Kakistocracy

I just learned a new word.  My source is this WSJ article, but it's in wikipedia, too.  Kakistocracy is from greek: Kakistos is the superlative of Kakos (κακός), meaning bad or evil, so Kakistocracy is government by the worst.  The wikipedia article interprets that to be rule by the stupidest.  But I don't think that's right.   It's government by the worst--the most corrupt, the most willing to lie, cheat, steal, kill for their own (or whoever is paying or controlling them) self interest.

In other words, pretty much what we get when we let the big banks, big oil, big military companies, the NRA, etc., have too much power in government.  Kakistocracy, Oligarchy, and Plutocracy are not mutually exclusive...in fact, they usually go together.   If you understand Gresham's Law, it's pretty much inevitable that it happens when you fail to regulate the powerful sufficiently:   The getting of power is always a competition.  If cheating is tolerated, those who cheat will quickly gain enough advantage that those who don't cheat will either be driven out of the competition or forced to begin cheating.  So it's inevitable that those that cheat the worst have the most power.

One of our parties has been fundamentally Kakistocrat for a long time, has stacked the supreme court with pro-corruption justices, has blocked enforcement of monopoly, financial, environmental, etc., regulation, has taken us into self destructive (but good for the plutocrats) wars.   It became almost literally kakistocrat when it began following the tea party script to try to get their way by mucking up the works of government...and not really succeeding at anything but mucking up the works.  The other party has been a feckless patsy...target for the Kakistorats lies, and occasionally duplicating their destructive policies.


A few pertinent references
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/tattoos-incompetence-and-the-heritage-foundation
http://www.timesherald.com/article/JR/20150729/NEWS/150729821
https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486272745