Democracy’s double edged sword
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. — Winston Churchill
Political philosophers since Plato have worried that the great weakness of democracy is the ignorance of the average voter.
Democracy, I strongly feel, is the autocracy of the ignorant, sometimes a minuscule percentage of the voters can decide who should rule the full population. In election science, we call it the swing!
One-party swing (in percentage points) = Percentage of vote (current election) − percentage of vote (previous election)
And it assigns no value to intelligence and painstakingly acquired understanding of the world by important citizens. Quality doesn’t matter in parliamentary democracy. Only quantity is valued.
Just like in companies, shareholders have disproportionate voting rights, it’s time we have voting rights based on factors like tax paying metrics or contribution to GDP.
A few voters can decide the destiny of a country, a generation of people and even humanity’s direction — precariously! We still believe in democracy because it is better than military dictatorships, monarchies or even for that that matter religiously fanatic rulers.
