Despotism: All you need to know.

You can roughly locate any community in the world somewhere along the scale running along the way from democracy to despotism. Once the democracy end somewhere in the middle is Despotism.

Credit to owner

Any politics student should avoid the idea that the mere form of government can safeguard a nation against despotism. For example, Germany under the term of Pres. Paul von Hindenburg is a republic. And yet in this republic, an aggressive despotism took root and flourish under Adolf Hitler. When a competent observer  looks sign of despotism in a community he looks beyond find words and noble praises. But we agrees to two common “yardsticks” help in observing how nearer the community in Despotism.  The respect scale and the power scale.

REPECT AND POWER SCALES

An observer can use the respect scale to find how many citizens get an even break. As a community moves towards despotism, respect is restricted to fewer people. A community with low respect scale if common courtesy withheld from a large group of people on account of political attitudes, if people are rude to others because they have a higher political position and this gives them power and wealth which gives them that right or they do not like the mans race or religion.

Equal opportunity given to people not just citizen to develop their skill is one factor in rating a community on respect scale. The opportunity to develop useful skill is not enough. The equally important importunity to put skills to use is a further test on the respect scale.

A power scale is another important “yardstick” of despotism.  It gauges citizens share in making a community decision. A community which concentrated decision making in few hands rate low on the power scale and moving towards despotism. Like France under the Boron king which one of them says He is the state.

Philippines for example is a Democratic Republican Country. But Democracy itself allows despotism.

How?

Trough it’s citizens. When the citizen in a particular community allows power to be concentrated in the hands of the few. The test of despotism disregards the will of the people.  Another example is during election, when voters can only vote the way they are told. A community is moving towards despotism. When legislature become a ceremonial assembly only and have no real control in the law making. The state is moving towards despotism.

In a downright despotism, opposition is dangerous whether the despotism is official or unofficial.

The spread of respect and power in a community is influenced by certain conditions which measured by two means:

1. Economic Distribution 

If a community’s economic distribution become slanted. Middle class incomes grew smaller and despotism stands a better chance to gain a foothold.

A land which is privately owned one sign of a poorly balanced economy is the concentration of land ownership into a small number of people. In effect, when small farmers losses their lands they are also losing their independence. If these condition exist through out a nation, the likelihood of despotism  increased.

In a community which depends almost on a single industry like factories and mines, maintaining economic balance is a challenging problem. If this condition exist in the whole nation as a whole so that the control of jobs and business opportunity is in the few hands despotism stands a good chance.

Another sign of a poorly balance economy is the taxation system that presses heavy taxes to those who are least able to pay.

In my Economy class with Prof. Bernardo, a larger  part of a small income is spent in a much necessity such as food. Sale taxes in such necessity hits the small income harder.

2. Information

A community rate low on an information scale when the press, radio and another channels of communication are controlled by only few people and the citizen of the community have to accept what they are told.

For example in a master class for teachers, when graduate students are told that young people cannot trusted to form there own opinion and when teachers put this concept put in practice, students taught to accept ideas uncritically and questions are not encourage.  When newspapers and radio are officially controlled, the people will receives exactly what the few and control wanted to. One form of control is government censorship.

Now,  what is the status of Philippines today? Second, what way it is like to go in the future?

To find out the answer in the first question, you can rate it using the Respect and the power scale. The second question is answerable using Economic Distribution and information scale.

Remember, that the lower the community rates in Economic distribution and Information scale the lower it is likely to rate on the respect and power scales and thus to approach Despotism