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Ineptocracy – A new word for our times Ineptocracy – A new word for our times
*Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy)* – A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
This via a comment by our local neighbourhood ‘ukipwebmaster’.
I have though for a while now that this term deserves wider currency and to be used in all seriousness.
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It’s a fine definition. It’s not the popular view, and leads to all kinds of philosophical debates about obligations to the law when one has no say in them, but I have long believed that the adoption of universal sufferage as some kind of a moral right was the biggest mistake the West ever made from a political standpoint. The stupid, the disinterested, and the lazy all vote and there are more of them than there are of us.
“Kakistocracy” works, too.
Or “Scatocracy”.
Just one quibble, I wonder how many of the the Welfare claiming classes actually vote? Has any study been done on it?
Does the average Dole recipient, who can’t be bothered to get out of bed to do a job of work of a morning, say to themselves… Shit, gotta vote for Labour today, my Dole check depends on it?
Well it hardly matters who they vote for as their dole checks will keep rolling just fine from Dave and his ‘conservative’ party.
Absolutely correct Mycroft, but the part I quibble with is this bit of the definition…
“the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing,…”
Is there really any cause and effect there? Labourites may hope there is, it would explain many of their policies over many decades, but is there really a link? Because most of the “Underclass” I’m aquainted with don’t know what day it is, let alone where the Polling station is.
RAB
Go back & read the quote. There’s nothing there saying the dole scroungers are the voters.
The voters are the public sector & other left wing non-producers who depend for their income on servicing them. The idea they’d actually start voting en mass’d frighten the life out the left. Never know who they might vote for.
No, Bloke-in-Spain has it right. It is not the “underclass” who are the problem, it is the parasite class of public sector people and their out-sourced mandated state function providing private sector sweethearts who are the problem. They are the ones who do indeed vote.
I take your point Bloke in Spain, but when I read “Least” I do not automatically think Civil Servants, I think the cradle to grave over many generations now, Welfare class.
After all, my first job was as a Civil Servant. I couldn’t get Articles after my Law Degree, so I joined the Lord Chancellor’s Office as an Executive. Pity to waste 3 years of Legal training I thought, even though I never really needed it, the LCD being mainly Admin tasks that anyone could be trained to do. And although knowing well that my salary came from the taxes that are paid from the industry of the Private sector, it altered my voting habits non one jot.
You’re right though, if the Underclass did actually use their vote, it would certainly scare our Pols shitless. Who might they vote for I wonder?
“Kakistocracy” and “Scatocracy” do indeed work, but the meaning of neither is as intuitive to the average person (who is not conversant with Greek) as is “Ineptocracy”.
Depending upon how vulgar you wish to be, one could also refer to our current government as the Turd Reich.
On linguistic grounds, I should prefer kakistocracy, which is formed exclusively from Greek roots. It also alludes to one of the key chapters of The Road to Serfdom. . . .
I find myself voting… for Laird’s Punch Bowl suggestion… though idiocracy or ineptocracy have their appeal.
In Australia the dole bludgers and welfare cases do vote under threat of fines if they don’t. So the problem isn’t just the unproductive public servant class.
Ah! at last, the attentions turn to the composition and motivations (vel non) of the electorates in our theoretically representative forms of governance.
Which takes us directly to a question put by Jeff Jacoby ( U.S. – sorry I don’t know how to link):
Do the bulk of the electorate consider themselves as agents in governance or merely as clients of politicians?
Most views here indicate the latter is perceived as the rule.
So we are doomed to repeat CM Kornbluth’s scifi short story ‘Marching Morons’, as tragedy/farce, tragifarcedy?
Myno, “Idocracy” is already taken.
There were plenty of the underclass queuing up at the polling station when I voted at the last GE.
Mostly loudly asking who the BNP candidate was.
Laird, it was taken way before that, and by something else entirely at that.
Superb. It is a term I intend to spread.
A point I forgot to mention about “scatocracy” is that it’s not just cream that rises to the top…
Anyway, aren’t all these terms a little misleading when the reality is that most such governments are kleptocracies? The result may be incompetence all along the line, but the cause is that those attracted to the government aren’t concerned with doing a good job, just a ‘rewarding’ one.
Where’s PfP’s cigar?
Here in the US the dolists definitely vote. There are entire organized bureaucracies dedicated to getting them to vote, and correctly. (Now you know what a “community organizer” does.)
And if that doesn’t work, so long as they’re registered it’s good enough. Someone can vote for them (there’s a bureaucracy for that, too).
There’s a very good reason that snarky people here in the US refer to public housing projects as ‘vote plantations’ for the Democrats. For starters, because they are.
Find any area (city, county, state) and pack enough dolists into some horrible ghetto-ized portion of it and poof! it becomes an instant (D) stronghold. Oh yes they vote.
I coined the word “proctocracy” some time back, to describe the government of Iran, but the term may have broader application.
It is singularly the most accurate description of South Africa at the present time.
The word is pure genius!
In a world where “Atlas Shrugged” seems to be coming to life around us Ineptocracy is a perfect description for the “entitled” class of bureaucrats & politicians.
Is the word “ineptocrat” in use yet…?