Is our system a plutarchy ?

[steve2470]

I'm leaning strongly towards yes. What do you think ?

The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

[Dogmudgeon]

1. It's a Democracy with too many lazy whiners

If you want Democracy to work, you have to participate.

Voting is NOT a consumer behavior!

--d!

[Truth2Tell]

10. Just because we hold elections

doesn't make us a democracy. An actual functioning democracy requires a whole series of elements, like critically thinking participants and equal access to information for all participants, etc. Our system of government comes nowhere close to being a democracy. It has some of the superficial trappings and a lot of people spend a lot breath falsely calling it a democracy. But no, The USA is no democracy.

[mmonk]

17. We do.

But my vote is bought by someone else.

[jobycom]

2. No. That's an easy complaint, but not so. We are a democracy in which a wealthy few

wield more influence than they should, but we are still a democracy where the people can change that if they ever decide to. In a true oligarchy or plutocracy, the ruling class would be fixed, and it would be invulnerable to the masses except through revolution.

So I'm going the poster who said we're a lazy democracy full of people who would rather complain than vote. Or, to put it a little less cynically, enough people are basically comfortable with the way things work that they don't go out of their way to use the powers at their disposal to make changes.

If things get worse economically, you could see a lot of people suddenly caring a lot more, and then things could change drastically. That's not possible without revolution in a true plutarchy.

[steve2470]

4. Excellent response, thanks nt

[TheKentuckian]

8. Hence the question. It is a matter of perception and degrees at this point.

What democracy there is has always been a choice of the powerful establishment.

Nobody gets included in the process without permission and if someone that gets permission to participate but isn't acceptable other than as a control rod to power brokers wins then the popular vote always has an override.

[metapunditedgy]

12. What about "soft" force, though? Categories like "democracy" and "free market"

are difficult to discuss clearly because their advocates like to pretend that "force" only comes from the government or from guns.

Propaganda (advertising), regulatory obstacles favoring the big players, unfair competition practices... all provide a soft "force" on consumers and voters.

Is that a "free market" and/or "democracy"? Technically maybe yes, but the technical definition doesn't really describe reality.

[PufPuf23]

14. Nice post. I have never noticed you before. nt

[metapunditedgy]

20. Thanks. I'm innocuous. n/t

[jobycom]

15. Soft force is just influence, and that's not outside of democracy.

You're always going to have someone or some group with more influence than the rest, whether because of money or social skills or talent or whatever. You have competing forces even, where the power of corporate propaganda is offset to some degree by the power of a fairly liberal entertainment industry, several organized interest groups, etc. Sure, the conservatives have more such power now, but the point is that nothing in law forces that to be so. Nothing in law requires the people to vote for the representatives of that group.

People can, if motivated, choose someone else.

I think the "free market" (which to me is a meaningless phrase anyway) is probably less free these days. I agree that regulations and laws (and especially tax structures) protect larger businesses at the expense of smaller, and that is one of the biggest causes of our economy's decline. To me that is the result of people voting poorly, though. Government has the power to change that, just not the will, and the people are too clueless to understand what it happening, and keep falling for the wrong arguments. To me that's a serious failing of capitalism, in that anyone can argue anything to get someone to vote for them, and everyone can vote whether they have the ability to understand the issues or not.

[metapunditedgy]

18. Like I said, you can adopt narrow definitions of these terms that exclude "soft force."

But I don't think they're very meaningful or realistic.

In Detroit, there are McDonalds restaurants everywhere. People are saturated with advertisements for cheap, crappy food that ruins their health. McDonalds intentionally makes this crap easily accessible for everyone, and profits obscenely from it. (This is similar to the well-recognized history of cigarette/smoking propaganda.)

Many right-wingers live in a fairy-tale world where this is just an impersonal market using money to apply value to goods. At best, that fairy tale is a shallow view of what's really going on. The implication of that fairy tale is that people who disseminate propaganda are savvy entrepreneurs, while those who ingest propaganda are dupes who deserve to suffer.

I'm not trying to argue about definitions... leave that to the right-wingers. I'm asking what the *reality* is.

[jobycom]

29. And you can give broad definitions of "soft force" which include them in any definition.

Which means you can never have anything other than a plutarchy, since there is no way you can ever remove all types of influence from a system. Left broad enough, as you're doing, any democratic system is a plutarchy, because the group with the slight majority always controls the government, whereas the lower 49% have no say.

And there is an immense difference between people mindlessly eating at McDonald's because advertising has made it an easy choice for them, and people eating at McDonalds because the government has decreed that no other restaurants are allowed. The former is democracy, and it is not made less so by the fact that people choose the propagandized route. The latter would be a plutocracy (or whatever form of dictatorship) where people couldn't choose otherwise even if they wanted.

The reality is that. We have options. A plutocracy doesn't. The fact that we consistently choose one narrow option is our fault. Yes, the system could be more fair, and yes, laws favor a narrow group, and yes, through soft force there is an aristocracy who influences us unduly. But the bottom line is we still have a choice, even if we keep choosing the same thing. In a true plutarchy, or whatever, we wouldn't. And while that isn't making much difference right now, it has in the past (FDR), and it can in the future. In a plutarchy, there would not be a difference.

My main complaint is with defeatism. All these claims that voting doesn't matter, the system is rigged, we don't have a real election, we only have two parties therefore we don't have real choices... Those are all just cowardly reasons for people to surrender. They are not wisely cynical, they are defeatist. They are tools of the powers that be to crush any chance of resistance by destroying the initiative of the people who do realize that change is needed. They should be rejected at every opportunity. Yes, the reality of the system is that it isn't fair and it favors an aristocracy. But it can still be changed. The fact that we have to work harder to do so doesn't make it not so.

Edited to add: Your points are all good ones and you have turned this into a great discussion, and I'm not so much disagreeing with you as adding points to balance yours, if that makes sense. I don't disagree with anything you said, really, I just disagree on how they affect things ultimately.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. "we are still a democracy where the people can change that if they ever decide to"

I disagree. The plutocracy would and has in the past moved quickly to defeat and destroy, by any means necessary, any organized effort to upset the current status quo that appeared to have even a small chance of being effective.

[Romulox]

23. LOL. nt

[jobycom]

28. ROFLMBGDARTFO!!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

(Rolling On Floor Laughing My Big Fucking God Damned Ass Right The Fuck Off, in case you're scoring at home)

[Selatius]

24. I'd agree except that I would say we are a Republic. We never were a democracy and never will be.

If we had a system of government like Switzerland's, maybe I'd get around to calling it a democracy, but other than that, no.

[jobycom]

27. That's one of those weird memes without any basis.

I don't know how all that started, except maybe Republicans just didn't like us being described by a name that sounded so much like Democrat.

A Republic is any form of government chosen by some group of its citizens, as opposed to a hereditary system like a monarchy. A Democracy is a system of government where the citizens are directly or indirectly involved in running the government. We are both a Republic (as is China), and a Representative Democracy. They describe slightly different aspects of our government and our culture, and are not in opposition.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. It is a Republic...

and it is not to late to keep it.

[dimbear]

5. You need an accurate estimate of the voting public.

American voters=stupid and ill-informed, not complete idiots.

[Ozymanithrax]

7. In the majority of elections, the majority of the public isn't voting...

but we are still a Republic in accordance with the Constitution and law.

[Xipe Totec]

6. It's a cleptocracy nt

[Octafish]

9. I vote for peace and we still got war.

I voted for justice and Bush and Cheney walk and lay, disrespectfully, free.

[frazzled]

11. Self-deleted

Didn't read the whole post.

[lumberjack_jeff]

13. Kleptocracy. n/t

[Greyhound]

21. We don't agree on much, but here...

:thumbsup:

[ShamelessHussy]

19. Obviously, or even better a kakistocracy!

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. It is getting there

like it has a few times in the past (1880s, for example)... but it is not quite there YET.

[upi402]

25. remember when mexican elections looked BAD to us? n/t

[DailyGrind51]

26. Too many vote against their own interest because of wedge issues.