Democracy is a funny old system. We elect people who promise loudly and repeatedly to represent our interests in a parliament. Then they take a biggish chunk of our salary from us before we can even see it and use that money to pay themselves and to maintain justice, policing, infrastructure and lots more. They carry out the wishes of the people who elected them.
So here’s a wheeze that’ll make our democratic system more democratic than it currently is. It’s not a complicated wheeze, or a wheeze that would need a lot of people to implement it. What’s more, I’m convinced that it would be very good for us and everyone else.
Here’s my plan. In the list of candidates for election, there would be a final box asking you if you would like your money to be used in the killing of or threatening to kill other people. If you indicated Yes, then a proportion of your taxes would go to arming the (yep) armed forces. If you indicated No, your money would be used for the many things that require money to function – health, education, paying politicians.
“But why just the military?” you shout, pounding the table. “Why couldn’t people tell their representatives where they want their money to go in other respects – like I want a third to go towards education, a third to health, and so on.”
I’m in total agreement with you. But we don’t want this deepening of democracy to get complicated. Let’s pick one element first and see how it works. Then we could move on to telling our representatives what exactly we want our money to go on in terms of hospitals, schools, roads – all the rest.
But since my suggestion – the military – involves the threat of death or actual killing of people, I’d modestly suggest it should be at the top of the list.
After all, our politicians are said to be our representatives. In which case, shouldn’t they re-present what surely most of us are thinking: that killing people is not a good thing?
Comments are closed.