A kakistocracy is a system of government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century. It also was used by English author Thomas Love Peacock in 1829, but gained significant use in the first decades of the twenty-first century to criticize populist governments emerging in different democracies around the world. [...] The word is derived from two Greek words, kakistos (worst) and kratos (rule), with a literal meaning of government by the worst people.
source: Wikipedia
"150 years ago the business corporation was a fairly insignificant institution. Today it is all pervasive, like the church, the monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution." These are the opening sentences of the 2003 documentary film The Corporation, which is based on a book by professor Joel Bakan called "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power".
The kakistocracy we're dealt in this fake democracy of ours is a direct result of the corporate power that's behind all western governments. The documentary, which I will link below this article and which I urge you all to watch if you haven't already, begins with the corporation's extraordinary legal status:
The incorporation of a company is an artificial entity recognized by the law as a legal person that exists independently with rights and liability.
source: Law Teacher
This gives the corporation certain individual rights, like the ability to sue other individuals. The other individuals generally try to avoid legal fights with corporations as they are far superior; they hire the best lawyers for example, or they can just wear you out by having far more money to keep paying their lawyers. This is an artificially created legal person with special rights and no morals.
From there on the documentary does some psychoanalysis on this legal person that is the corporation and comes to the conclusion that corporations are in fact psychopaths. And this is linked to the "Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" from the title of the book on which the film is based. But aren't these businesses managed by real people that have real morals, and wouldn't they counteract these psychopathic tendencies?
But, you say, corporations are owned and managed by real people, so surely immoral corporate actions might be inhibited by them? Well, not really. First of all, the officers and directors who run corporations are actually duty-bound to act in the corporation's best financial interest, and that means they are obliged to do whatever they can within the law to make money. Thus, this fiduciary duty requires corporate management to set aside ethical niceties when they get in the way of corporate profits. This is why tobacco companies market their products to kids when they can - only laws prohibiting such conduct will keep them from doing so. [...] The pathological and narcissistic nature of corporate "persons" is reason enough to deny them fundamental constitutional rights that should be reserved for flesh-and-bone persons, but the fact that they also wield economic resources far in excess of those available to real persons magnifies the need to restrain them.
source: Psychology Today
Image by Phil Venditti - source: Flickr
A special mention has to be made about investment bankers, like those from Goldman Sachs that served in both Obama's and Trump's teams. Investment bankers are often categorized as psychopathic:
Studies conducted by Canadian forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent. And Christopher Bayer believes, based on his experience, that the rate is higher. Bayer is a well-known psychologist who provides therapy to Wall Street traders.
source: Business Insider
This is how we end up with a "government which is run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens". Each and every time. This is why we're free-falling in a race to the bottom designed for us by those on top of the capitalist food-chain. The happy and sad thing about this is that I can write this all here, but if I said that the democracy is dead and that voting is just legitimizing a thoroughly corrupted system to any of my friends or colleagues in real life, chances are they'd call me insane or an incurable pessimist or something worse...
Here's the promised link to "The Corporation". It's more than two hours long and not totally devoid of some sensationalism; the mere use of swelling and emotion-evoking music could be called questionable in a totally unbiased, purely information-based film. Still, it tells the basic truth about corporate power as I see it. The plutocracy is our kakistocracy. The irrational belief that wealth can only be created when it's privately owned is the death of true democracy. Is clean water not wealth? Is good health not wealth? Is compassion not wealth? Is peace not wealth? We should all be grateful that blockchain technology based social platforms like this one have given us tools to grow communities parallel to the craziness of real life society and it's corrupted fiat money system.
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