or rewards.

Now you have the perfect tool to curtail the power of The People. If they advocate for higher wages, you can simply beat them back: Their wages are exactly the wages God The Market has determined should accrue to one who does what they do. Paying them other than what the God Market has chosen is an affront, and will have many negative consequences.

Perhaps they would use their democratic powers to move something from the realm of the private into the realm of the public with the desire that the fruits of society should benefit all of its members. Again,

remind them that public entities are fraught with inefficiency and corruption – you know, because God The Market has informed you, and It has no interest in rewarding any who would not strive alone to better themselves.

You can even use it to bruise their ego. Observably, the masses are poor, and since the God Market is purely efficient and correct, ergo, they deserve their lot in life. Who would dare go against what is pure and true? Those who have succeeded, by definition, are those who have worked harder, dared more, and received the bounty of the God Market! Repeat often, and perhaps they will learn the error of choosing Democracy, and stop attempting to use their votes and some pathetic egalitarian ideal to oppose that which is natural and pure and good, and just go and toil for the God Market.

For surely, you can point to your own success, and recognize that it is of course the result of a mighty struggle that has received the beneficence of God The Free Market, and you now have the perfect tool with which to flay Democracy: Indeed, you can point to your own neutrality! Do The People want clean air and plentiful, pure water? It is not for you or they to decide: The God Market will provide those as needed and when needed, and if they are not as clean as some want, well, who are they to go against the providence of the God Market?

Use the tool often and with energy, and perhaps this desire for messy interference with the natural order of things, this desire to make society better for all, this desire to diminish the injustices of previous generations can be caused to wither, perhaps die. Those who would choose their fellow citizen over personal gain can see the error of their ways. For once this arrogant wrongness, this affront, this virtual heresy that is Democracy is banished, then all can turn towards the God Market and have its splendor and perfection shine upon their faces, and the world can become Its perfect reflection.