Democracy hates Democracy

I am getting to a point where I need to stop preaching from on high in my prechingest preachy voice, and simply just recommend books of people who are much more conscice and instructive than I.
But I also like to share here and write to share my thoughts largely with myself. It helps me think and comprehend.
I finally, finally less than a month ago now, started reading Chomsky.
I will later in my travels be stopping at MIT and hope to catch a glimpse of the worlds most quoted activist (largely for his linguistics work) but as one can guess, my mind has been being blown with a regularity the past couple of years, that makes my formal education seem worthless.
I like shit that when reasoned out makes sense.
Georgism, came to me as the most stupid sounding thing in the world. But it was like a black hole for my mind, that nobody else in my circle of friends seemed to or still seems to comprehend the significance of, even in development. But it completely rearranged my view of the world, with its asking of the right question 'what causes poverty?'
Then there was Semler, who in his book 'Maverick' [english] or 'Turning the Tables' [portugeuse original] illustrated all things I had only begun to suspect about work and put them together in a beautiful illustration of the principle of liberty.
Then Dawkins came about with his consciousness raising mission, that Athiests are incredibly hard done by when you go to seek the moral answers on a panel by sitting a Rabbi, Cleric or Priest in the chair and don't put in a Moral Philosopher, whose profession and whole life is morality. And there's more than that.
Then there is Abe Lincoln, who taught me about capturing public sentiment, that freedom is the heritage of the world and his skillful repositioning on the American foundation.
Lincoln isn't really someone whose methods become a neat reason circuit, something that works despite your best efforts to break it, but Chomsky is certainly on the above list by pointing out the fundamental failure of democracy.
Democracy hates Democracy.
The book was 'Hedgemony or Survival' and it is detailed, and that is why I say go out and pick it up, if you care what happens to you in life. But I will simply cover the arguement without too much background.
But here's the background. Iraq, the Hussein tyranny was propped up by the US government as the second major US power hold in the middle east along with Isreal, until in the late 80's early 90's Saddam disobeyed his masters and invaded Kuwait. Then the tables turned. 15 years later, Bush Jr. had a 'vision' and brought freedom to the world, yet as Chomsky points out the Bush Administration had done everything it could to disrupt and undermine Iraq's first democratic voting process since the occupation.
Then there's South America, where from the reagan years, CIA backed operations deposed popularly elected governments and propped up dictators with the sole exception of Cuba and recently Hugo Chavez. Cuba is bad because as Michael Moore stated, 'a dictator we don't like got rid of a dictator we did like'
The sellout dictators.
Cuba and Iraq are more instructive though because of the economic sanctions. The US sanctions against Cuba could have crippled it and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis if it wasn't for Cuba's world class health care.
In Iraq, US and UK sanctions kept the country poor and its people dependant on Saddam. I don't have the book to quote anymore but there was an analyst that said 'no invasion of Iraq was necessary to overthrow Saddam, all that was necessary was for the US and UK to lift the trade sanctions that prevented a middle class from emerging to challange Saddam.' certainly something that appears to be happening in China.

So what's so mind blowing, well for one thing it reminds me that I thought America was an evil tyrant when Clinton was in charge promoting so much injustice and hypocrisy in the world, a lot of it inspired by the American citizens that make up Rage Against the Machine.
Secondly it had never occured to me before that democracy hates democracy. It always just made sense to me that US or UK or Aus in their foreign policies would always push for clones of the democratic system anywhere it could force its hand. A maker making them in their image I suppose you would call it.
But that is not the case and that's where Chomsky get's on the mind-blowing-reason award.
You see my previous post was on 'No God, No Country' and I've also been talking recently about Universalism and Individualism.
Scope is an important concept for all of these, and it all has to do with how and who you identify with.
Democracy is derived from the greek word demos the people and means loosely 'of the people' it is representative. Expansions on democracy in purpose is 'of the people, by the people, for the people' and so forth.
Democracy is representative, it represents the interests of the body of people that participate in elections.
That is, retention of power is based on an ability to represent and fulfill the interests of those in your electorate. (aha)
So now let's take it to the thought exercise.
You have two countries. My economics lecturers would love this.
One produces phones, the other produces oil.
Illustration one: The one that produces phones is a democracy, the one that produces oil is not.
The democratic leadership to retain power must represent the people in its electorate, the other government retains power by oppressing its people and its interests. Therefore the first government needs oil to drive its economy, at the lowest cost so it can maximise profits thereby improving the standard of living for its people.
The country with oil might have millions of people, but their welfare means nothing, the government of oil only has to look after the interests of the government therefore it only needs to ask a price that will fulfill the needs of government not the people. (aha)
Illustration two: Both countries are democracies now, therefore the welfare of both populations are important to the retention of power of both governments, for the country with phones, this means trying to buy oil at the lowest price and sell phones at the highest price. For the country with oil, the opposite is true, they want more phones for less oil. The two opposing views are both crucial to retention of power, so it looks like they will have to negotiate. (aha)

You see, maybe lastly a metaphore. You are a sprinter, tomorrow you must run to compete for a prize in an invitational sponsored athletic event. The prize is $10,000 a true sportsman of course seeks competition, strong competition is the only meaningful reward, but if you have the $10k in mind you would be hoping and praying to go up against a fat, smoking, beer drinking slob that doesn't run to the toilet.
I would have liked to put the Youtube clip of john Belushi's 'Little Chocolate Donuts - Breakfast of Champions' to give you a mental picture but it seems to have been removed.

So that's it, a democracy has an incentive to do whatever it takes to please those with a vote, and anyone who doesn't vote, doesn't matter. And to go up against another democracy means the negotiations are that much harder, it is cheaper to sell your own luxury goods to a small party that oppresses its people into submission, than a competent government, that manages its economy well and gets the most bang for its buck for its people.
And it is a unconscious mechanism of a fundamental design flaw of democracy - scope. Simply that retention of power is limited to a small group of individuals. With globalization and climate change making the decisions of governments more and more global ramifications (that is Australia's energy policy for example could contribute significantly to killing every last person on the planet) then democracy has to step up a notch.
Or rather increase its scope to everyone effected. I mean imagine if the government of Austrlia only had to win my vote? what would that mean for you? either very little or a hell of a lot.
So just take that thought and imagine it about 9 billion people bigger.