I recently had a discussion with a good friend on the best form of Government in theory.

There have been many trials at different governments and ruler forms over the many years of all the countries in our world. Democracy, Communism and Monarchy are the most common. There are many variations of this as well. Even the Uk has a combination between democracy and monarchy even if the monarchs don’t do that much to affect the day to day lives of their citizens.

Democracy tends to be less affective because getting a large number of people to agree on something and move forward is often very difficult. Take the last election for example. There wasn’t much in it between the two major parties and when the two that combined for the greatest majority people said that wasn’t what they’d wanted (In ‘theory’ it was what the majority of people wanted put together).

Communism is another form of government that only kind of works. On a small scale it works fairly well. In fact most homes are small forms of communism. One or two people work bringing in the cash and able others do the housework etc. Leaving an environment where the weak (such as children or elderly) can be nurtered and protected.

However, in practice and large numbers communism proves less easy. Often it takes a great deal of oversight to ensure all the weak are looked after as well as the better people not taken advantage of. What often results is a few people bearing more than their fair share of the burden and certain people not being looked after with an even more select few getting richer off the backs of others work.

The biggest challenge all the different types face is corruption. In this not perfect world corruption lingers everywhere. Often in democracy and communism it’s hard to see who’s the corrupt party let alone remove them. As a result progress is slow and often hindered.

My prefered government is therefore, as my title suggests, dictatorship. But not just any dictatorship, a benevolent dictator. If the dictator is not corrupt in any way then they have the absolute power and ability to remove anyone corrupt from any form of control or office. By definition of being benevolent they will always do what they think is best for people as a whole. I guess the trouble lies in finding someone benevolent who will stay benevolent.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely – Lord Acton