The One Missing Category in Modern Democracy

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Most will know this cliché and use it to refer to inexplicable and disastrous outcomes that occur despite the good intentions with which projects usually begin. Nowhere, is this most evident than in 2024. The year that has been dubbed the “year of democracy” because 64 nations around the world are headed to the polling booths to elect their political leaders. In our democratic age, where universal franchise and the casting of a ballot, twice a decade is a near sacrosanct activity, there seems to be an equally near universal omission of the single category that would make the greatest difference to all these elections, and that category, I will argue is Hell itself.

Our democratic epoch considers the casting of a single vote, twice a decade, as a virtuous act. Moreover the common definition of democracy is misunderstood category, as for most, democracy equates to accountability. As I will show this is simple not the case. The implicit assumption inherent in voting is that elected leaders will be accountable to their electorate due to the threat of losing office. This is a fools understanding of democracy. Democracy can only ever be very narrowly understood to be a mechanism to change leaders without having to cut their heads of. The inherent absence of accountability in our modern age does not link the supposed good intentions of democracy, and the evident hellish outcomes produced across the world by mass elections.

Democracy can only very narrowly be understood, as a mechanism to change leaders without having to cut their heads off

Let us consider two of those outcomes before explaining why hell as a category, would make the greatest difference to all elections. By greatest difference, I mean creating a true element of political accountability that would positively affecting the lives of the two billion eligible people (or quarter of all living people) on earth who will vote in 2024.

The two hellish outcomes are debt and inflation, that democratic governance seems unable to prevent.

National debt throughout history is a tool leaders have used to fund political projects, but in particular wars. However, it is with the modern democratic state that insurmountable national debt has become the norm, with the advent of the ever growing welfare state. The oldest democracy, the United States of America, leads this abnormal indebted state of affairs with a staggering 3.2 trillion dollars of debt. After 235 years of American democracy, current and future generations of Americans have the greatest amount of debt the world has ever known.

National State debt is not the government’s debt isolated and separated from every citizen or their families balance sheet. Since debt is paid for by taxes, and taxes are paid for by citizens, in a very real sense, ALL debt can be apportioned to all tax-paying Americans. The current generation of living Americans will not be able to pay off that debt and unfortunately, debt does not evaporate upon death. The legal consequences are, that the next generation shall have their “fair share” of national debt and be forced to pay it during their lifetimes. America is not unique in this. My own nation of South Africa has 273 billion dollars of debt, however when translated into our own currency of Rand it is a much more impressive 2,7 trillion Rand that I and my sons have a part in.

These are truly impressive and incomprehensibly hellish numbers.

Inflation is the second hellish outcome that modern democracy produces. The accurate definition of inflation is a decrease in the value of your money. This results in you being able to buy less whilst at the same time, sellers of goods and services have to increase their prices to get the same value of money they received before. What this means is that, people see rising prices - not the decrease in value of their money, since you cannot “see” the unstoppable decreasing value of the actual currency note in your hand at any given moment. The numbers don’t change on the R10 note, but the amount of stuff you can buy with it decreases.

Inflation is a hidden tax on any population and the saddest fact is that is is mostly misunderstood by the population. It is singularly and directly attributable to politicians. Inflation occurs behind the large impenetrable doors of every nations central bank which is directed by political elites.

In South Africa we have a policy of 3-6% inflation per year.

What this means is that according to national policy, our nation shall, decrease the value of our money by 3-6% every year.

Importantly this is compounded, as in the decrease builds atop of the previous years inflation. Put simply, in order to buy the same R100 worth of goods today as it was in 2020, you would need R124.11 in 20241.

These outcomes, when considered objectively, are truly hellish and they are directly attributable to the phenomena of the modern democratic state. In times gone by, when emperors or kings attempted to debase the currency by shaving gold off the coins in circulation, people could see and feel how their gold coins got lighter and take appropriate corrective steps.

Simultaneously when kings attempted to raise taxes to pay for their wars, they didn’t always live long lives, or keep their kingdoms in tact. They were strong disincentives to engage in debt or inflationary tendencies. In contrast, to our modern life where our lives operate on mostly digital platforms that are invisible, it is nigh impossible to identify the inherent disaster afflicting our currencies and the financial bedrock upon which our lives are built. This makes taking any remedial steps impossible.

These and other hellish consequences of modern democracy could easily be remedied with the retrieval of the category of Hell. After all, there is an argument that it is not democracy itself that is the cause of hellish consequences, but the absence of a proper mechanism of accountability. This together with the observation that democracy only magnifies and accelerates the moral character of the people that exercise it creates a toxic social and political life.

Democracy has no level of accountability and only magnifies the peoples’ morality or lack thereof

Term limits, along with the short period of 4 or 5 years that any elected politician has to govern and prove his usefulness to the electorate, force short term thinking. Combine this with the magnification of the moral virtue (or lack thereof) in society at any given moment, and the political and social environment generates short term and selfish thinking. In this scenario the present is always preferred at the cost of the future.

Previous generations garnishee future generations’ income through confiscatory rates of taxation in order to prop up the political system that benefits us with goodies from the government in the present, but demands that our children pay for them in the future.

This is a feature, not a bug, of the modern democratic system.

So what is the answer?

We need a mechanism of accountability to focus the minds of the aspiring political elites.

If democracy is a magnifier of the moral state of the people it channels, then the answer very clearly, is to improve the moral state of people, or at least the moral state of those that are elected. There are many ways to do that. From ethical charters to codes of good conduct to criminal laws - all solutions fundamentally appeal to the rational mind of human beings and all have been tried. What they miss, is that part of being human, the part that doesn’t communicate in logical axioms but in emotions that are housed in the heart.

Fear of eternal damnation for governing poorly can only have a dramatic improvement in the decisions of our political leaders. Here escaping punishment for wrong doing does not hinge on the quality of one’s attorney or the political slant given to any situation or the “connectedness” of any one politician. The very real threat of spending eternity in hell focuses the mind. There is no appeal from the pit of hell and that reality helps focus the mind

In focusing the mind on the last end of Hell as a very real consequence for present decisions and actions creates a real mechanism of accountability. Previous decisions that were borderline become clear no-go areas. When doing the “right-thing” becomes paramount, then doing selfish, irresponsible or evil acts dramatically decrease. Hell provides clarity.

If leaders truly understood that they would give an account for their decisions, of how they spent public monies, the lack of responsibility they adopted towards future generations and that they would have to pay the price for their illicit behaviour, the propensity to act different, perhaps better, might occur.

There are at least three wonderful consequences of bringing back Hell as a political category.

1. The attractiveness of being a political leader would decrease if Hell was a real prospect for candidates when doing the job badly. Competition for such positions would decrease since a majority of of immoral and selfish people most attuned to short term thinking might consider the risk to benefit ratio out of kilter. The solution to short term thinking is an enormous punishment that overwhelms any potential gain in the present. What greater punishment is there than hell?

2. General reticence to make immoral or illegal decisions. Leaders would become accustomed to thinking things through clearly, being aware of the consequences to the best of their ability.

3. The consequences of an overwhelming punishment is a greater willingness to adopt a higher level of authenticity and speak hard truths to the voters even at the expense of votes. They might even develop the courage to state the obvious, that previous generations made poor even evil decisions, and that the consequences are real in the present.

From this we can see that in the dim, painful light of hell, each person can better see current realities. The glow of adulation from electioneering campaigns seems to dull the senses of both the adoring voters and the well intentioned politician. In contrast, if in the mind of the politician, he saw the pit of hell between himself and the adoring glow of his supporters, he would not so easily sleep walk into giving them what they wanted.

To do so, would cost him his own soul for eternity.

Hell is a most useful political category

In the absence of this, we find ourselves with conniving politicians, cloaked with the self story of “serving the people” whilst calculating every step in terms of their own political benefit or eventual demise [For the record, they must do said calculation for that is how the system has been designed).

Hell is a most useful political category. No need to weed through the ballot list, deciphering scoundrels from saints. No need for endless commissions of enquiry into state corruption, no protracted criminal investigations that never end in successful prosecutions.

And hell isn’t just for the politicians. Every man will also have to explain why they magnified wickedness or evil by voting for deplorable politicians. To use a term from the dismal sciences, hell “aligns incentives” across all demographics, class, language, voter or politician.

Sadly most will only realise that hell is a real place, only too late. I want to live under leaders that take the reality of hell seriously and hopefully I’ve convinced you as well, so join me in making hell great again.

Lets make Hell great again...

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