More Presidential Leadership

[tw]

Originally posted by jaguar
Plato himself argued this one, because democratically elected leaders have limited terms, they will not undertake politically risky or LONG TERM SOLUTIONS (global warming, transport alternatives, etc) because they won't be around to reap the political benefits. He proposed a system of a benevolent dictator, personally I don’t subscribe to that line but I just thought I’d mention that.

Effective democratic leaders empower the source of all solutions. Dictators are only effective as limited solutions to finite problems.

Take a recent study of Nazi Germany, rumored back then to be more productive than Britian during WWII. True if you consider the potential size of Germany's economy. However the study demonstrates that Germany was so dictatorial that production abilities were wasted. Numbers suggest that Germany's economy was limited to about 70% of its production abilities because of its dictatorial government.

Why would this be true? Plato based his conclusions on a society called status quo. Unfortunately, society does not advance by making the same things. It is what economists and political scientists, even by WWII, did not fully appreciate. A dictatorial society can address a problem known to that dictator. But since new problems continue to arise, that society must wait for the next dictator to grow up so that he can address the next problem? It is why dicatorial societies can advance. The top man cannot empower the little people to solve a problem he does not understand.

Society can no longer wait for its dicators to learn of problems, then grow up to be a dictators. Society must have today's problem solved tomorrow. That cannot happen in a dictator soceity when the top man does not empower problem solvers and does not understand how the work gets done.

Plato's solution assumed a dictator knew everything in a world that did not change. Plato's flaw was not in his logic, but in his assumptions of what makes a world grow.