Minority Vs Majority

This latest article I read about balloon payments to clubs in the premier league who get relegated to bottom divisions causing an imbalance in providing equal chance to all clubs in the championship to be promoted has somehow coalesced my thoughts about other things I have been reading nowadays. These thoughts are about how inequality is rampant in all parts of the world and how different reasons/incentives contribute to economic inequality. It is not about inequity anymore. Not everyone gets a fair chance due to how the game is set up. World elites find a way to keep their supremacy and the rest of the world resists and these elites find a way to circumvent this to maintain the status quo.

If you look at the balloon payments that the relegated clubs receive (which is a payment of 90 mil pounds), it gives them a clear financial advantage to gather resources to equip themselves well to get promoted to the premier league. Looking back on the last few seasons there were clubs which went down and came back again fairly quickly i.e. in a gap of year or two. West Brom, Norwich city, Fulham to name a few. Looking at this season Fulham and Bournemouth seem to be on their way back to the premier league. What would have prompted the regulatory body to set up the game this  way to avoid fairness and equality? Why are the majority of the clubs losing out to a minority of clubs who somehow have a seemingly captive control over economic resources?

The other day I read an article in the latest issue of Atlantic about how the dictators around the world are helping each other out to circumvent the problems/pressures of the west to survive and become more dictatorial. Countries with dictatorial leadership used to face a hard time from the west due to economic sanctions placed on them. With cutting of trade relationships with such country the economic activity would slowly ground to a halt. This would create unrest in the said country and make it hard of the dictator to stay in power. The living standards would gradually decline, making the population miserable and would put the country in more disrepute as the dictator would use the force to check the populace. Not all dictators – especially the new ones – have the wherewithal to handle the unrest. The sanctions would wear them down. But now all dictators have come together to provide a solution to this problem. If economic sanctions are levied by the west on country X then the dictator of country Y will reroute the goods through his country to bypass the problems economic sanction would create. If the dictator is naïve then help is provided by experienced ones by way of providing military force, military know-how/tactics, propaganda machinery and how to use, etc. Few are amassing power and wealth to create deep inequality in the society. How does the world allow for a small political minority to dominate a majority of the population for personal economic and political gain?

Even in the democratic world, gaming the system has become easy. The US embassy website says that democracy is based on majority rule and individual rights.

Utilitarian philosophy also agrees with democratic principles. Utilitarianism says that society as a whole should pursue those actions which bring happiness to the majority of people. Statistics, though, are showing that it is the majority that is losing out to the minority on the economic front. Financial freedom, or at least lack of financial struggle makes up an important part of maintaining peace and prosperity in any society. If someone argued that there are many more such constituent parts that make up the core of peace and prosperity of a society then I would agree with them. Basic civil rights, law and order and virtues like sympathy, empathy, honesty, integrity and many more also have an equal part to play.

Now individual rights as a principle of democracy can be tricky to comment on. It is not a simple number game of majority votes. Individual rights are hard to specify and corrupting its quality is possible too. Take the right to education as an example of an individual right. What quality of education is one entitled to under their rights? Is it possible that different sections of the society, majority against minority, receive different quality of education? What if the elite minority gets significantly better education to stay ahead of the curve and remain elite? If the answer is yes then even though the individual right to education has been fulfilled it has not been executed to the benefit of the majority. Same can be said about individual rights to healthcare, law and order and other living standards.

Though democracy as a system of government is a noble idea it also goes against basic Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest. The fittest, read elite, want to remain elite and will do anything to maintain the status quo. May it be football or politics or the members who hold the seats in the governing council of your small residential society it is always minority over majority.