democracy
Elections could be used to decide the level of basic
financial capability required to become a parent. Options could be: None, $500,
$10,000, $15,000. Such elections could be held every 2 years or so, so that
people have a chance to determine or reassess what standard of living their
children should be born into and brought up in, according to varying economic
and social conditions. Now the people can not only decide who rules them but
also their own future living standards. Ultimately, that is what democracy and
elections are for. So that people would decide who can give them a safe and
acceptable standard of living. The people’s judgment of the election candidate’s
ability may prove to be right or wrong, but through the entire bureaucracy and
government machinery under the election winner, the final effects of their
choice is hardly ever what they had thought would be. If people decide the
minimum standard of living they wish to be born into, they are deciding their
minimum standard of living, if not for themselves, then for their children. They
are deciding both the living standard of their children and the general living
standards surrounding their children.
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Will democracy erase the sheer hopelessness into which
most humans are born every day? The endless poverty? No, it won’t. Let democracy
remain as a system that prevents tyranny and dictatorship. But let there also be
better laws to prevent human birth into poverty. Since the people make the laws,
it’s in their own hands whether to attain perfection in their society, if they
abhor poverty, if they care for every human who is to be born, they will do it.
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We hail democracy as our savior but it is hardly worthy
of such a title. Democracy will ensure that the poor majority will make the
decisions in the poor countries and those decisions, though benefiting the poor,
will not also stop short of bringing the rich to the level of the poor. With the
population explosion on the horizon and especially the poor being the major
contributors to it, the degradation of living standards is not only imminent but
also inescapably obvious.
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Democracy fails because it tries to secure the
interests of adults and not the weaker and less independent portion of the
population, who are the children, who are, without doubt, the more deserving
members of the population. Also, for a society to be stable in the long run, its
very basic blocks need to be secured, namely the children who are the citizens
of tomorrow.
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Democracy will remain as the self-governing,
decision-making machinery run by the adult population section. The law should
protect the interests of the infants and children who exist today as well as
those who are yet to be born while democracy continues to protect the interests
of the adult population. The latter cannot be done satisfactorily unless the
former is done first. But in today’s world, with much sorrow I have to say, that
both Democracy and Law is used to protect the interests of adults almost
exclusively.
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