All hat, no cattle

Voting is an opiate, giving an illusion of control. Control lies in placating the masses with jobs (money). Watch the [west], as jobs vanish. @Awan_ken

Save for the men and women in the public service, the Government is not, and should not, be responsible for the bulk of jobs created in the economy. Its principal job, in the grand economic scheme of things, is to ensure that economic policy leads to economic growth and, consequently, economic growth not only leads to wealth-creation but job-creation as well. @Awan_ken seems to be a member of that school that glorifies "economic growth", especially the one that comes without having to deal with the other necessities of a functional economic system: democracy; free, fair and credible elections; human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The thinking is simple, if not overly simplistic. The vast majority of voters almost always vote for the "wrong" people; these "wrong" people make the wrong policy decisions; these wrong decisions lead to waste, "theft" of public resources and poor economic development numbers. The simple solution, so they say, is to take political decision-making from the people who almost always make the wrong decisions and entrench the power to think "correctly" in an elite, usually the large taxpayers or investors -- almost always the rich and, because of their wealth, the powerful. In fact, take away democratic institutions such as elections and you can unlock the economic potential of the national treasure wasted on such frivolous, opioid and illusory frivolities. Let the fate of the republic be decided by unaccountable and faceless men making decisions in secret boardrooms.

Let us acknowledge that freer people are prone to greater conflict and, therefore, require and rely on robust and independent institutions to mediate their conflicts with as little violence as possible. Of these institutions, the technical ones only offer technical assistance: the civil service in general, the judiciary and the disciplined services. The ones that are critical to properly mediating conflicts almost always are political institutions, like the elected government and the political parties through which political organising mostly takes place. The election is the culmination of the process of mediation and negotiation among citizens and their interest groups including trades unions, employers' federations, chambers of commerce, and industry associations as well as faith-based and other charity organisations.

The freer the political process, the more robust and independent political institutions need to be. Not the obverse. Free people are innovative and adventurous, capable of great achievements and incredible wealth-creation. Un-free people are more likely to become the victims of the elite who make all the decisions, unlikely to enjoy even the freedom of thought deep in the recesses of their minds. Un-free people are almost always the enemies of the people. Un-free people are only free in one respect: they can be killed at any time with little remorse or shame.

I don't trust anyone who doesn't trust me and my fellowman to make the best decision about my life, who believes that the democratic process we have chosen for ourselves without coercion or undue influence is the wrong one, and who would champion the equivalent of a dictatorship of thought -- all for my mine and my fellowman's benefit. I don't trust anyone who would sweepingly declare the political process to be an opiate, illusory, who has not offered himself in the agora to lead the people to his political utopia where the people have not succumbed to the debilitating effects of opioids. Either you have the conviction of your principles or you don't. So far as I can see, the democracy-is-bad-for-the-economy bandwagon is made up of the all-hat-no-cattle cabal.