Note: I speak with the knowledge and experience I have from my connections and my business. Everything in this article is based on my opinions, and are not targeting any specific side of a political party.
Democracy is a bad form of government, but all the others are much worse – Winston Churchill
Although it is a system that uses the phrase — “For the people, by the people, and of the people”. It’s the most attractive form of government since it involves the direct involvement of people to choose who would rule them(or so we think).
The problem with the voting system
Most of the public is not capable of researching thoroughly and having an unbiased reason to vote for someone. Every vote is intercepted by the person's bias, which acts as a diversion of the real unbiased opinion of the same person.
If this bias is controlled and amplified in the right way, this could easily change the decision of whom to vote from the person.
How is the overall bias diverted?
The unbiased decision of the person would consist of a vague combination of all the contributions of the party, like infrastructure, GDP growth, inflation, employment, etc.
Whereas the biased decision would be feeling/emotion, attachment towards an ideology, etc. If the emotions are made strong enough, the party has to simply amplify and sell the emotion. Eventually, over time this bias would deviate enough to cause a change of vote from the person’s mind.
This emotion/ideology to sell could be anything. It might or might not relate to politics. It could be religion, caste, conservatism, liberalism, or even racism(god forbid). Unfortunately, the amount of the population who would fall for this, and whose mind could be manipulated purely through these biases to get a vote is way more than what you think.
Eventually, it is equivalent to selling a product, usually advertised through mainstream media, etc.
But bias is not all…
There will have to be absolute work either way to prove that some work is done. Hence there will be multiple major improvements, which the public could notice. The problem here is that logically speaking, there is no reason for a party to focus on work that goes unnoticed, or work whose results will be affected after 5 years(after a term of their power), This is because of 2 reasons.
- There is no guarantee that the party will be ruling when these long-term projects show their result
- Putting the same amount of effort and time into short-term projects would give shorter bursts of positive results, which is more attractive to the public.
This is the reason, parties would not see huge interest in improving the education system, life expectancy, etc, whose results would be shown decades later, in terms of improvement in employment, public health, etc. This is the reason, we often see sudden improvements before the election, usually, in fields like infrastructure and management, and often of stuff which could be done in a shorter time with higher chances of getting eyes.
You might not agree with me on the above due to your subjective reasons. But on a logical level, simply put, it just makes more sense for a party to ignore any work whose positive results would be shown after their term when there is no guarantee that they would be in power.
How Is This Used?
On a broad scale, if you think from a perspective of purely making profits or having power(and trust me, most govt bodies are), and you want to win an election or get sales of a product, here’s what you’d do…
- Get the masses' attention away from the actual product/service, since it is extremely tough and competitive to be at the top(and hence win the election) and the mindset of the people would be to vote for the one who has given the most/buy the product of highest quality.
(This applies to companies who want to get sales of a product or a political party)
- Attach a feeling to the service/product. Example: Companies like Rolls Royce sell you luxury, Apple sells you lifestyle-signification or status, etc. This way, the attention of the customer goes towards the brand image/ideology/feeling rather than the work/product.
- Amplify the importance of the feeling or ideology. Make it feel like it’s the end of the world if you don't vote for them or buy the product. This creates 2 extreme mass groups of people(for or against), and either of them is used to create a snowball effect to hate on each other or prove each other wrong.
- Eventually, the 2 groups are self-fueling to each other and end up marketing the product/service to each other, without the company or the party doing much.
Well…
The parties will end up putting more effort in marketing than the work, purely because it makes more sense to do so.
That’s why I think it’s not gonna work. No matter who comes into power, what they do, or how they perform, they will focus on votes for the 5 years and if it means marketing an idea to a mob instead of developing the nation(mostly), so be it.
Democracy, with time, dissolves into problems as entropy in politics increase, due to bias and greed
What is the solution you might ask? Well… I have a couple of them, but I don’t want to make this article too long(I hope you found it interesting so far). If you guys like these kinds of articles, I’ll make a part 2, of my opinions on how this could be made better. This is a different type of article compared to my usual ones, and I hope you like it. Let me know what you think :P
You’re Awesome :)
FadinGeek
