Date: Wednesday, 23 April 2025
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/further-responses-to-my-proposed
https://theduran.com/further-responses-to-my-proposed-new-way-to-achieve
Further Responses to My Proposed New Way to Achieve a Democracy
22 April 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
This article is addressed only to individuals who already know that the U.S. Government is, and for many decades has been, not a democracy, as it claims to be and is asserted to be by its advocates, but a dictatorship by its super-rich. Without this knowledge, a reader won’t understand that the problem exists, and will therefore not be willing to try to understand the only way to solve it. Such a reader won’t be interested in curing a disease he/she doesn’t even know exists (and which pertains, as well, to the nations that are allied with the U.S. Government — and to some other Governments also). This article challenges and re-defines what the word “democracy” most-basically means; and this is necessary to do, because a merely symptomatic understanding of any disease cannot even possibly point the way to how it can be cured.
On March 31st, I introduced my proposed new way to achieve a democracy, in an article titled and about “A political left that’s controlled by billionaires is a fake ‘left’”. I opened it with:
One of the core features of nazism (not the German political Party but its core ideology) is racism, which allows some ethnicities (or “races”) to be advantaged by law, and other ethnicities to be discriminated against by the law — it is, at its very core, AGAINST equal rights under law. Consequently, Adolf Hitler constantly condemned democracy (which can’t exist WITHOUT equal rights under law). Another of its core features is imperialism — support of the idea that a ‘superior’ nation has an international right to expand to control other, ‘inferior’, nations. Those two core features are also AMONG the core features of ANY type of conservatism, which is the reason why Hitler’s Nazi Party was considered to be extremely conservative despite its being obviously extremely radical. The idea that radicalism is necessarily leftist is false — rabidly false: stupid — but it is popularized by the billionaires who control the ‘news’-media, because billionaires are the biggest beneficiaries of the status-quo.
Someone today with whom I have been discussing democracy, and who has devoted many years thinking about how it can be achieved (and so he considers himself to be a supporter of democracy) said to me, “I admit that the ideal of equality is not high on my list of priorities. Certainly not as high as freedom. Respect for human dignity is though.”
A libertarian (or “neoliberal”) claims to be a supporter, above all else, of “freedom,” but libertarianism is really concerned about only the types of freedom that are proportionate to how wealthy a person is, and it’s therefore a liberty for wealth instead of for persons-per-se — it’s not the same ideal as democracy, which is traditionally for one-person-one-vote, while, by contrast, libertarianism (or “neoliberalism”) is instead for one-dollar-one-vote, like in a corporation, where it is called one-share-one-vote — and so it endorses a dollar-based (or other wealth-based) equality of rights, and NOT any sort of person-based equality of rights, and so it is thus OPPOSED to democracy, much like Hitler was. That philosophy, libertarianism (neoliberalism), was created in the 1760s by hirees of the aristocracy, who called themselves Physiocrats, who were the originators of the economic advocacy for, and were the inventors of, “laissez faire” economic policies, or a free-market economy, against economic regulations, and they deeply influenced the economist Adam Smith, who achieved his financial independence in 1764 by becoming the protégé and tutor to the third Duke of Buccleuch, Henry Scott, which allowed Smith to widen his knowledge, meet intellectuals beyond his former limited sphere, and travel with the Duke and make influential friends even outside of England. (It’s hard to find this crucial information about him — his dependence upon the aristocracy — on the Web, and sites such as Wikipedia minimize instead of expand upon it, because today’s aristocracy control the Web, but this is essential information in order to understand why economic theory, at least up until John Maynard Keynes, has been fraudulent — written for the benefit of the aristocrats, not really of the public.) So, the founders of capitalist economics were hirees of the aristocracy, whose interests they served; they have served the aristocrats. This was the foundation for libertarianism, and also for economic theory. It occurred right before the American, and then the French, Revolutions, and replaced religion (belief in ‘God’s law’ and ‘nature’s law’) as being the aristocracy’s laissez faire “justification” (supposedly ‘scientific’ “invisible hand”) behind their extreme wealth in a world of poverty, prior to these Revolutions. The source of microeconomic theory is actually the need those aristocrats felt, in that time leading up to Revolutions, to “justify” their wealth as religiosity was declining as a source for that purpose. This need is what produced the theory – the theory (libertarianism and economic theory) that’s now known to be false (but that remains helpful to today’s aristocrats and is thus still financed heavily by them and is therefore still widely beieved to be true, despite the now-massive empirical evidence that it is not).
A highly respected German-American-Turkish libertarian, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, published in 2001 his DEMOCRACY: The God that Failed, which was considered a libertarian masterpiece. Hoppe unapologetically argued there that libertarianism and conservatism are one and the same. He wanted it, and hated democracy. He says that he supports “peace,” but it is (like with Hitler, who said the same), ONLY peace on their terms, which are a supremacist, instead of equalitarian, legal system. However, ANY supremacism entails the inferiority of others, and if those ‘inferiors’ resist, then the ultimate peace will be only in death of the ‘inferiors’. That’s a mockery of peace, just as libertarianism is a mockery of liberty. But libertarians also call themselves “anarchists” because they want to "reduce it [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” so that everything is privatized and the wealthiest will then collectively own almost all of the wealth.
That same objector who said that “the ideal of equality is not high on my list of priorities” objected by saying also that “candidates for the position of [the Government’s legislature, should] … become visible at [a] five yearly [meaning they’d have five-year terms] universal suffrage referendum [i.e., election by the public], standing against [political opponents who should] be chosen by lottery from among volunteers.”:
This person was writing in the belief that my proposed Governmental system can entail elections by the public, though that is clearly rejected by what I have written: my proposed system would choose only legislators, and choose them ONLY by means of a lottery among all of the country’s adults — no elections and no political campaigns at all. The only election would be of the head-of-state, and would not be by the public, but instead by only members of the legislature, who would select from amongst themselves, whom the head-of-state will be. This commenter was assuming that the lottery should be among ONLY volunteers — individuals who have volunteered to serve in the legislature; he said this though the article to which he was responding, which was my April 8th “Does every democracy corruptly degenerate into control by the richest?”, said that my proposed system would be a lottery not selecting only from volunteers but from “all adults” and that this lottery would be:
replacing all public competitive elections (which inevitably will be corrupted) between competing politicians, by, instead, random assignment of members of the public, to the legislature; and, then, if that person is willing to serve as a legislator, be paid by the Government so to serve.
So, to that “among volunteers” in his objection, I responded:
I have thought quite a lot about the question of at which stage in the system “volunteering” ought to be included in it, because obviously this is to be a democracy and so the objective is to REDUCE as much as is possible to do, ANY AND ALL coercion — and that there must be NO coercion that is a part of it (ONLY volunteers will serve, but those must be volunteering AFTER having been first chosen by the lottery — NOT before it), and it must be AN ALTERNATIVE TO the present system, which present system is slanted very heavily toward the richest (who have vastly more discretionary or “spare” time to volunteer to participate in Government than a normal person is habituated to think oneself ever does or even can have) included within the system ITSELF; this is a total rethink about “democracy”; so, here is what I have concluded about this “volunteering” matter:
The lotteries must therefore come first and the volunteering must come second, because if the lotteries are to be ONLY among volunteers, then the whole system is going to degenerate back into something like what we already have, (because rich people have vastly more discretionary or “spare” time than a poor person is habituated to thinking oneself ever can or will have (time enough to “volunteer” — and this is true regardless of how high the salary for serving in the legislature would be, it’s a matter of feeling, of habituation; poor and rich peple are habituated differently).
FIRST come the lotteries, THEN come the decisions by the lottery ‘winners’ (but they aren’t — because there is NO COMPETITION involved in this; all of the STANDARD conceptions are absent in this system; it is TRULY NEW!) as to whether they will DO this, whether to accept or else decline the Government’s offer. If the given person says “no,” then the random selection for that position will simply be redone until someone says “yes.”
I see no alternative to that, because the system’s purpose is to do everything possible in order to AVOID being ruled by corruption — by the corruptors and the corruptees (but ULTIMATELY by the corruptors, the Deep State, the billionaires — the people who select the corruptees). The purpose is to replace THAT with randomness.
If a person is at all religious, then the purpose here is to replace control by humans by changing that to control by God. Then, to support this system is to have “faith in God,” and supporting this system is therefore proof to everyone that the given person REALLY DOES (have faith in God).
If a person is not at all religious, then the purpose here is instead to produce democracy, a thriving equal-opportunity economy, minimization of interpersonal conflict, and minimization of international conflict (all of which can be produced ONLY by eliminating corruptness in the Government).
The existing system (intentionally or otherwise) encourages corruptness in the Government, and none of the means that exist to prevent that can succeed; but IF the one that I am proposing is rigorously designed to prevent it, and becomes implemented, then corruptness in Government CAN and WILL be prevented.
All of the objections that I get to this proposal assume falsely that the biggest problem in Government is that the Government is incompetent, NOT that it is corrupt. My study of history proves to me that that almost universally-held assumption is FALSE. My system is designed on the basis of this radical but factual recognition. Thus far, all objectors to it have assumed that the problem is the Government’s incompetence, more than the Government’s corruptness.
Another person asked me “And what if an idiot wins this lottery? Should that person be allowed to serve?” The public’s fear that an incompetent person might become a legislator might be higher than the public’s fear that an evil person will become a legislator, but which is more the problem with our ‘democracies’: their corruptness, or their incompetency? This is supposed to be a democracy, in which the legislators serve the interests of the people instead of the interests of the few people who donate over half of all of the campaign money, but it’s actually the latter instead of the former: is that because of the legislators’ incompetency, or because of their corruptness?
Maybe these ‘democracies’ aren’t at all incompetent — they serve the billionaires extremely well. But they CERTAINLY are corrupt. Why do the public have wrong beliefs about democracy? Could it be because all the magazines, newspapers, books, and news, they get, are owned and advertised in, by the billionaires’ corporations? Is this rut (control of the Government by the billionaires) something that the public needs to get out of? Can you think of a different way to do that than I have proposed? If so, then publish it. But if not, then pass this article along to everyone you can, in any way you can, because virtually everybody who has thus-far responded to my proposal remains stuck in that rut, not even trying to get out of it.
My latest two articles about this proposal were:
April 8th “Does every democracy corruptly degenerate into control by the richest?”
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
