Friday 10 April 2015

Democracy and Debt


Global government debt in 2010. Please take note of which countries have the highest debts. 



Assalaam alaykum,

A few years ago, this article was forwarded to me and I was asked for my thoughts. I replied with the email below and subsequently wanted to publish it as a blog post but never got around to it. Now, with a general election next month in the UK, I am again hearing discussions about the validity and legitimacy of voting and democracy and therefore I think the information below is very relevant. I haven't quoted any fatawa or even touched on the issue of man-made legislation. Rather, I've quoted Americans and other westerners who have grown up and still live in democracies. For the purposes of the blog, I've added links where appropriate.

______________

Assalaam alaykum,

Jazakum Allah khayran for the article.

It appears to me that the author has completely missed the point about what a democracy is, and why democracies are always in debt.  The author also has no idea what a bank is supposed to be and what free markets are. In conclusion, he favours social democracy even though he laments that it is now large social democractic projects, like the EU, that are working for the banks. So, as a typical leftist, he continues to sing the praises of statism, i.e. a big government regulating and controlling an economy, and when the obvious and inevitable consequences happen (i.e. debt, unemployment, corruption, a ruined economy etc.) he can sniffle and say "if only the right people were in charge". As Milton Friedman said, we don't want a system that depends on the right people running it. Rather, we want a system that forces the wrong people to do the right thing.