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While this essay probably won't convince anyone of anything, I don't have anything better to do at the moment, so I'll write it anyway. Enjoy. 
1. Netherlands
2. You wouldn't understand it, but (in English) it sounds a lot like something it isn't, so I shall refrain from writing it here.
3. We call it left, but I'm not sure if those terms mean the same everywhere.
4. Here we go:
Table of contents:
- How does an electoral democracy work?
- Why will there always be multiple parties?
- What are the main differences between parties?
- What are taxes good for?
- The problem of companies.
- What does this mean for me?
- Beyond electoral democracy.
Obviously, all of this is highly subjective; I'm writing my opinion here, not hard facts.
How does an electoral democracy work?
There is a group of people living together on a limited piece of land. There need to be some rules for what is and what isn't acceptable. Politicians are appointed to make those rules. Of course the question then is who is allowed to vote, and what is the weight of everyone's vote. The answer to this is a choice: in ancient democracies, there was some sort of elite (nobles, men, any limited group) with voting rights. Nowadays, most countries have chosen to give a single vote to every citizen. This implies that we, as a society, consider every citizen's opinion equally valuable. This may seem like a silly observation, but it is in fact important; read on.
The elected politicians are then expected to do whatever they think is good. Hopefully the voters will elect the people who are indeed going to do that (as opposed to being corrupt and filling their own pockets). Independent media have an important role there; they must show the voters what the politicians are really doing.
Why will there always be multiple parties?
For the moment, let's assume that all politicians are trying their best to do their job. Then there are several questions: is it their job to make the country as a whole (all citizens being equally valuable) flourish as much as they can make it, or should they only represent their own voters, and let the others be represented by the other politicians? And regardless of the answer to that, what is the best way to do this? Answers to that last question are choices, based on evaluating the value of certain outcomes (if the total money in the country increases, but the balance shifts so the poorest become poorer, is that a positive or a negative total effect?)
What parties should do, I think, is clearly state their position on this first question ("are they going to try to make life better for people who didn't vote for them?") and on a case by case basis, explain why they choose a certain option as the best possible path given a political situation ("Why should we (not) send our army to this place?", etc.)
Then the people can choose which party is closest to how they think society should be organized, and vote for it.
Again, all this assumes that politicians are all trying their best to do a good job, and journalists are trying to be as objective as they can, without pushing the vote one way or another by misrepresenting the facts. Unfortunately, both these assumptions are highly questionable in many countries.
What are the main differences between parties?
So let's talk about the Netherlands. There are many parties and many of them have some influence over the final decisions. However, I'll focus on the two main streams, which are called left and right. The left parties are trying to make a better world for all, so they will try to represent people who didn't vote for them. While concrete cases are always complex, the main way they evaluate a situation is by looking at the low end: something is an improvement if the people who have it bad are getting a better life. The main philosophy behind this is that the mighty (rich) people can take care of themselves; they don't need the government for making their lives better.
The right parties, on the other hand, seem to only represent their own voters (but I'm not entirely sure about that). They usually consider the sum of money when evaluating a situation: something is an improvement if the total amount of money in the country increases. This usually means that the differences increase, but they don't consider that a problem.
What are taxes good for?
The next thing to consider are taxes, because they are a main point of dispute between left and right parties. The government pays for everything it does from tax money. If you choose to have a big and powerful government, you automatically choose to have high taxes. Similarly, if you choose to have low taxes, you automatically have a government that is incapable of doing much.
So an important question for politicians is what the government should do, and what it should leave for private individuals and companies. Left parties generally say that everything which is for the common good should be done by the government (healthcare, education, infrastructure (including roads and railroads, post, telephone and electricity), police and military, etc). Other things (farms, transport, shops, etc; things where one bad company only harms its own customers, and customers can reasonably choose a different company) are left to the market.
On the other hand, the right parties claim that the government is incapable of doing anything at all, and want as much as possible to be given to the free market, which does it all better. But there is a problem: companies don't really like the market to be free; they much rather have a monopoly and demand ridiculous amounts of money for things that people can't get elsewhere. Or they can try to confuse the information that people get, so they cannot properly compare different suppliers. When this happens, the good things of the free market (prices going down and quality going up) are not happening. So there must be an organization for checking that all the companies are playing fair. Obviously, only the government can run this organization; it can't be a private company. And running this organization is not easy: they have to know all the ways that companies might try to cheat, and see through all their dirty tricks. Running this organization is actually much harder than just doing the work yourself... But they claimed that the government was too stupid for that. Then they must certainly be too stupid for properly running the inspection as well. However, this is an insight that the right parties don't share. If anyone believes my logic is wrong, please comment.
The problem of companies.
But there is another problem with giving private companies control over common good services, and it's representation. If a company decides what to do with the railroads (or any other service), then every shareholder gets an equal vote, which is fundamentally different from every citizen. Moving all decisions for common good services to companies means that rich people get to choose what the country is doing, and poor people don't. Considering that every citizen's opinion is equally valuable, this is a very bad thing.
What does this mean for me?
If you've read all the above, it won't come as a surprise that I'm in favor of a strong government, which organizes all common good services. This automatically means significant taxes; I support those too (if they are used for such things, not for crazy projects like buying fighter planes for much more money than they're worth). But high taxes don't mean people will all be poor: public services paid for by taxes are free to use, so you save money there. Of course it's not really free; you're just paying in a different way. Taxes you pay are not "lost" money; it's used for good things, that you don't have to pay for when you use them.
As for who should pay the taxes, I think rich people should pay more than poor people. There should be a lower limit to income; even if you don't do anything, the government should give you that money, so you don't starve. There should also be an upper limit: if you manage to get more than that somehow, I want 100% tax over the excess. This upper limit may be very high, of course, but I think it is a good thing that income is eventually limited. Nobody is worth a million times more than somebody else, not even if that somebody else seems to be doing nothing all the time. So the upper limit could be a million times the lower limit.
Beyond electoral democracy.
So now it's time for some controversial statements. (Wasn't the former controversial? It's nothing compared to what's coming.
)
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams writes Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. This is funny because it's true. Electoral democracy attracts people who want to rule the country, and the ones who survive their way to the top are often the worst you can get. This is why the assumption above, that all politicians are trying their best to do a good job, is so questionable.
A different system would be random selection; just randomly select a group of people each term who will have to drop whatever it is they were doing and rule the country for a while. Similar to how jury duty works in many countries. This would probably work much better than the current system, but it would still suffer from the problem that they know their term will end, and they may not care too much about what happens after that (although I have more faith in them than in power-hungry politicians in that respect).
There is yet another way to rule a country, which is not democratic at all: just randomly appoint someone, and let him rule the country until he dies (or decides to stop). Random selection could be as simple as "First-born son of the previous ruler", saving lots of money on administration; it doesn't really matter who it is, so there's no problem if it's all in one family. Good thing about knowing in advance who will be the ruler is that they can prepare themselves.
And for those who didn't notice yet, that person would be called a king. That's right; I have more faith in a king to rule my country than in elected politicians. How's that for controversy?
1. Netherlands
2. You wouldn't understand it, but (in English) it sounds a lot like something it isn't, so I shall refrain from writing it here.
3. We call it left, but I'm not sure if those terms mean the same everywhere.
4. Here we go:
Table of contents:
- How does an electoral democracy work?
- Why will there always be multiple parties?
- What are the main differences between parties?
- What are taxes good for?
- The problem of companies.
- What does this mean for me?
- Beyond electoral democracy.
Obviously, all of this is highly subjective; I'm writing my opinion here, not hard facts.
How does an electoral democracy work?
There is a group of people living together on a limited piece of land. There need to be some rules for what is and what isn't acceptable. Politicians are appointed to make those rules. Of course the question then is who is allowed to vote, and what is the weight of everyone's vote. The answer to this is a choice: in ancient democracies, there was some sort of elite (nobles, men, any limited group) with voting rights. Nowadays, most countries have chosen to give a single vote to every citizen. This implies that we, as a society, consider every citizen's opinion equally valuable. This may seem like a silly observation, but it is in fact important; read on.
The elected politicians are then expected to do whatever they think is good. Hopefully the voters will elect the people who are indeed going to do that (as opposed to being corrupt and filling their own pockets). Independent media have an important role there; they must show the voters what the politicians are really doing.
Why will there always be multiple parties?
For the moment, let's assume that all politicians are trying their best to do their job. Then there are several questions: is it their job to make the country as a whole (all citizens being equally valuable) flourish as much as they can make it, or should they only represent their own voters, and let the others be represented by the other politicians? And regardless of the answer to that, what is the best way to do this? Answers to that last question are choices, based on evaluating the value of certain outcomes (if the total money in the country increases, but the balance shifts so the poorest become poorer, is that a positive or a negative total effect?)
What parties should do, I think, is clearly state their position on this first question ("are they going to try to make life better for people who didn't vote for them?") and on a case by case basis, explain why they choose a certain option as the best possible path given a political situation ("Why should we (not) send our army to this place?", etc.)
Then the people can choose which party is closest to how they think society should be organized, and vote for it.
Again, all this assumes that politicians are all trying their best to do a good job, and journalists are trying to be as objective as they can, without pushing the vote one way or another by misrepresenting the facts. Unfortunately, both these assumptions are highly questionable in many countries.
What are the main differences between parties?
So let's talk about the Netherlands. There are many parties and many of them have some influence over the final decisions. However, I'll focus on the two main streams, which are called left and right. The left parties are trying to make a better world for all, so they will try to represent people who didn't vote for them. While concrete cases are always complex, the main way they evaluate a situation is by looking at the low end: something is an improvement if the people who have it bad are getting a better life. The main philosophy behind this is that the mighty (rich) people can take care of themselves; they don't need the government for making their lives better.
The right parties, on the other hand, seem to only represent their own voters (but I'm not entirely sure about that). They usually consider the sum of money when evaluating a situation: something is an improvement if the total amount of money in the country increases. This usually means that the differences increase, but they don't consider that a problem.
What are taxes good for?
The next thing to consider are taxes, because they are a main point of dispute between left and right parties. The government pays for everything it does from tax money. If you choose to have a big and powerful government, you automatically choose to have high taxes. Similarly, if you choose to have low taxes, you automatically have a government that is incapable of doing much.
So an important question for politicians is what the government should do, and what it should leave for private individuals and companies. Left parties generally say that everything which is for the common good should be done by the government (healthcare, education, infrastructure (including roads and railroads, post, telephone and electricity), police and military, etc). Other things (farms, transport, shops, etc; things where one bad company only harms its own customers, and customers can reasonably choose a different company) are left to the market.
On the other hand, the right parties claim that the government is incapable of doing anything at all, and want as much as possible to be given to the free market, which does it all better. But there is a problem: companies don't really like the market to be free; they much rather have a monopoly and demand ridiculous amounts of money for things that people can't get elsewhere. Or they can try to confuse the information that people get, so they cannot properly compare different suppliers. When this happens, the good things of the free market (prices going down and quality going up) are not happening. So there must be an organization for checking that all the companies are playing fair. Obviously, only the government can run this organization; it can't be a private company. And running this organization is not easy: they have to know all the ways that companies might try to cheat, and see through all their dirty tricks. Running this organization is actually much harder than just doing the work yourself... But they claimed that the government was too stupid for that. Then they must certainly be too stupid for properly running the inspection as well. However, this is an insight that the right parties don't share. If anyone believes my logic is wrong, please comment.
The problem of companies.
But there is another problem with giving private companies control over common good services, and it's representation. If a company decides what to do with the railroads (or any other service), then every shareholder gets an equal vote, which is fundamentally different from every citizen. Moving all decisions for common good services to companies means that rich people get to choose what the country is doing, and poor people don't. Considering that every citizen's opinion is equally valuable, this is a very bad thing.
What does this mean for me?
If you've read all the above, it won't come as a surprise that I'm in favor of a strong government, which organizes all common good services. This automatically means significant taxes; I support those too (if they are used for such things, not for crazy projects like buying fighter planes for much more money than they're worth). But high taxes don't mean people will all be poor: public services paid for by taxes are free to use, so you save money there. Of course it's not really free; you're just paying in a different way. Taxes you pay are not "lost" money; it's used for good things, that you don't have to pay for when you use them.
As for who should pay the taxes, I think rich people should pay more than poor people. There should be a lower limit to income; even if you don't do anything, the government should give you that money, so you don't starve. There should also be an upper limit: if you manage to get more than that somehow, I want 100% tax over the excess. This upper limit may be very high, of course, but I think it is a good thing that income is eventually limited. Nobody is worth a million times more than somebody else, not even if that somebody else seems to be doing nothing all the time. So the upper limit could be a million times the lower limit.
Beyond electoral democracy.
So now it's time for some controversial statements. (Wasn't the former controversial? It's nothing compared to what's coming.
)In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams writes Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. This is funny because it's true. Electoral democracy attracts people who want to rule the country, and the ones who survive their way to the top are often the worst you can get. This is why the assumption above, that all politicians are trying their best to do a good job, is so questionable.
A different system would be random selection; just randomly select a group of people each term who will have to drop whatever it is they were doing and rule the country for a while. Similar to how jury duty works in many countries. This would probably work much better than the current system, but it would still suffer from the problem that they know their term will end, and they may not care too much about what happens after that (although I have more faith in them than in power-hungry politicians in that respect).
There is yet another way to rule a country, which is not democratic at all: just randomly appoint someone, and let him rule the country until he dies (or decides to stop). Random selection could be as simple as "First-born son of the previous ruler", saving lots of money on administration; it doesn't really matter who it is, so there's no problem if it's all in one family. Good thing about knowing in advance who will be the ruler is that they can prepare themselves.
And for those who didn't notice yet, that person would be called a king. That's right; I have more faith in a king to rule my country than in elected politicians. How's that for controversy?
