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https://theduran.com/balance-of-powers-in-a-government-inevitably-produces-corrupt-govt/

Balance-of-Powers in a Government Inevitably Produces Corrupt Gov’t.

Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

An excellent example, of how balance-of-powers within a government produces a corrupt government, was provided by the report in Bloomberg News on 17 June 2020, “Trillions in Stimulus Go Unchecked With Watchdogs Kept Toothless”. The reporter, Laura Davison, described the U.S. system, in which a government’s outcome regarding a particular matter (here the economic response to the coronavirus) is the result of not a single agency and its subordinate agencies, extending all the way down to the full share of the government’s power to influence a specific given matter being lodged in a single and clearly identifiable chain of command, but instead is immediately spread amongst multiple agencies, in order to spread the power around so that supposedly there will be no dictatorship. The result is inevitably corruption in which lobbyists and other behind-the-scenes actors that are funded only by the wealthiest individuals and their organizations, work simultaneously upon each one of the key governmental agencies that will affect such matters as how much the corporations that those wealthy individuals control, will benefit from the government’s ultimately enacted and enforced policies regarding that given matter. In other words: behind-the-scenes, or “Deep State,” actors (agents of those actual aristocrats) will control, and the public will not. And this is corruption. Balance-of-powers government produces rule by the richest, and that’s rule by an aristocracy of wealth, and that is a type (the commonest type) of dictatorship; it is NOT a democracy. It is one-dollar-one-vote rule, like a corporation is ruled (by the number of shares each person owns), instead of one-person-one-vote rule, which is the way that any democracy is ruled. What is equal in a corporation is each share; what is equal in a democracy is each person. A corporation is intrinsically a dictatorship. A government is not. However, a balance-of-powers government will be a dictatorship.

Theoretically (that is to say, in the poorly conceived existing political theory), a balance-of-powers within government is essential in order to avoid there being a dictatorship; but that is a misconception of what a “dictatorship” is, and of what it isn’t. And of what a “democracy” is, and what it isn’t. America’s Founders were confused about this, because their enemy was a single person, Britain’s King, who was held responsible for what the foreign dictatorship, supposedly his rule, was doing to his colonies (themselves). The U.S. Declaration of Independence was declaring independence specifically from that dictator: King George III. Dictatorship was being viewed as having been lodged in that one person, the dictator or “Monarch,” and not in the aristocracy that he actually represented. He represented the interests of the aristocrats over whom he ruled (who since 1689 were in the House of Lords, but still held effective veto-power; it remained an aristocracy); and, if they collectively would decide that he no longer represented their interests, then he would likely have become overthrown and replaced by a different one of them, whom the aristocracy would select, as had happened so many times before. America’s Founders thought that they were declaring their independence from the Crown, but it was actually independence from the British aristocracy. 

An aristocracy is a class, a ruling class. In a dictatorship that is collective (it’s a dictatorship by a class of people) instead of monarchical (“mon” there meaning one, and “arch” meaning ruler — thus, “one-person ruler” or “monarch”), it is rule by the aristocracy. That is a dictatorship just as much as is monarchical rule. Almost all dictatorships are actually by an aristocracy (a ruling class), instead of by an authentic monarch.

In the United States, the rulers are the billionaires, and that class consists of now around 1,000 individuals. Some few centi-millionaires also are included — the few of those who donate to political campaigns as much as some of the leading billionaires do. In total, America’s ruling class consists probably of around 1,000 persons. Some fund the Republican Party; the others fund the Democratic Party. They hire and otherwise employ literally millions of agents, who continue receiving benefits from them only for as long as remaining loyal to them. This is rule by purchased loyalty, instead of by mere citizenship (which latter is democracy). In each Party, it’s loyalty to the aristocracy. Therefore, in America, the public do not rule, the aristocracy do — and this has been empirically proven.

The most effective way for an aristocracy to rule is by competent use of that purchased loyalty, and this is typically done behind the scenes so that the given nation can call itself a “democracy” even though it actually is an aristocracy — rule by a very narrow ruling class, who constitute the nation’s actual aristocracy, or ruling class.

Today’s United States exemplifies a multi-Party dictatorship. America’s Founders had wanted there to be no Parties at all. I have proposed a way to reduce the role that political Parties play in America’s Government as well as to reduce the role that America’s wealthiest play in our Government. However, the aristocracy, which currently runs two Parties, will be united in resisting that proposal. So, America’s future likely prospect is continued international decline, and continued wealth-transfer, from the masses, to “the classes.” There will be less and less to loot from the domestic population; the looting will need to increase in the vassal nations; America's military-industrial complex will ultimately reach its limits, and the empire will ultimately collapse.

America’s Founders failed to recognize sufficiently that the only way to reduce corruption would be a thoroughly democratically controlled unitary top-down federal government with clear lines of control and responsibility answerable always at its very top, in a purely one-person-one-vote directly elected universal-suffrage head-of-government, and likewise directly elected state governors, everything else in government being appointed by those few directly elected governmental officials. 

Balance-of-powers government is inevitably not only complex and too-slow-to-respond but also corrupt, and this means that whatever democracy will exist in the nation will inevitably degenerate into an aristocracy — such as has already occurred in America (which was supposed to be a revolution away from aristocracy).

Anyone who even uses the phrase “balance of powers” in a positive sense is misunderstanding political reality, because what is needed in order for any government to function effectively is instead complementarity of powers. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of a government can produce an effective government ONLY if EACH branch serves ONLY its function and NO function of the other two branches. To say that that is ‘balance’ of powers is to misunderstand, in a fundamental way, what the term “government” means. From that misunderstanding, there can likewise be no truthful understanding of what such terms as “democracy,” “dictatorship,” etc., mean. Such misunderstandings by the public are very helpful to billionaires who are determined to control the government.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.