So I’m reading ecconned and I’ve been thinking about propaganda. Corrente had a great piece on “The Fear” that desperate last act of the fauxgressives to make us vote D, or else the republicans will happen and the world will be worse off. Or not.

Yves Smith points out that in economics the neoclassical theory has been that even though it only works in a perfect world, working at second best with all the complications that are stripped out of the theoretical model will still get you to a perfect system. But that’s a load of crap. It not only won’t get you to a perfect system, but you will end up way more fucked up than you would have been if you just kept bartering with your neighbors. (It’s the A-Prime/C-Prime theorem by Diedre McCloskey. You should read it even though it’s a pdf. It will help you understand this post and a lot of other shit too.

But what if that same nice theory, doesn’t work in real life thing is true of our political system. What if we’ve been striving for second best democracy, only to end up with kleptocracy because second best democracy isn’t really democratic at all?

So if the idea is that we can’t have a perfect democracy (too many people for us to vote on every single little issue, have reps do that for us instead blah blah blah) we can have near perfect. Except near perfect is anything but. With democracy, we are supposed to have representation of everyone, unlike the previous system where only those acting in the king’s best interest were represented. But we still have a king (or kings) class. It’s just now they don’t have to worry about any actual governing because the people have the illusion that they are doing that themselves, what with the voting and the choice between the king’s rep who wears blue ties or the king’s rep who wears red ties. But make no mistake, both are working for the king. But you know, we do get to vote so it is technically democratic. We have democracy within the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it.

Anyways, I just cleaned out the mod que (so sorry peeps! I can’t check the que on my phone and this is literally the first time I’ve been in front of a real compy in months) and it was full of screaming obamabots who think I am just as bad as a tea partier because I won’t bow to the supreme leader. I have to wonder what those self-labeling liberals would say if they realized that they are the political equivalent of NAFTA champions and people who want to kill the epa and end public schools.

Anyways, it’s a working theory. Not quite fleshed out. Feel free to fill in the blanks and check my work. I do find that the realization that this kind of democracy doesn’t work actually doesn’t make me any less democratic. Actually, I’m becoming more radical about it. Fuck elections. We should just draw social security numbers out of a hat every few years and choose our reps that way. Everybody goes in the hat. Everybody gets a chance to serve. But I haven’t figured out how we would kill the bureaucrat class that would pop up as the power behind the peeps if we did that. We still need their technical skills, but they would become the entrenched power players.