Another Billionaire for Democracy

The FT has a piece on a spouse of a Rupert Murdoch kid pushing democratic reform. There's a long tradition of disreputably gained wealth's philanthropic efforts to leave a shinier legacy. A most recent example is convicted monopolist Bill Gates, though Chairman Bill's charity might well end up being as notorious his operating system, that's another story.

Mrs. Murdoch is focusing on the elections process, no doubt it requires reform, but without addressing both the lack of democratic political organization – communication, education, discussion – before elections and our obviously archaic government institutions, the offices elections fill, questions of how elections are conducted will be of limited value.

Some might dismiss Murdoch's actions as democracy having descended to now becoming a cause for 21st century socialites, but there are a few examples when oligarchy sided with democratic reform, most famously Solon and Athens. In the 7th century BC, Solon brought forth constitutional, economic, and cultural reform helping move Athens to democracy — democracy that defined democracy as we understand it, such that democracy is understood at all at this point.

Writing six hundred years later in his Lives, Plutarch describes Solon's Athens,

“At that time, too, the disparity between the rich and the poor had culminated, as it were, and the city was in an altogether perilous condition; it seemed as if the only way to settle its disorders and stop its turmoils was to establish a tyranny. All the common people were in debt to the rich. For they either tilled their lands for them, paying them a sixth of the increase, or else they pledged their persons for debts and could be seized by their creditors, some becoming slaves at home, and others being sold into foreign countries. Many, too, were forced to sell their own children (for there was no law against it), or go into exile, because of the cruelty of the money-lenders. But the most and sturdiest of them began to band together and exhort one another not to submit to their wrongs, but to choose a trusty man as their leader, set free the condemned debtors, divide the land anew, and make an entire change in the form of government.”

Solon did two out of the three, destroying debt and constitutional reform, but he stopped short of land reform. Democratic reform in the 21st century would include debt, corporate, and government reform, I'm skeptical Mrs. Murdoch would really be interested.