Hello, everyone. I thought we would get back to a Week in Pandemonium after the election. Now, I have waded into politics on this blog before, and it went disastrously. Still, I’m inclined to weigh in again as I am a recovering political junkie. In the interest of avoiding a Twitter war, I will avoid saying much about the current election other than that I voted for Harris for President and for Republicans down ballot. Instead, I’ve decided to lay out an idea that I’ve been munching on for a while. Hear me out: we need a real government and a fake government.

We currently live under a system called liberal democratic capitalism which is characterized by two phenomena: 1. It has minimized the amount of violence, disease and starvation humans beings deal with on a daily basis while maximizing freedom, wealth and our lifespans. 2. It makes us feel like shit. This second point exists in tension with the first point.

Consider: right now, in America, we have an awesome economy despite having a worldwide epidemic just four years ago. Unemployment is four percent. Inflation was a problem for a while, but has recently come down to normal levels. Wage growth is strong, amazing devices are being created every day to improve our lives, and while there’s more war than there was say, ten years ago, historically, the amount of state-on-state conflict and the deaths caused thereby are at all time lows.

Yet, if you look around, everybody is miserable. Why? The way we got here is stunningly unnatural and counterintuitive. Human beings expect society to get better when we put aside our differences, rally around a competent and moral leader, and make common sacrifices for the common good. That’s not how our system works. Our system works by assuming human beings are selfish, because they are. Rather than asking people to come together, capitalism encourages people to compete against each other for the base motivation of money. Our government is run by clowns, and our system of government works by dividing power and pitting the clowns against each other in order to minimize the damage they can do. In a liberal society, there’s a great deal of skepticism that we could ever agree on what the “common good” is, much less agree to make personal sacrifices for it.

The end result, as I see it, is that We the People are constantly endangering the Golden Goose because we vote based on our erroneous guts rather than the available evidence. How do we fix this problem? We need two governments. The first government could be the government we have now, exercising roughly the same powers. It would have checks and balances, a division of power, and a Bill of Rights. The only difference is that to vote for these people, every person would have to pass the same citizenship test that immigrants must pass to become U.S. citizens. Most people would fail.

For those people who can’t pass the test, or who don’t bother, there will be a second government which is basically an elected monarchy with no power. Yes, 90% of the public wouldn’t vote for the President but for a King or Queen whose job it is to say and do things that make the public feel good. When a recession happens, the real government can take measures to solve the problem while the Monarch can pass out food to poor people for the cameras. During war, the Monarch can serve in the military and sell war bonds in commercials while the real government, made up of uncharismatic technocrats who don’t know which end of the gun to hold, allocates the necessary money to achieve the war’s objectives and appoints generals who conduct the war per their expertise. On social issues, the Monarch would either rail against Christian Nationalists or Transgenderism depending on which party won the last fake election. I assume one party would run someone like Tucker Carlson and the other party would run someone like Marianne Williamson.

The purpose is to have one government do the things necessary for a stable, prosperous society and to have another government that makes people feel good. You could even bribe people to vote for the fake government with paraphernalia or beer. Respectable news organizations could continue covering the real government, while an alternative ecosystem would cover the fake government like how ESPN covers sports and wrestling. The way I see it, if the public is going to treat elections as a form of entertainment, let’s stop fighting it and build a system that incorporates that tendency. If you don’t know which branch of government passes laws or you think the unemployment rate is currently 50% or you believe we need to withdraw all of our troops from Agrabah then please vote for a powerless king, not a public servant.