"happi"ocracy - democracy with a purpose

HAPPIOCRACY

"DEMOCRACY WITHOUT THE UNHAPPIERNESS"

"The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors."

~Thomas Jefferson

The problem with democracy, socialism, plutocracy and many other types of government, is that they are a means, not an end.  Lawmakers legislate programs to give a variety of freebies to Some Not Others. Those who get are "happies".

Those who don't are "unhappies".

In bygone days, information - and everything else – was slower than it is today. 

So the unhappies were not numerous enough to worry about; in any case, they would get their turn next time.

But nowadays, information - and everything else - travels at the speed of light.

So lawmakers legislate even more varieties of freebies to Some Not Others.

The cumulative happiness of the Some, is slowly being eclipsed by the cumulative unhappiERness of the Others.

As time passes, the number of unhappies grows and society becomes less stable.

The problem with today's democracy is that it is not democracy. It is representative democracy. It is not government of, by and for the people. It is government of, by and for our representatives.

If our representatives really represented their constituents - that's us - there would be no problem. But they don't.  They represent themselves first and their constituents - that's us - second.

More than half of America's representatives are now millionaires. Yet half of their constituents - that's us - are not millionaires.  Why such inequality?  Surely our representatives should first be figuring out how to make their constituents rich.

One of the commonest ways for representatives to get rich is knowing in advance – before we-the-people – what new legislation is in the pipeline. If such legislation is likely to benefit certain corporations and send their share prices higher, our good representatives, or rather Greedie Representatives - simply buy their shares before the legislation becomes public knowledge - when the share prices are still low.

Naturally, they make such purchases through undetectable third parties.

When the legislation becomes public knowledge, the share prices goes up and our representatives can cash in. Or they can sit on their shareholding and wait for the price to go still higher.  Either way, they are benefiting for no reason other than the fact that they have advance knowledge of legislation.

This is not fair. It leads to inequality and unhappierness. It leads to unearned riches for our representatives but not for us.  Which is why half of them are millionaires and we are not. This is a simple example of the growth of inequality.

Alternatively, when our representatives have advance knowledge of legislation that might cause certain share prices to drop, they do their damnedest to cancel, amend or delay such legislation, thereby earning the everlasting goodwill of the companies whose shares are involved - often those in the banking or finance industries.  The money involved is huge.  Hence the banking and finance industry being so generous with the campaign financing that they dollop out to representatives/lawmakers who enable them to keep profiting at our expense.

This is just one example of the elite - in this case Greedie Representatives - getting richer quicker than the rest of us.