Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
- Agnes Repplier
I don’t believe in democracy. It’s an awkward system designed to let every person involved have a vote towards what happens to them. As if they’ll ever agree on any topic whatsoever. In theory, this sounds perfect. In practice, it’s not. Because, as always, people are not perfect. They’ll rarely know what they’re even voting for, and they can never trust that what they vote for will actually come to pass.
Most democracies vote for politicians rather than ideas. They vote for imperfect people who put forth perfect plans which are then executed imperfectly, or even not at all. This alone is enough for me to not bother voting at all. An imaginary stock in a corrupt company won’t do me any good. The system doesn’t work.
Of course, voting for ideas isn’t going to work either. It’s nearly impossible to put together a workable solution to a problem, that can be executed without a million problems. We can never account for every little detail required for a plan to be effective, so we muddle along with temporary fixes, never fixing the root of the problem, because this is practically impossible to do.
I’m not suggesting there’s a better form of government than democracy, because its alternative, a dictatorship, has its own flaws, which I doubt require explanation. But ultimately, the problem is the divide between theory and practice, as always. In theory, both democracy and totalitarian regimes can be effective, but they never are. And any middle way is just as inefficient and unlikely to succeed.
Every vote counts, maybe, but counts towards what, really?