Tristan Mountcastle

Professors Kaye and Stacey

Honors Forum
3 November 2014
Representative Democracy and the Plutocracy
It is very clear to me that while our government is technically a plutocracy in all practice, as
most elected officials are incredibly affluent, it still maintains a careful resemblance to democracy.
Though most government leaders are extremely wealthy, they are completely democratically elected. In
fact, the mechanism of electing officials to represent common civilian interests screams of democracy.
It is the closest a nation the size of the United States could ever come to a direct democracy, which is
nigh impossible to implement in even small states. The level of democracy achieved in the United
States is astonishing, given the extreme concentration of wealth within a pocket of its population.
Admittedly, the existence of this concentration of great wealth within a few members of society
is not conducive to a democracy. Whenever there exists a disparity in agency within a population there
is no longer a pure democracy. Those in the highest tiers of earning power in the United States simply
have more ability to affect legislation in Congress. The current wage system grants people with greater
disposable incomes greater voices in government. Lobbying is how private interest becomes the
interest of legislators. Lobbying requires serious money from private parties, therefore, wealthy citizens
almost exclusively can have their interests championed by congresspeople. Political families can even
form as particular legacies accumulate wealth, which is needed at high levels when running for office.
At the same time, less affluent members of society see their needs unmet by these congresspeople.
Of course, in order to achieve a full fledged democracy we would have to dismantle the wage
system and crush capitalism in America. In America right now we have a concurrent representative
democracy and heavy concentration of wealth within the hands of a small population. I believe that
these two things can and do exist together, there is simply a lot of violence inherent to the systems
operating smoothly.

The situation regarding our current health care reforms shows an attempt at solving some of this
violence. Approximately 32 million people gained health coverage with the enactment of the
Affordable Care Act. Previously, these people and many more did not have access to health services.
These lower income people would suffer from easily curable or preventable diseases, and sometimes
succumb to death from otherwise non-fatal illnesses. Still, democracy is upheld in these people's lives.
They die because they are not deemed economically successful, but they still maintain the right to vote.
That is democratic. Some people, like Ralph Nader, believe that this considerable social inequality
means there can not be a democracy within the nation. I argue that though this democratic society is
wholly unjust and unequal, the idea of democracy is still upheld in our government.