As man started living in communities, to contain flagrant behavior of the members, communities started making rules. The rules were enforced using the fear of punishment. The wiser and stronger persons surfaced as the leaders to defend the community from without and to maintain order within. In a nutshell this is a government. Thus it is the society that creates a government, and not the other way around.

In addition to regulate the behavior of the members, the rules aim to prescribe the modes of division of labor, and the distribution of wealth. This frame work of rules is called socialism.

We all possess a different balance of kindness and the need for gratification. A parent has a high level of power over the children. Fortunately, nature has given us intense parental instincts to bring out kindness to forefront when nurturing our children. But our sense of dedication decreases as the circle of our affection enlarges. Highly dedicated social leader is a rare phenomenon. That is why we need a few leaders making decisions together, in order to bring out their dedication, and shame the selfish interests. We do not want a father figure rule us, except our natural father in our childhood. According to the availability of information channels we need to choose the appropriate number of our decision makers to keep the decision-making process effective. A happy medium has to found. This is democracy. Due to the recent enhancement of the information channels, in a generation or two, as we figure out the proper ways to use the channels, we will see the decision-making process being influenced by much larger participation.

Since autocracy can act more decisively and swiftly due to highly concentrated decision-making process, the rest of the world used to think that democracy has no chance of survival against it. What it forgot to consider is that the governance of democracy is more in tune with the well being of all its citizens, and so it receives highly motivated support of its population, and can sustain itself against all kinds of foreign tyrannies. The results of the conflicts over the last hundred year period prove this: monarchy and dictatorship are all but dead, and communism is dying, but democracy is alive and spreading. Will of people prevails over huge adversities. The super powers went home empty handed from Vietnam, Korea and Afghanistan, because of native peoples’ will. India won freedom without firing a shot. Comparatively insignificant American colonies of merely three million people won against the then mighty British Empire, because of self respecting and fiercely independent minded citizens. Top leaders like Washington were supported by hundreds of courageous and dedicated second and third category leaders.


Since the well being of all the citizens is the most basic concern, Democracy is the best deal we have so far.

Democracy is founded on the basis of diffusion of state’s power, curtailing the power’s potential for injustice. The dazzling success of the system has made the concepts of democracy and capitalism popular around the world. The existing form of capitalism worked very well for a while, because then, wealth making power could not converge easily into a few hands. Industrialization has changed that. Now a few rich have undesirably high power to manipulate wealth distribution and politics, and to influence social values. In the US the richest 1% own more than 35%, and the top 3% own more than 50% of the total wealth, while the bottom 50% share 4%. The world statistics is even more appalling, the top 1% own 50% of the total wealth, while the bottom 68% share 3%. Unrestricted capitalism favors the rich. It is easier to make money with money than by working. Extreme greed for wealth and the power of highly concentrated wealth has a degrading effect, the same as that of the power of state, on community.

A community cannot function without some socialism. By definition, socialism is nothing but taking away some individual freedom for the good of whole community. Even law of land is socialism. In advanced communities the modes of labor divisions are maintained by the economy. Countries around the world try to make the distribution of wealth just by variety of means. But so far most of the experiments have tried to shift the control from money to authority. USSR was an extreme example of this. This cannot work for long, because human greed for power, wealth and fame, has a high tendency to take over the process. The axiom, ‘the rule that rules the least is the best’ applies to any power.

The U.S. seems to be leading the way in such greedy degrading enterprising. Simply defined, morality is: ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you’. The existing degenerate environment of greed forces new entrepreneurs to compromise their moral convictions and adopt cunning ways, first for their businesses to survive against the unscrupulous competition, and later, after testing the fruits of corrupt methods, to prosper. The first offense of a kind against one’s own self is the most painful. Each subsequent one is easier than the preceding one. This craving for quick gratification is evident in mature and growing economies all over the world. Look at how processed food is made unhealthy with harmful preservatives and cheap ingredients, the quality of food in chain restaurants has degraded over the years, farm produce is made unhealthy by high-breeding, and the quality of dairy products by rampant use of hormones and antibiotics.

This makes the nation fat and unhealthy, requiring more medical attention. On the other side, medical drugs/treatments are marketed at exorbitant prices, and once they are in circulation, our medical drug industry shows instances of suppressing and discouraging immerging cheaper/better remedies, and of suppressing discoveries of dangerous side effects. The common man is getting squeezed from every side. The subtle influence of the rich on our legislature keeps our tax code from correcting the loop holes, which favor the rich heavily. This keeps the taxes of the less affluent high, and the entitlement programs strained. Our automobile industry ignored, or bought and shelved technical innovations, to avoid prerequisite expensive modifications to production processes, loosing against foreign completion in the end, retarding the country’s progress. Even our national sports have turned excessively commercial. Our society is losing from every side. Too much wealth in the hands of a few robs democracy of its effectiveness.

What we need is a way to defuse the power of money on economic decision-making, releasing the economic factors from the narrow channels of money flow that keep enriching the economically high and mighty. This needs to be effected without blocking individual’s ability to acquire wealth, which motivates economic production. It is best to achieve this economic power diffusion with least interference from other entities, like continued meddling by the government.

Democratic societies can make new rules to curtail the flagrant expression of greed, just as they have rules to contain other vices we all possess. This can be achieved by limiting the number of persons any business can employ. In conjunction with this there has to be a limit to the maximum percentage interest an individual can own in all other businesses.