Chapter 28 of “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” by Douglas Adams addresses the most pressing, fundamental questions of social science:
“The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they’re not.
And somewhere in the shadows behind them — who?
Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?”
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I think it was in those books that the Lizard rule model of democracy was brought out. You should be able to google for it, but it goes roughly like this. A traveller asks how humans being ruled by lizards is democratic. It’s because they voted the lizard in. Why don’t they vote for a human? Ah, but then the wrong lizard might get in.
I forget which of the books it is in, but I always recall the people who decided that leaves should be their currency and then start burning down the forests to fight runaway inflation.
Cincinnatus.
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