Posted by
CKHustler on Thursday, July 31, 2008 9:00:00 AM
I am going to do a series of posts in which I pit human nature against a type of government and speak as to why it would fail or succeed. I will start each on off with a paragraph on human nature to remind everyone what I am basing my opinion on. This post will simply rely on human nature and nothing else. It is the underpinning of my arguments ahead and will be used for my comparisons.
Human nature:
What exactly is human nature? To care for others? To bow to a ruler? I will only compare human nature to government and not human nature as a whole.
The ruled: The people who are not in government and are of the middle class or lower make up a major portion of all societies, including the most successful. So it only makes sense to use them as the people being ruled. How does human nature play a part in how they react towards their government?
They would expect their government to repel foreign invaders of course, but how about domestically? I will start with freedom. Through history some have said that certain people wouldn't be able to deal with freedom. Many said it of the Black slaves that were freed in the civil war and given equal rights during the Civil Rights movement. Many said Japanese wouldn't be able to cope with a free society after world war 2. In both cases they were dead wrong. The Japanese are one of the most prosperous nations in the world and the blacks here, with some draw backs from LBJ legislation, are coping with freedoms much the same way anyone else here does. Humans want to be free! They don't want a person telling them they must grow up to be a factory worker because their dad was. They want to have the possibilities of owning the factory.
How about government prosperity? Through history many dictators and tyrants have built incredible castles and palaces. Do the people care about those types of things? I believe they do not. The people would much rather have the money going to something that benefited the entire populace rather than the money building a palace for their prince.
I believe the ruled act in a very expected way. They just don't want government getting in their way or pushing them to the ground. The rulers are the ones that make or break the case for many governments.
The rulers: What does a person do with power? Do they take only what is good for the country? Some do...some don't. What about finances? Do they again take what is good for the country, or horde as much as they can?
If a single person is the ruler, they have supreme control to do what they like. The country is at the mercy of one man. Many people are corrupt by so much power and end up overextending principles that are otherwise good for the country. Many turn their country into an oppressed population. However, some do not. Some will use what is given to its fullest extent and since they don't have to worry about another contradicting them, they bring prosperous times to their country.
The Human nature of man with power is to become corrupt in it. Through history many leaders have started out with good intentions and ended up bringing their country to their knees because of corruption. They get power hungry. Once they got power, they could never get enough. Even the purest of heart were often corrupt in their last days. Many become paranoid in how they will retain their power until their dying day and will do anything to keep it, even murder a rival if they must. A single man at power puts the country at great risk since the country is at the command of a single opinion with no checks or balances to stop a bad decision.
The human nature of man is only relevant to a single person and in each government I will delve into whether the multiple persons aspect of that particular government will help or not.