Saying that it's the oligarchs' fault is too easy

Jimmy Carter wasn't the first to say that America has become an oligarchy. There are countless articles on the subject going back more than ten years. What it means is that a theoretical handful of influential persons "control" the American political system.

To this analyst, that is too simplistic. The American political system is one gigantic accident, guided by Constitutional rules and enabled by a public whose intelligence is watered down by the masses. That is as it should be in a pluralistic Democratic society.

If all of the many entities in society play by the rules of fairness and equality as intended, that means that the system is self-regulating albeit constrained by aggregate abilities and capacity.

The nation would be well-advised to work to make even the lowest persons in the hierarchy as intelligent and able as it can because that way the average performance will become optimized. When there is significant economic disparity and inequality, the overall result is considerably less than is possible.

When it appears to many that the American political system is crumbling because the government isn't functioning well and its leaders don't seem to be exceptional, that is time to worry. It is also time to fix it. Some will simply say that it is too hard and that the oligarchs have won.

There might be 400 oligarchs out there, and my bet is that half of them are Democrats, and half are Republicans. They truly can't win much with those numbers, even with a lot of power.

If things go south again, they won't benefit much. In fact, unless they are bankers, they stand to lose much more.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2014/04/25/american-democracy-now-an-oligarchy