Daily Times

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” — Alexander Tyler

Not that I came across this quote yesterday, and not that this particular gem did not deserve to be immediately quoted in a column purporting to be motivated by the Devil’s Advocate. Which, therefore, in current time requires abject opposition to the detestable system of governance referred to in common parlance as democracy, a feat admirably achieved in the afore stated quote. Except that there was absence of absolute clarity on exactly which stage we were at amongst the various stages enumerated in the second part of the quote.

However, before getting to the second part of the quote, two things need clarification. Firstly, there seems to be a bit of confusion, according to the information uploaded on the World Wide Web, as to who actually uttered the words, quoted at the beginning of this article and attributed to Mr Tyler, and when. Apparently, in certain cases ignorance is perhaps bliss. Undoubtedly, however, somebody did say them somewhere before the middle of the 20th century. This clarification was necessary since the latest strategy of the ‘irrationals’ is to find the most microscopic error in any rational comment that raises a real issue, which they either don’t understand or cannot understand, and run with the error with an intent to discredit the entire expose. Obviously, in this pursuit they are amicably and rather passionately supported by the equally irrational and otherwise motivated segment of the electronic media. And the astute reader will find that a lot has been said between the lines in the last sentence. Irrespective, this attitude itself and the fact that the masses do absolutely nothing about it beyond lips service in a highly charged and polarised environment can easily be labelled complacency, something that will be explained shortly.

Secondly, since hardcore economics is Greek for most, the assertion that “voters discover that they can vote generous gifts from the public treasury” needs elaboration. It is not like the finance minister would release funds from the public accounts to members of the legislative assemblies to buy iPhones for onward distribution to their voters; well, at least that hasn’t happened yet. But if funds dished out to MNAs and MPAs for development works in their respective constituency are not gifts from public treasury, than I am not sure what is. And how does a democracy finally collapse over loose fiscal policy? Well, if you keep borrowing and can’t pay it all back, what else can happen but a collapse. This is exactly why finance managers are obsessed with controlling fiscal deficit, while experts keep screaming that debt is already at unmanageable levels.

The second part of the quote attributed to Mr Tyler: “The average age of the world’s greatest civilisations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”

Obviously, the irrationals now have the opportunity to argue that we still have 130 years or so, why is precious newsprint being wasted. However, we will follow Mark Twain’s brilliant advice: “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience,” and ignore.

I hope we are all now clear on the earlier reference to complacency; Dictionary.com defines complacency as a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc. Arguably, and there will be the usual sceptics, we graduated to complacency sometime ago, not really important when except that confusion remained: have we achieved ‘apathy’?

And lately something happened that perhaps points to apathy. Ignoring the good and the bad, avoiding any political overtures, and from a purely academic standpoint, recently anti-Pakistan slogans were raised by certain quarters. Naturally, there was immediate hue and cry, and the nation reacted as it was expected to and supposed to, which was all good. However, we are all aware of what happened thereafter and the compromises achieved in the name of democracy. Perhaps democracy is important enough to demand a few sacrifices, but seriously! But just a few weeks down, absolutely nothing has happened in the sense of substantive action. News channels continue to look the other way, and politicians and celebrity analysts have turned a blind eye. So if this attitude does not fall within the definition of apathy, than Webster has erred in defining the word.

And dear readers, those of you who religiously follow talk shows will concur that in most cases of breaking news relating to what can be termed horrific happenings, the unanimous reaction after the initial shock is memory lapse; we as a nation just move on. As an example, we have simply accepted corruption as a way of life; new scandals don’t even shock us anymore.

But establishing apathy or not aside, the good news is, it’s just a quote, irrespective that it makes sense at a certain level. The quote is not empirically proven beyond reasonable doubt and is not backed by scientific deduction. So there is a good probability that it is not necessary that we are one stage away from bondage, albeit we have not yet figured out what is meant by dependency. On the other hand, considering the minuscule probability that whoever said all of that was right, would it hurt the intelligentsia to debate national complacency and apathy? The objective here has always been to provoke debate, a necessary process for informed decision making.

Personally, the fact that democracy is cyclic does not come as a surprise for someone who has read about the business cycles plaguing its associated economic system, capitalism. In fact, in the latter case the business cycle is a prelude to a much bigger disaster, a consequence of the rich man’s dilemma. But that can wait till next week!

The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad, and can be reached at syed.bakhtiyarkazmi@gmail.com