A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.
-- Anonymous
I was unaware of this quotation until a few days ago when I read it in the back of a magazine. I find it of interest, even though the provenance of the quotation is very much in doubt (see below). The second half of the first paragraph, where the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, strikes me as the cornerstone of Republican fiscal policy, originating with the "voodoo economics" of Reagan's supply-side economics through McCain's "Bush-Plus" budget plan. One wonders when a Republican will "go the distance" and make the suggestion to eliminate taxes altogether.
Personally, I think that American culture currently falls somewhere between "from complacency to apathy" and "from apathy to dependence."
Note: The above quotation is old, but apparently not as old as it is often attributed. Most people have attributed it to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813), a Scottish attorney and writer, although it has been attributed to several other men as well. Research suggests that the quotation is relatively modern; it first began to be published back in the '50s; however, no one has been able to determine who the real author(s) is/are. (As a result, I've attributed the quotation to "Anonymous.")
For several interesting discussions on the quotation, see:
3 comments:
Bear, Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, and Merrill all ruined within 6 months of each other...I can't believe all of this is happening...I'm a pessimist when it come to economic outlook, but I would have never guessed that it was going to get this bad...now I'm not sure that we've seen the worst quite yet...
I wonder if the cyclical view of civilization expressed in the quote was inspired at all by Ibn Khaldun?
From Wikipedia: Perhaps the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldūn's work is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization (and, presumably, the dominant culture in its region), its high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process. Some contemporary readers of Khaldun have read this as an early business cycle theory, though set in the historical circumstances of the mature Islamic empire.
When I was researching this for the post, someone else also made the observation that the quotation might have been influenced by Ibn Khaldun although, ironically, I can't find that webpage at the moment. So, yeah, it's a possibility. BTW, I do agree with Ibn Khaldun's theory.
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