Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire (14 page)

The immunity of the mob can produce a corrupting and degrading effect that utterly appalls those who were swept up in it, afterward. No viciously sadistic affair in the Roman Arena exceeds in corruption and degradation what a modern mob, anywhere in any nation today, including the United States, will do. The mob will do things that not one member of that mob will consider doing.

Immunity, and the sense of immunity, is the deadliest of corrupting influences. It is, in essence, simply the result of cutting off the normal negative feedback, the pain-messages that warn of excesses. Imagine yourself not only blinded, but deprived of all kinesthetic sense, so you could not tell where your limbs were, how hard your muscles were pulling, or whether you were touching anything; you would then be totally immune to external messages. You would certainly tear yourself to pieces in a matter of minutes.

The record of history seems to indicate one fundamental law of civilizations:
The Rulers must always be a minority group
, or the culture will be destroyed.

Note this: under the exact and literal interpretation of democracy, it is perfectly legitimate democracy for a ninety per cent majority to vote that the ten per cent minority be executed by public torture, in a Roman Arena style spectacle.

The advantage of having the Rulers a minority group is that, under those conditions, no group has the deadly feeling of immunity. The Rulers are a minority, and know it, and must rule circumspectly; like the
mahout
driving an elephant, they must rule always with the realization that they rule by sufferance only—not by inalienable right. The majority, then, knows it is ruled—that it is not immune to punishment, that it is not free to become a mob.

True popular democracy—true rule by the majority—establishes the government of the mob. It was the growing influence of the people of Rome, under the venal and practically inoperative rule of the Legions—the Legions wanted money, not political responsibility; they were fools, rather than villains—that built up to the demand of "Corn and Games!" and the consequences that followed.

A minority group, aware that it is a minority group, is also aware of the problems of other minority groups through direct, personal experience.

Long ago, Machiavelli pointed out that the Prince cannot rule in the face of the active opposition of his people; the Prince must rule circumspectly, for he is a minority.

So whatever system of choosing Rulers we may select for our Utopia—it must be a system that never allows any groups to achieve the position that, inevitably, every group wants to achieve—a position of security! The concept of "security" is, in essence, the same as "immunity"; I am secure if I am immune to all attack, or efforts to punish or compel me. The Rulers must never be secure; since they are to have the power of rule, they must not be a majority, so that there will be the ever-present insecurity of the potential threat of the great mass of people. The majority, on the other hand, must never have security from the power of their rulers—or they become a self-destructive mob.

This boils down to the proposition that we want a non-theoretical-rational test for selecting a minority group of people who will be, with high reliability, relatively wise, benevolent, and competent.

The simplest test for this, that does not depend on the rationale and prejudgment of the examiners, is the one the founders of the United States proposed—and which we have rejected. It's quite nontheoretical, and hence has a tendency to be exceedingly irritating to our sense of justice—sense of "what ought to be." The test is simply whether or not a man is competent to manage his own affairs in the real world about him; is he a successful man in the pragmatic terms of economic achievement?

The difference between a crackpot and a genius
is
that a genius makes a profit—that his idea is economically useful, that it returns more in product than it consumes in raw material.

Now it is perfectly true that competence does not guarantee benevolence. But it's also true we have, for this argument, agreed that we're not designing a constitution for Heaven, but for Utopia—an optimum engineering system, not a perfect system. Inasmuch as no one can define "benevolent," we're stuck on that one. But we can say this with pretty fair assurance: a man who consistently injures his associates will not have a successful business for long. A man may
hurt
his associates quite commonly, and be highly successful—provided his hurts are, however painful, essentially beneficial. The good dentist is a simple example. But the man who injures will not be successful for long; the "painless" dentist who is incompetent, and uses lavish anesthesia to cover up his butchery, for instance, doesn't
hurt
his patients, but won't remain in business long.

The founders of this nation proposed that a voter must have five thousand dollars worth of property—a simple economic test, perfectly pragmatic tied with no theoretical strings about how he garnered his five thousand dollars. The equivalent today would be somewhat nearer one hundred thousand dollars.

That particular form of the test is not quite optimum, I think; instead of a capital-owned test, an earned-income test would be wiser, probably. A man can inherit property without inheriting the good sense of the father who garnered it. But earned-income is a test of
his
competence.

It violates our rational-theoretical sense of justice, because not all men have equal opportunities for education, a start in business, et cetera.

But we're seeking a non-theoretical, non-"just", purely pragmatic test, so that alone would not be an argument against the economic-success test.

Also—to use the dental analogy in another context—if a certain man wants to be a dentist, and has never had the opportunity to study the subject, but sets himself up as a dentist, and wants to work on your teeth . . . why shouldn't he? Is it his fault he never had an opportunity to go to dental school? Why shouldn't he start trying out his own original ideas on your teeth . . .?

Are you being unfair to him if you refuse to allow him to practice on you?

And are you being unfair when you refuse to allow a man who never had an opportunity for an adequate education to practice on your nation's affairs? Look, friend—this business of running a nation isn't a game of patty-cake; it's for blood, sweat and tears, you know. It's sad that the guy didn't have all the opportunities he might have . . . but the pragmatic fact is that he didn't, and the fact that he can't make a success of his own private affairs is excellent reason for taking the purely pragmatic, nontheoretical position that that is, in itself, reason for rejecting his vote on national affairs.

There's another side to this pragmatic test, however; neither Abraham Lincoln, George Washington Carver, nor Thomas Edison ever had an adequate opportunity for education. The guy who bellyaches that his failure in life is due to lack of opportunity has to explain away such successful people as those three before he has any right to blame all his misfortunes on the hard, cruel world around. Those three individuals all get the vote, aristocrats, and formal intellectualists to the contrary notwithstanding. One un (formally) educated frontiersman, one Negro born a slave, and one nobody who never got beyond grammar school; three properly qualified Rulers. They made a success of their private affairs; let them have a hand in the nation's affairs. We do not care who their parents were; we need not concern ourselves with their children, for the children will vote if they, themselves make a success of their own private affairs.

Let's make the Test for Rulers simply that the individual's earned annual income must be in the highest twenty per cent of the population. This automatically makes them a minority group, selected by a pragmatic test. It bars no one, on any theoretical or rationalized grounds whatever; any man who demonstrates that he can handle his private affairs with more than ordinary success is a Voter, a Ruler. The earned-annual-income figure might be determined by averaging the individual's actual income over the preceding ten per cent of his life, taken to the nearest year. Thus if someone eighteen years old has, for two years, been averaging in the top twenty per cent—he votes. He may be young, but he's obviously abnormally competent. The system also lops off those who are falling into senility. It automatically adjusts to inflation and/or recession.

It isn't perfect; remember we're designing Utopia, not Heaven. We
must not
specify how the income is earned; to do so would put theory-rationalizations back in control. If a man makes fifty thousand dollars a year as a professional gambler—he votes. Anybody who guesses right that consistently has a talent the nation needs.

There may be many teachers, ministers, and the like, who by reason of their dedication to their profession do not make the required income level. If they're competent teachers and ministers, however, they'll have many votes—through their influence on their students or parishioners. If they're incompetent, they will have small influence, and deserve no vote.

The economic test does not guarantee benevolence; it does guarantee more-than-average competence, when so large a number as twenty per cent of the population is included. And while it doesn't guarantee benevolence—it provides a very high probability, for each successful man is being judged-in-action by his neighbors and associates. They would not trade with him, or consult him, if his work were consistently injurious.

There are exceptions, those eternally-puzzling areas of human disagreement between sincerely professed theory, and actual practice. Prostitution is perhaps the clearest example; for all the years of civilized history, prostitution has been condemned. It's been legislated against, and its practitioners scorned . . . by the same population that, through all the years of civilized history, have continued to support in action that ancient and dishonored institution.

The people who voted to keep Prohibition on the books were also those who contributed to the high income of bootleggers.

There are many such areas of human ambivalence; no theoretical or rational solution appears to be in sight. The simple fact remains that, by popular vote-in-action, not in theory, prostitution, illegal gambling, and various other socially-denounced institutions continue to win wide popular support.

So . . . Utopia still won't be Heaven. But maybe we can say it will never be a Blue Nose Hell, either!

O.K., friends—now it's your turn!

The anarchist writer Max Stirner said, "If slaves ceased to submit it would be all over with masters." True enough. But if the key to good government is wise and benevolent public officials, how does one go about training them?

He dragged his bags and cases out of the car, dumped them on the concrete, paid off the driver. Then he turned and looked at the doors that were going to swallow him for four long years.

Big doors, huge ones of solid oak. They could have been the doors of a penitentiary save for what was hand-carved in the center of a great panel. Just a circle containing a four-pointed star. And underneath in small, neat letters the words: "God bless you."

Such a motto in such a place looked incongruous; in fact, somewhat silly. A star was all right for a badge, yes. Or an engraved, stylized rocketship, yes. But underneath should have been "Onward, Ever Onward" or "Excelsior" or something like that.

He rang the doorbell. A porter appeared, took the bags and cases into a huge ornate hall, asked him to wait a moment. Dwarfed by the immensity of the place he fidgeted around uneasily, refrained from reading the long roll of names embossed upon one wall. Four men in uniform came out of a corridor, marched across the hall in dead-straight line with even step, glanced at him wordlessly and expressionlessly, went out the front. He wondered whether they despised his civilian clothes.

The porter reappeared, conducted him to a small room in which a wizened, bald-headed man sat behind a desk. Baldhead gazed at him myopically through old-fashioned and slightly lopsided spectacles.

"May I have your entry papers, please." He took them, sought through them, muttering to himself in an undertone. "Umph, umph! Warner McShane for pilot-navigator course and leader commission." He stood up, offered a thin, soft hand. "Glad to meet you, Mr. McShane. Welcome to Space Training College."

"Thank you," said McShane, blank-faced.

"God bless you," said Baldhead. He turned to the waiting porter. "Mr. McShane has been assigned Room Twenty, Mercer's House."

They traipsed across a five-acre square of neatly trimmed grass around which stood a dozen blocks of apartments. Behind them, low and far, could be seen an array of laboratories, engineering shops, test-pits, lecture halls, classrooms and places of yet unknown purpose. Farther still, a mile or more behind those, a model spaceport holding four Earthbound ships cemented down for keeps.

Entering a building whose big lintel was inscribed "Mercer's," they took an elevator to the first floor, reached Room 20. It was compact, modestly furnished but comfortable. A small bedroom led off it to one side, a bathroom on the other.

Stacking the luggage against a wall, the porter informed, "Commodore Mercer commands this house, sir, and Mr. Billings is your man. Mr. Billings will be along shortly."

"Thank you," said McShane.

When the porter had gone he sat on the arm of a chair and pondered his arrival. This wasn't quite as he'd expected. The place had a reputation equaled by no other in a hundred solar systems. Its fame rang far among the stars, all the way from here to the steadily expanding frontiers. The man fully trained by S.T.C. was somebody, really somebody. The man accepted for training was lucky, the one who got through it was much to be envied.

Grand Admiral Kennedy, supreme commander of all space forces, was a graduate of S.T.C. So were a hundred more now of formidable rank and importance. Things must have changed a lot since their day. The system must have been plenty tough long, long ago, but had softened up considerably since. Perhaps the entire staff had been here too long and were suffering from senile decay.