How do you convince someone that the government bribing its citizens to be content (like the free wheat and entertainment of ancient Rome) is wrong?
A better question would be, why should you convince someone that the government bribing its citizens to be content (like the free wheat and entertainment of ancient Rome) is wrong?
To answer both of you, you can point out that the government can’t afford it and the result will be disaster in the long run. IF that happens to be true. Or, you can point out that the bread and circuses are there to convince people to ignore other major injustices or problems; again, IF that’s true.
In practical terms as I see it, the “circuses” part probably is normally a bad idea; people can make their own entertainment, and there’s always going to be a more practical use for government resources. On the other hand, ensuring that everyone is well fed is a perfectly reasonable government function; an example of acting for the general welfare if anything is.
N.B.: The “Tytler Cycle” has never actually happened in human history. Many republics have self-destructed or been destroyed; but none by the path of the plebs voting themselves bread and circuses.
Well, the modern equivalent would probably be petro-states like Saudi Arabia and LIbya, where much of the GDP is from oil sales, and the income is used to fund a generous welfare state. The first obvious problem is that when the oil runs low, your economy is in trouble, and in retrospect you’ll probably decide you should’ve invested the money to develop other industries. I guess Rome made do with conquring other people and using taxes and slaves from the provinces to generate money. That’s probably not workable now, so I think a country rich in natural resources is the only way to fund such a state, and most such resources are prone to running out eventually.
You can point to Thailand for the answer. Under the Thaksin Shinawatra administration, many programs for the poor were implemented that kept him popular but just about broke the bank. That’s one of the reasons why so many of the poor here today want him back in power, and to hell with the expense. This is one of the direct causes of the present instability and unrest.
That’s a very disingenuous sentence.
“Bribing citizens to be content” would probably be wrong; and impossible. Giving them food and providing entertainment for them is not wrong. Characterizing the latter as the former is wrong.
I’m disinclined to assist in the OP’s request because of the disingenuity in the original conjecture.
A governemnt gives its citizens what they want. If doing that is “bribery”, then let’s all go live in caves and hit each other over the heads with clubs for food.
Well, in the case of Thailand, it really could be termed “bribery”. Thaksin was simply buying love. Or at least renting it. Sure, the citizens want the moon, but when it’s given them with no way to pay for it, trouble ensues.
There’s nothing wrong with giving citizens bread and circuses. Bread and circuses aren’t the problem. What they’re there to cover up for is the problem.
If the country can afford it, have all the bread and circuses you want!
If you look at where that quote comes from, it speaks directly of political apathy.
Why is this considered “wrong?” It’s not that the bread and circuses are going to bankrupt the state, the point is that they are a distraction from the things that will. It’s all the other problems that get ignored as a result–like hoards of barbarians pissed off from expansionist policies that now require a massive military industrial complex to deal with. But no one cares because a politician promised them a lolly-pop, or a new highway, or a call center.
It highlights how easily voters are swooned by political bribery into voting for an otherwise terrible government.
“Read my lips, no new taxes.”
“I will make the tax cuts for the wealthy permanent.”
“I will lower taxes for 95% of Americans.”
That’s not a debate. First, you tell us why it’s wrong, and then we debate.
Why is it wrong? In his book The Predictioneer’s Game, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita talks about rational choice theory, and how in a democracy politicians are required to placate large numbers of people. Politicians get what they want (power, prestige, security) by giving other people what they want, whether those other people be voters, business leaders, military leaders, other politicians, etc. In an authoritarian regime (like North Korea) politicians only need to placate a few hundred or thousand people. Kim Jong Il in North Korea only needs to placate a few thousand bureaucrats and military leaders to remain in control (if his generals and other powerful politicians turn on him, he will lose power). A president in a democracy has to placate 51% of the people who go out and vote every 2-6 years. So the more people a politician has to placate, generally the better a society is run (in theory). A politician who only has to please and placate a few hundred or few thousand aristocrats has no incentive to treat the millions of citizens living in that country well.
So bread and circuses are better than the government money going to statues and mausoleums of the dictator, or a fleet of Mercedes Benz cars to generals and bureaucrats.
However when used maliciously to distract people from serious structural problems in a country (if Nixon had handed out free sports tickets the day after watergate to distract people) then that is a problem.
I will just note that there is a difference between “wrong” and being “impractical”.
It is wrong if it represents a misuse of resources. If you’re paying for your bread and circuses by neglecting the sustainability of the economy or the environment, or you’re simply ripping people off with the intent that you’ll gain more votes from the people you’re bribing than you’ll lose from the people you’re screwing over, you are acting unethically.
I think that some “bread” is necessary - it helps create stability. And at some level it is the right thing to do.
“Circuses” are a different deal. Circuses are the distraction. Far fewer circuses are necessary to the running of a stable government.
However, everyone is going to have a different idea of where the line is for where “bread” and/or “circuses” are unfair and when we’ve overstepped from needs into circuses. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of public funding of sports stadiums - to me “circus” - but there is an argument to be made that the economic benefit is worth the investment.
I agree with this. The problem with the classical Roman “bread and circuses” was that the central government was taxing the outer provinces in order to subsidize the population in the city of Rome. Not only was this unjust in principle, it had the practical difficulty of creating an incentive for more people to move to Rome which caused a bigger burden on next year’s budget.
Feeding people because they were hungry might make sense. Feeding people because they happen to live near the capital doesn’t. The Roman government would have been better off bribing the city dwellers to move out of the city. Offer them a free tract of farmland somewhere. This would have increased the population (and the tax base) out in the prvinces and decreased the population (and the public expense) in the city.
But like was said, it’s all about who you need to placate. The Roman poor was a potential threat to the Roman government because Rome was the seat of power, and Italy was demilitarized. So, if the Romans riot, that’s a big deal and a threat to the government. If the provinces riot, first, it’s not a threat to government itself, and secondly, there’s always the military to put the riots down.
Again, I agree the government had reason for buying off the crowd. But it would have been a better plan to have spend more money trying to fix the cause of problem (by getting people out of the city) rather than just trying to avoid the effects of the problem.
To some extent, they did do that, by conscripting the poor into the military, and then setting up colonies for retired soldiers.
There were several attempts to do that during the Republic, by distributing the Ager publicus (state-owned land) to the poor; but all land-reform bills proved politically controversial (not least because many Senators were already making use of the Ager publicus for their own profit) and one effort resulted in the murder of the Gracchi brothers.