Non-POM Elections

So what would a non-POM nation's elections be like?

The context of the election would be quite different than the context in a POM nation. For one thing, government officials would not be able to see to it that anyone got any money. Non-POM governments do not spend money. Non-POM governments do not allocate money. Non-POM governments do not generate procurement contracts. Non-POM governments do not regulate business activities in any way. Non-POM governments do not own land. In short, there is no way a non-POM government can make anyone else richer.

This removes a great amount of the motivation to offer bribes or to otherwise attempt to control the outcome of an election. With less motivation to cheat there will naturally be less cheating.

That brings us to the means of cheating. The powers that be today can hire people to carry out their orders to rig elections. A dictator can pay his secret police to do whatever is necessary to see that the dictator is announced as the winner of the election regardless of how it is done. But in a non-POM economy, the powers that be can't pay anybody since they cannot transfer money from their accounts (no matter how much money they have) into someone else's account. Therefore, the people who do their bidding will only obey if they think that what they are doing is going to generate a net benefit for others. Rigging an election is not likely to be seen as producing a net benefit. Also, those who would bribe a candidate would have to leave a "paper trail" if they bought luxuries and gave them to a candidate. But those gifts would not help the candidate get elected. The only way one could help a candidate get elected would be to attempt to convince others to vote for that candidate.

So how does one convince voters? No individual in a non-POM economy can control a significant part of the communications mass media. Therefore, to put information on TV or radio or newspapers or on the Internet will require cooperation from other people. Those who work in any communications capacity will not be paid for helping spread lies about anyone, especially candidates for office. In fact, they will be paid most for providing the most relevant and accurate information about the candidates. Thus it will be exceedingly difficult for an individual to gain the cooperation of enough people in mass media to spread lies about one or the other of the candidates for an office.

But let us assume that such has been accomplished and a lie has been widely spread about a candidate. In that case, anyone who brings to the attention of others that the lie has been spread would be paid for correcting the error. Thus, almost anyone who is exposed to campaign information can earn money by correcting errors in that information. So even if someone or some organization managed to spread a lie, the lie would probably be short lived. It would be soon contradicted and those who had helped to communicate the lie would lose money, as well as gain negative Declarations on their reputation.

In these circumstances it would take little time to present the relevant information about the several candidates for an office and to conduct the election. In fact, even if a candidate began to campaign many months before the election, the mass media would tend to ignore it.

Therefore, under the non-POM situation and circumstances, elections would be honest and the campaigns would be short. There would be relatively few ads and those would be to honestly inform rather than to argue for one candidate or another. Political parties would tend to be many and each centered around only a few issues. Most people would not care much about politics.