This was posted many years ago at a now dead location: http://www.plaidder.com/crackpot.htm#asshole

Reposted directly from: https://sevenstring.org/threads/the-asshole-theory-of-government.65100/

As noted below, it was adapted to a delightful short video: https://youtu.be/RYYHLJ2Ktnk?si=MWCE94Pr9DvHXVy4

I’m posting it here as it seems worth maintaining considering the continuing state of the world…

The Asshole Theory of Government

This Crackpot Theory has now been made into a short film called Theories of Government #9 by an Australian filmmaker named Larry Larstead.

Problem: Why is it that no matter what kind of political system man devises it always ends up going bad?
Answer: Because no political thinker has yet managed to solve the problem of the Asshole.

Sure, the details often differ, but when you come right down to it all forms of government run into the same problem: What does society do with the asshole? Nobody has yet come up with a satisfactory answer, and this is why the vision of life on Earth as put forth in Star Trek has failed to materialize. No matter what principles you build your system on, there will always be some asshole out there who can screw it up and pervert it from its presumed ends. Let’s break it down with a few familiar examples:

System: Capitalism.

Principle: Efficiency and virtue will be rewarded by the market; only the truly useful will survive. Those who cannot make it to the top will be employed in the service of those who have, and if anyone falls through the cracks, private charity will alleviate the worst of their misery.
Problem: Some asshole with money and power will always be trying to fix the market to protect his own assets. Also, assholes don’t give a damn about the suffering of others and have no incentive to take care of them.

System: Communism.

Principle: Everyone cooperates and shares the work and the wealth so that everyone’s needs are taken care of.
Problem: Some asshole will always try to get out of doing his share of the work while at the same time collecting his share of the profits.

System: Fascism.

Principle: Everyone surrenders their will to the State, whose leaders will decide what is best for the people.
Problem: Fascist leaders are almost always assholes.

System: Pacifism.

Principle: Nobody hurts anyone else.
Problem: Some asshole is always going to be willing to hurt you to get what he wants.

System: Anarchy.

Principle: People are left to themselves to do as they see fit without being hassled by The Man.
Problem: Left to themselves, most people will behave like assholes.

System: Democracy.

Principle: Government by the people, for the people.
Problem: Get enough assholes in one place, and you’ve got government by assholes for assholes.

And so on. It really is quite a knotty problem, because the asshole is a peculiarly intractable and unmanageable sort. The true asshole cannot be appealed to in the name of any ideal, or in the name of the public good, or even in the name of other people he knows and presumably cares about. The true asshole is driven by one thing and one thing only, and that is to do what he damn well wants to do no matter who else he hurts along the way. You cannot convince the asshole to comply voluntarily; therefore your system of government must have in place a way of punishing the asshole when he oversteps the line. But a real asshole has surprising powers of resistance, and ultimately can require you to mobilize such a huge penal system that you discover, having finally quashed the asshole, that you have quashed all the ordinary law-abiding citizens along with him. Paradoxically, the more freedom your system allows its citizens, the greater room the asshole has to work his assholic will on those around him.

The only system of government that would actually work would be one where, somehow, the assholes could be detected by an impartiable and incorruptible Asshole Detention Board and exiled to a desert island somewhere. But unfortunately even this is impractical, because there is a little bit of the asshole in all of us