Tristan Mountcastle

Professors Kaye and Stacey

Honors Forum
27 October 2014
Representative Democracy and the Plutocracy
It is very clear to me that while our government is technically a plutocracy in all practice, it still
maintains a careful resemblance to democracy. In fact, the mechanism of electing officials to represent
common civilian interests screams of democracy. It is the c
losest 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.