Benevolent Dictatorships work better than Democracies

And forgive me, I may have incorrectly assumed that round one simply stated position, round two was for stating arguments, and round three was for rebuttal. Now that things a a bit clearer here we go: According to Govtrack. us the United States congress has 10,691 bills or resolutions that have been introduced or proposed, but await further action. That number represents 89% of all the legislation they have dealt with for the present congressional term that started on January 5th, 2011 and ends on December 31st, 2012. That means that only 11% of all bills or resolutions that have been brought up since January of last year have been resolved. There is nothing efficient about that. Furthermore, given the sheer amount of legislation that comes before the U. S. congress every year one has to concede the point that it is physically impossible for them to get through it all given the current system. You have a democratic president and a republican controlled house operating under the checks and balances system that makes sure no one branch of government gets too powerful. While that idea is good in premise, when you have two parties who dislike each other as much as republicans and democrats do the system merely allows the two parties to stymie any legislation that comes their way that they may not like. Instead of protecting against an imbalance of power the only thing this type of government is good for now is to protect against rival political parties screwing up the country with too much of their own legislation. The president can follow all the necessary procedures to bring a bill before congress, but realistically it will not be passed any time soon because the democratic minority in the house must persuade republicans to side with them before the bill can be passed. It is this arguing back and forth between the parties over whether or not a bill should be passed that ensures very little gets done. Overall, the U. S. government is so concerned that the voices of everyone are heard, that they sometimes fail to realize no matter how many peoples opinions are heard you can never please everyone. Meanwhile, let us now examine a more favorable alternative; the benevolent dictatorship. A benevolent dictatorship is run by one single person. This one person controls what legislation is drafted, revised, and eventually implemented into law. That persons interests are rooted in the well being of the country they run. Because they are not overly concerned with swaying voters, fighting other political parties, or trying to establish functional bipartisan relationships all they focus on is doing what is best for their country and their people. Example A: Singapore 40 years ago Singapore had a rapidly growing impoverished population and an incredibly sluggish economy. Then in 1965 Lee Kuan Yew took over leadership of the country as a Prime Minister. In twenty years the economy grew eight fold, per capita income grew fourfold, and the percentage of those living in poverty dropped to an absurdly low 0.3%. He saw the problems his country faced and he passed the legislation necessary to instigate positive change. He has cracked down on drug trafficking by making the offense punishable by death. Now while some may gasp in horror at this, think in terms of efficiency. He draws up this legislation and passes it into law in a remarkably short amount of time, and now because of it drug trade in Singapore is on the decline. He see's what needs to be done, and he can do it because there are no other voting bodies with the power to stand in the way. When it comes down to it, we are debating which works better. When something is better it is among other things more efficient and more capable than its competition. While it is great that in the U. S. every persons opinion is heard the job of government is to run the country, to make it prosperous, safe, ensure it has developed infrastructure, and that it will be competitive in the global economy. There are way too many people involved in the decision making process in any democratic society to claim that it efficiently does much of anything. While on the flip side a benevolent dictator can directly address the problems of their nation and immediately begin drafting legislation to make positive changes. It just works better. (And just to be clear I love the United States, but our system of government was the perfect example of inefficiency for the purposes of this argument. )