Prevention Of Corruption

"What is he, insane? Arguing for corruption?" -- Many of you are no doubt thinking. Don't worry, I have a method to my madness. Pro asserts that corruption is bad for democracy, therefore it follows that I (as Con) must be arguing that corruption is good for democracy. This is, in fact, what I'm about to argue, but from a perspective you may not have considered. I will be arguing that democracy IS corruption. Democracy corrupts society and it is the framework of democracy itself that not only allows for the corrupt results Pro has mentioned, but it makes such things inevitable. My reasons for this are as follows; 1. Vote Wars. Let's say that group 1 votes themselves group 2's resources. Obviously group 2 won't be happy with this, and so they will be trying to vote their resources back. The result of this is that elections no longer act as a competition of ideas, but a competition of voting for whomever promises you the most stuff. It becomes a voting war. 2. Rational Ignorance At the end of the day, no matter how politically or economically savvy you may be, you are just one vote. Your vote may not even be worth particularly much if you happen to live in the wrong state. Because of this, it is largely irrational for people to bother spending a large amount of time researching the different candidates and their platforms since their vote is, ultimately, worthless in the grand scheme of things. This creates a society of rationally ignorant voters who end up voting for virtually every reason except honest understanding and agreement with the candidate they are voting for. 3. 2 Party Anti-Vote system In every democracy, you see the emergence of two main political parties. It's not as though other parties aren't allowed, but this is the way things turn out. The reason for this is because people recognize that the person they really want to vote for doesn't have a shot at winning, and so instead of voting for what they want, they vote against the person they dislike the least by voting for their biggest competition. In this way, politicians who's platforms aren't really supported by the population get voted in and nobody wins. To illustrate the point, In the upcoming election, Gary Johnson of the libertarian party will be running for POTUS [1]. Not surprisingly, Gary will not be receiving many votes because he isn't part of the "big 2". Out of the Big 2, Mitt Romney is more like Gary than is Obama. Therefore, Gary supporters will likely vote for Romney instead of Gary because at least then they can keep Obama out, even if they can't actually get in the guy they really want. This idea of anti-votes is so well known and well documented that it even has its own name, "Lesser of two evils principle" [2]. 4. Package Deals In most democratic systems, you usually can't choose the course taken on single issues a la carte. Instead, you have to vote for candidates who have a shot at winning along with their platforms -- which encompasses far too many issues to be an efficient way of maximizing society's wants. If what you want to see happen with your tax dollars is only met partially by each candidate, then no matter who you vote for, you aren't really voting for what you want. 5. Dependence on the State The welfare system and unemployment insurance system has made many people dependent on the state for their livelihood. Since cutting government spending on these systems would result in many of these people starving to death, they have a very strong incentive to push for the expansions of government spending and therefore, the state. On the flip side, tax payers won't starve simply because taxes go up a little, so their incentive to oppose the expansion of government spending is negligible compared to the incentive of those dependent on the state. Since these people grow to depend on the state, they never really recover and learn to take care of themselves, and since new people are always entering these systems, there is an ever-increasing need for the constant expansion of government spending. America is an example of this. The government has almost only ever grown in size [5] (sometimes faster than others) and government spending as a percentage of GDP is now up around 40%. It's almost on-par with that of Canada, the country said to be far more socialist [3]. 6. Cost of Running To successfully run for president, the cost is disgustingly high. Different numbers have been thrown around such as 300 million dollars, 450 million dollars, etc., but most agree that the number is in the hundreds of millions [6]. This number is simply outside the reach of most citizens, limiting the candidate pool to the wealthy and well-connected members of society -- the very thing democracy is meant to bring to the people. Even then, your average millionaire can't pay the bills on his own. This requires corporate funding. These corporations aren't handing over their money out of good will, mind you. The idea is that if they assist this particular candidate and he gets into office, he will return the favour via subsidies or enacting barriers-to-entry against said corporations competition. In this way, democracy isn't about bringing the power to the people, it's about tricking the people into handing over power to the state and the corporations who seek market advantages. Conclussion Each of the issues I've presented here are grandfathered into the framework of democracy. The issue isn't that democracy has been corrupted, but that the very system of democracy itself acts as a habitat for such corruption to flourish. As such, it's not a matter of corruption being bad for democracy, but a matter of democracy being bad for society. Therefore, if one wished to prevent corruption (in accordance with the title of this debate), one must oppose democracy and not the corruption of democracy as that is virtually a contradiction of terms. Corruption is integral to democracy and so to support democracy is to support corruption. It has now been shown that democracy thrives on corruption and corruption is not bad for democracy. I have, therefore, successfully argued against Pro's resolution that "Corruption is very bad for democracy", thereby negating said resolution. The ball is now in Pro's court to separate the two if possible if he hopes to win this debate. I look forward to your response. 1. http://www.garyjohnson2012.com... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. http://mises.org... 6. http://www.wisegeek.org...