History Has Given Us

many forms of government we can vote for,
aristocracy-direct rule by a royal family-
is the form that least needs a vote to measure
it's present acceptability among those ruled over.

 

Appointees run everything. Absolute rule,
with variations, is well accepted in small
to medium size Muslim countries, where
for theocratic reasons, the citizens vote 
for representatives whom the ruling family,
and religious councils selectively ignore
is an important process within society.

In the Timocracy* of Great Britain up to 1918,
a candidate for office had to own property to stand
for Parliament as an MP, in a representative democracy.
Up to that year those who voted had to own property too.

Socialism broke this rule. From 1918 onward

those in power remained highly likely to be wealthy,
but their voters were no longer required to own land.
-it is up to us now, in 2024, to reckon up how much
this makes voting for a representative democracy
more, or less, materially representative.  

 

Tyranny, or absolute rule by one ruler,
who can break the rules they enforce on others
is the least sustainable form of government,
because the tyrant is the one who is least able
to calm the passion for oppression by which he rules.
Where the tyrant is a royal, a king, his tyranny
always rebounds on the tyranny of his successor.

Oligarchy, rule of the many by the few,
often rule by a committee, has hierarchy
written into it, where the more wealthy
the few are the greater poverty of the many
who the richest decide for, not that the poor
want to more fully explore how devalued
their vote is amid a bought/paid for media
where money decides what they share.

I don't know the way out of all this,
or even if there is one, beyond how
we each of us have to find our own.   

*a word and idea handed down from Aristotle