California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

A Comparison of US Democracy and Chinese Meritocracy

by John Lawrence

China has been characterized as an autocracy or a dictatorship by American media which is basically a misrepresentation of how their political system actually works. China has a long history going back 5000 years including a number of dynasties such as the Han, Tang, Song, Ming, Yuan and Quing. For most of its history China's political system has been primarily influenced by Confucianism which mandated that Chinese scholar-officials be chosen after submitting to a rigorous and extensive examination so as to choose the best and the brightest people and also those with the highest ethical standards to comprise the government. In one dynasty applicants had to show up at the examination site with their own food and sleeping bags and be locked into a cubicle for 3 days while they took the exam. China does have democracy at the local level. These local leaders then choose the government at the prefectural level who choose the leaders in the National Assembly so it is an indirect democracy in a sense just as parliamentary democracies choose their prime minister not by a vote of the people but by a vote of the people elected to parliament.

The US has a form of democracy where the people vote district by district for members of the House and state by state for members of the Senate. They also vote directly for the President. Because of the nature of the voting system which is first-past-the-post or plurality, the candidate with the most votes, even if not a majority, wins. The voting system is further complicated by the electoral college when voting for the President and by gerrymandering when voting for Congressional representatives. US voters get to vote for one Congress person representing their district and two senators representing their state so only three people at the national level at all. There are no standards of knowledge or expertise for any candidate so any fool or idiot can be elected President or a member of Congress. Because of the nature of the voting system, the US is a two party system as opposed to China which is a one party system. The best form might be a no party system in which at least one House of a bicameral legislature is chosen by sortition (random selection) which is what Aristotle recommended. This type of system would exactly mirror the society which arguably is what democracy is supposed to accomplish. That would at least reduce the divisiveness between elites and non-elites which both the US and the Chinese systems suffer from.

Some people have argued that the Chinese Communist Party controls the Chinese government. To some extent this is true since China is a one party system. However, China changed its economic system in 1980 When Deng Xiaoping became Chairman. China's economic success is largely due to Deng's abandoning the communist economic system in favor of capitalism. So while China is no longer communist, they have still stuck with the name. Many scholars have recommended a name change to eliminate the word communism such that the party is simply known as the Chinese party, not the Chinese Communist party. Due to private enterprise, more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 40 years. Both the Chinese one party system and the US two party system have their defects. In the recent US election the majority or voters had no interest in long term solutions to problems such as climate change. Their only interest was their own wallets. China is capable of long term planning and also of making big changes on an immediate basis while the US is stuck in gridlock on many issues due to divisiveness of the two parties. True the US has a one person, one vote democracy, but the quality and sophistication of the voters, themselves, determines to a great extent the quality of US democracy as a whole.

Perhaps the Chinese system could be broadened in such a way that the people voted on all those candidates who passed the Confucian style examinations. The American system could also be improved by requiring its candidates for office to have attained some level of expertise for the offices they seek. A combination of democracy and meritocracy might be the way to go.

Off the Top of My Head

Which is a Better form of Government: a Democracy or a Meritocracy

by John Lawrence

In a democracy, you get the most popular people in government. In a meritocracy you get the most qualified people in government. Or is there some synthesis that combines the two in a harmonious manner? In a democracy in order to get the best people elected, what is needed is an intelligent and well informed electorate. If what exists is the opposite, the government that results will be second rate at best. Just because politicians are popularly elected does not mean that they are the best people for the job. So what is the alternative? If you could get the best people in government without their being popularly elected, wouldn't this be preferable to a democracy? The problem is, who are the best people, and, even if you could identify them, how do you have a procedure for getting them into government? Would you, for example, consult all the renown political science professors at major universities and ask them all to come up with a slate of people that they think are the most highly qualified for having the highest positions in government? And then winnowing down that list to the required number? That's not a bad idea actually. Highly intelligent people such as college professors might be better choosers than average Joes. However, in a democracy it's the average Joes that make the actual decisions about who gets elected. Or maybe the college professors should choose the nominees who are then voted upon by the electorate.

In China politicians are popularly elected at the local level. Then those politicians select the representatives at the regional level, and then those politicians select the national assembly. So China is a democracy at the local level, and supposedly, a meritocracy at the next two levels. However, the communist party controls the nominations at all levels. In the US the various political parties control the nominations. Usually this boils down to two parties. The all important nominating process determines the quality of those who are elected. So who are the best people to determine who should be nominated for the people to vote on whether for President or for representatives? Obviously, any party or group should be able to nominate anyone. In China no one is likely to be nominated unless they support the principles of the communist party. It's a one party system. The US is basically a two party system because the voting system itself tends to preclude third parties. Neither system really guarantees that the best people, in terms of a meritocracy, are nominated or elected.

Another problem is the nature of the electorate itself. If the voters vote just in terms of their self interest, will the resulting elected body represent a meritocracy? Does the sum of self interests equal the best possible national representative body? In the current US election for President, the chief issue among the voters seems to be the economy. The American economy is currently the envy of every other country in the world. Yet all the voters seem to be concerned about is which nominee will make them personally better off. The voters are oblivious to other issues such as the two wars going on or climate change or the millions of people who are refugees in the world and have nothing. In short they don't seem to be interested in issues that affect the world at large. They are only interested in their own narrow economic interests. This is possibly because of the American ethos which encourages the pursuit of self interest or the pursuit of happiness that Thomas Jefferson wrote into the Declaration of Independence. I would assume that a meritocracy would be equally concerned about the well being of its citizens as well as the well being of the planet earth without which everyone suffers.

Perhaps a group of respected and accomplished citizens whether they be political science professors or others should nominate the representatives who are then voted on by the public. But then the voting system itself would have to be changed from the winner take all majority rule system to a much better system. Even more important is taking the money out of the political process. As it is now, the US is a plutocracy in which Kamala Harris has raised a billion dollars to support her efforts to get elected President. Elon Musk purportedly is giving a million dollars a day to voters who will vote for Trump. Money totally distorts the political process, and self interested voters totally ignore the crucial issues of climate change and world peace. Voter self interest is not enough to give rise to a healthy planet that takes into account the well being of all peoples.

Off the Top of My Head

The Absence of War is Not Peace

by John Lawrence

Human beings do not use the absence of war to create peace. They use the absence of war to prepare for the next war. The time between wars could be used in a more constructive way and that is to do everything possible to prevent the next war. Instead what we do is to build up our offensive and defensive capacities so that whatever side we are on prevails in the next war. The US military-industrial complex is allotted almost a trillion dollars a year whether or not there is war or absence of war. There is never ever really peacetime. It's sole purpose is to prepare for the next war. Meanwhile the Peace Corps is allotted next to nothing in order to create the conditions that might prevent the next war. What are those conditions you might ask? They are very simple: creating educational opportunities for the undereducated, creating economic opportunities for those in poverty, creating hospitals and clinics for those whose health is at risk, building infrastructure for those lacking access to modern infrastructure. In other words building more successful societies from the ground up for those lacking what the most advanced societies already have. Above all poverty and lack of healthful conditions must be alleviated all over the world including in the advanced nations themselves before anything approaching world peace can be achieved.

So what is the lesson of the Israeli-Gaza war? It is that in the time period before the war, nobody did nothing to create the conditions for a lasting peace which would have been the two state solution. Instead people just stood back content to have the Palestinians live miserable lives without political or economic rights. Nobody cared. Nobody worked hard to correct or ameliorate the situation. People were content just to let the situation fester until the next violence broke out, and then it did with very dramatic and horrific results. When there was an absence of war, people just said ho hum, there's no urgency to create the conditions for a lasting peace. Then when war breaks out everyone gets very excited and upset, horrible things happen to children and old people. People want revenge. Hate proliferates. War is exciting. Peace is dull and undramatic. People get bored with the absence of war. People's senses come alive during war. During the absence of war in which there is no real peace, people pursue their self interest or in other words lining their purses. During war they get all excited. There is nonstop news coverage. People get upset by (wo)man's inhumanity to (wo)man as if people doing horrible things to other people is unimaginable. It's not. People's senses come alive and they come out of their collective stupors.

If the US just spent half its defense budget on war and the other half on peace, it would still have a larger defense budget than any other country in the world, and just think what the Peace Corps could do with a $500 billion budget. Why it could even compete with China's Belt and Road initiative which is building infrastructure in parts of the world where inadequate infrastructure exists. The two largest world economies could compete creating peace in the world instead of trying to out compete each other with larger and better weapons and more vitriolic and challenging rhetoric. However, this is not OK with conservatives who feel very threatened by the Chinese COMMUNIST Party although the Chinese system brought 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years primarily by adopting a free enterprise capitalistic system. Oh but it is still authoritarian politically, you say. That is subject to interpretation as the Chinese political system is based on Confucianism which promotes a meritocracy unlike the US where any bozo can become President.

So where is the American Department of Peace? We have the Department of Defense(Offense). We have the Department of Homeland Security. We have the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). What agencies of the Federal government are devoted to creating a more peaceful world? Basically, none, and so is it any wonder that, while the human race continues to invent a plethora of gadgets, it can do hardly anything to create world peace? Peace depends on mutual respect among the leaders of the various nations of the world. Instead US authorities criticize and lord it over the leaders of other nations because they are not exactly like us. Instead of walking a mile in their shoes, they insist that every other nation walks a mile in our shoes.

Off the Top of My Head

Does China Have Some Version of Democracy and Capitalism?

by John Lawrence

The Chinese Communist Party in reality is just the Chinese Party. It is communist in name only. Kishore Mahbuboni in the book, Has China Won, says "...is America making a fundamental error of perception when it views the CCP as a Chinese Communist Party? This would imply that the soul of the CCP is embedded in its communist roots. Yet, in the eyes of many objective Asian observers, the CCP actually functions as the Chinese Civilization Party. Its soul is not rooted in the foreign ideology of Marxism-Leninism but in the Chinese civilization." China has had a capitalist economic system ever since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in 1978. China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty in about 40 years mainly due to the component of its system that represents private enterprise. It also has state owned enterprises but they have not been mainly responsible for China's rapid growth in GDP.

Xi Jinping has been President of the people's Republic of China since 2013. He is not popularly elected by the general public. Instead, he is elected by the National People's Congress (NPC), constitutionally China's highest state body, which also has the power to remove the president and other state officers from office. Elections and removals are decided by majority vote. This is not dissimilar to how the head of parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is elected. The British head of government is not elected by a popular election of the people either. He is elected by members of Parliament similar to most other parliamentary democracies. The US also originally had a system in which the President and Senators were not elected by a popular election of the people. Passed by Congress on May 13, 1912, and ratified on April 8, 1913, the 17th Amendment modified Article I, Section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators and the President. Prior to its passage, the President and Senators were chosen by state legislatures. The Chinese government has been based on a meritocratic bureaucracy for thousands of years. The popular vote elects the first representative body who elects the next higher body until the National People's Congress elects the President.

The cleavage between communism and capitalism is basically an historic artifact. Capitalism won. Almost all nations of the world have capitalistic economic systems including China. None of them have systems that are identical to the US. They all have some versions of capitalism and democracy. Prior to 1912 the US had a system similar to China's in that the President was not popularly elected but was elected by a vote of the states' senates. Today in order to maintain international tensions, US politicians keep up the dichotomy between the US and China by insisting that China's leaders are not elected democratically and that China has a communist economic system. The truth is that China has a version of democracy and a version of capitalism just as the US does. Vested interests in the US are responsible for maintaining the fiction that Chinese is communist and autocratic. In fact US democracy is vulnerable to being overthrown by a demagogue like Donald Trump which almost happened on January 6, 2020. The US is still vulnerable as a near majority of Americans prefer Trump to Joe Biden, a man who has passed landmark legislation like only a very few American Presidents have accomplished.

US democracy is also vulnerable in the sense that its first past the post voting system almost guarantees that third party candidates will be spoilers as happened in 2000 when Ralph Nader took votes away from Al Gore. Despite that Gore won the popular vote. If Nader had not been in the election, Gore would have overwhelmingly won the popular vote. However in the electoral college, which is an outdated feature of American democracy, it came down to who won the popular vote in Florida. The Supreme Court stopped the hand recount giving Bush the Presidency. There is still controversy over who would have won if that hadn't happened. In any case the Bush administration lied us into the disastrous Iraq war, something Gore probably would not have done. Also Bush was a fossil fuel guy while Gore was knowledgeable about global warming and would have pursued that agenda . History might have turned out differently, and more importantly the future history of planet Earth might turn out differently if Gore had won.

Chinese philosophy is based on Confucianism which emphasizes duty to family while the US is based on individualistic ethics emphasizing individual freedom. Keyu Jin writes in The New China Playbook, "According to the World Values Survey, which explores people's beliefs and values in more than 100 countries, 93% of Chinese participants value security over freedom, as compared to only 28 % of Americans. Such differences can be fully understood only by taking culture and history into account. In China, an interventionist state is rooted in paternalism, a hallmark of government in China since Confucian times, more than 2500 years ago;..." Although China's private enterprise capitalism has resulted in the fact that 800 million people have been pulled out of poverty in 40 years, GDP growth is not the sine qua non of Chinese capitalism. Under Xi China is turning a corner and reining in certain aspects of unbridled growth in order to mitigate certain unsalutary aspects of unfettered enterprise while emphasizing producing economic benefits for the 13% of the Chinese population still in poverty. So China is much more apt to put its finger on the economic scale while the US has more of a hands off policy on private enterprise. The downside of this is the unregulated growth of toxic social media and potentially artificial intelligence in the US. The US could mitigate the spoiler effect of third party candidates for President by adopting a different voting system. The current first past the post voting system practically guarantees that there will be a 2 party system with third parties acting as spoilers, something which could result in a second Trump Presidency despite 91 criminal indictments. Replacing first past the post with a voting system such as approval voting would eliminate the spoiler effects of third parties. It could be implemented simply by a vote of Congress since it would not violate any aspect of the Constitution. However, in the sclerotic American Congress it is unlikely that there will be any major changes in the US Constitution which is well past its "use by" date.

Off the Top of My Head

What is Better - a Meritocracy or a Democracy?

by John Lawrence, May 22, 2020

It is assumed that in a democracy the voters will elect wise and stable leaders. However, that is not always the case. The US circa 2016 elected an idiot with no previous government experience to the highest office in the land. He in turn has appointed bigots to the highest court in the land and fired anyone in government who is critical of him. Democracy is no panacea. And how can it even be called a democracy when one of the Houses of Congress puts the kibosh on the wishes of the other House which more truly represents the people? The Senate controlled by one party effectively has a veto over the other party.

Many opinion polls have shown that Americans want gun control. In a true democracy that opinion should prevail, yet it doesn't because the other party has a veto over what the majority of Americans really want. In a true democracy only the opinion of the majority should determine what the laws should be. The designers of the Constitution did not want the US ruled by the majority of the people since they considered that mob rule. Instead we got mob rule for the one office that all Americans vote for: the President. But mob rule is guaranteed by the one House that was supposed to prevent it - the Senate. Instead the Senate is beholden to the President who was elected by the mob.

One writer thinks that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has delivered more good governance than any other party in the world. Kishore Mahbubani writes:

"Yet, it is also a fact that relative to its peers around the world, the Chinese governing class generates more good governence (in terms of improving the well-being of its citizens) than virtually any other government today. Since the CCP is constantly vilified in the Western media, very few people in the West are aware that the members of the Communist Party have delivered the best governance China has ever enjoyed in its entire history."

Delivering 850 million people out of poverty in less than 40 years is a pretty good record. During that time period the wages of the American working class have stagnated. One reason the CCP has done so much good for the Chinese people is that it promotes the best and brightest Chinese minds to the top of the government. This makes it a meritocracy much more than an autocracy.

Mahbubani, a Singaporean, continues:

The strong and competent CCP is therefore delivering a global public good by ensuring that China behaves as a rational and stable actor on the world stage and not as an angry nationalist actor disrupting the regional and global order. To appreciate why this is important, American officials should spend some time probing the leaders and officials of China's neighbors to ask if they would be happier if the CCP were to be removed from power. Since I live in the neighborhood, I can say with some confidence that most of China's neighbors would prefer to see China led by calm and rationbal leaders, like Xi Jinping, and not by a Chinese version of Donald Trump...

The Chinese value order and stability. They are opposed to chaos. They value the continuity of the CCP because they have had an Emperor culture for millenia. The Chinese Communist state is a replacement for the Emperor state. The Chinese people are afforded a great deal of personal freedom in economic terms. In fact upward mobility is greater in China than in the US. Their approach to balancing personal freedom and social order is different then in the west, but it has more to do with the Chinese character than it does with the Communist Party. The CCP does not actively interfere in the daily lives of its citizens. They have enjoyed more personal freedom under the CCP than any previous form of Chinese government.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Myth of Meritocracy

by Robert Reich

Sunday, April 7, 2019

Most Americans still cling to the meritocratic notion that people are rewarded according to their efforts and abilities. But meritocracy is becoming a cruel joke.

The Justice Department recently announced indictments of dozens of wealthy parents for using bribery and fraud to get their children into prestigious colleges.

But the real scandal isn’t how far a few wealthy parents will go to get their kids admitted (apparently $1.2 million in illegal payoffs), but how commonplace it has become for them to go almost as far without breaking any laws – shelling out big bucks for essay tutors, testing tutors, admissions counselors, and “enrichment” courses (not to mention sky-high tuition at private schools feeding into the Ivy League).  

Inequality is lurking behind all this, and not just because the wealthy can afford it. Researchers Daniel Schneider, Orestes Hastings, and Joe LaBriola found that in states with the biggest gaps between rich and poor, well-to-do parents spend the most trying to get their children into elite colleges.

America’s unprecedented concentration of wealth combined with seemingly bottomless poverty have increased parental anxiety – raising the stakes, and the competition, for admission.

While some entrepreneurs in America’s billionaire class lack a prestigious degree, it’s become harder to become a run-of-the-mill multimillionaire in America without one.

Most CEOs of big corporations, Wall Street mavens, and high-priced lawyers got where they are because they knew the right people. A prestigious college packed with the children of wealthy and well-connected parents is now the launching pad into the stratosphere of big money.

Elite colleges are doing their parts to accelerate the trend.

At a time when the courts have all but ended affirmative action for black children seeking college admission, high-end universities provide preferential admission to the children of wealthy alumni –“legacies,” as they’re delicately called.

Some prestigious colleges have even been known to make quiet deals with wealthy non-alums – admission for their kids with the expectation of a large donation to follow.

Jared Kushner’s father reportedly pledged $2.5 million to Harvard just as young Jared was applying. The young man gained admission, despite rather mediocre grades.

About four in 10 students from the richest one-tenth of one percent of American families now attend an Ivy League or other elite university, according to a recent study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records.

At some upscale campuses – including Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn, and Brown – more students now come from the top 1 percent than from the entire bottom 60 percent put together.

By contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college. Fewer than half attend any college at all.

A worse scandal is K-12 education, where geographic segregation by income is leaving poor school districts – partly reliant on local property taxes, which don’t generate much revenue– with fewer resources per pupil than richer districts.

Race is involved. School districts that are predominantly white get $23 billion more funding each year than districts serving mostly students of color.

When it comes to early childhood education – which education experts agree is vital to the future life chances of the very young – the gap has become a chasm.

Wealthy parents spare no expense stimulating infant and toddler brains with happy human interactions through words, music, poetry, games, and art. Too often, the offspring of poorer kids do little more than sit long hours in front of a television.

The monstrous concentration of wealth in America has not only created an education system in which the rich can effectively buy college admission for their children. It has distorted much else.

It has created a justice system in which the rich can buy their way out of prison. (Exhibit A: money manager Jeffrey Epstein, who sexually abused dozens of underage girls, yet served just thirteen months in a private wing of a Palm Beach county jail.)

It has spawned a political system in which the rich can buy their way into Congress (Exhibit B: Reps. Darreill Issa and Greg Gianforte) and even into the presidency. (Donald Trump, perhaps Starbuck’s Howard Schultz).

And a health care system in which the super-rich can buy care unavailable to others (concierge medicine).

Meritocracy remains a deeply held ideal in America. But The nation is drifting ever-farther away from it. In the age of Trump, it seems, everything is for sale.