Working Out The Bugs
Like millions of others, I'm a fan of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers even though--and I'm hardly the first to notice this--it has no plot. Outside an opening and closing chapter about the bug war, it's pretty much a series of arguments (with a bit of action to illustrate them) regarding the society protagonist Juan Rico lives in.
This society is what makes the novel so controversial. The only people allowed to vote are those who have volunteered (you can't be drafted) and then successfully completed Federal Service. Heinlein has written elsewhere that only a small percentage of those serving are in the military, but the novel make it look like the vast majority are.
Anyway, I was just reading Wikipedia's enty on ST (don't you waste your time on Wikipedia when you're not watching YouTube, or are you more than Facebook/Twitter social type?) and I found the various criticisms of the novel intriguing.
It's a bestselling, Hugo Winner, but it's also been called poorly written, militaristic, fascistic, racist and utopian. I agree with that last one.
For that's what Heinlein is trying to do here--set up a perfect society. And why does it work? Because the book says it works. Even within the book when they discuss this question, the only answer given is they sort of came up with their system through trial and error and kept it up when they saw this was the way that worked.
Now this criticism could apply to all utopian novels. They describe allegedly perfect societies, but the only place we know their system works for sure is on the page.
But I don't believe Heinlein's society would even function well. Any system with any wealth and freedom needs democracy and basic rights to give people room to function as they see fit. (Oddly, most utopians, whether in literature or real life, don't give that much space for personal choice.) It may seem Heinlein's society has a lot of freedom, but in practice, I doubt it would work. His premise is after serving the public (in an apparently efficient government program) you'll have learned enough about the world to make wise decisions, and vote intelligently. But the trouble is, almost no matter who you deem is enlightened enough to vote, every group sees things through their prism, and what seems good for everyone tends to be what is good for the particular voter. Even if they didn't have any resentment for those who didn't volunteer, like they did, and only vote with everyone's best interest at heart, they will still best represent themselves and people most like them. Once you limit the vote to any subset, even if they are smarter than average, they will naturally start voting more power and money for themselves.
If Heinlein could get around that flaw, I'd be impressed.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:03 AM
2 Comments:
I believe you are right in your assessment that this system would not work.
However, I don't think you are properly summarizing RAH's argument for why he thinks it would work. It isn't that "after serving the public (in an apparently efficient government program) you'll have learned enough about the world to make wise decisions, and vote intelligently". Rather, it is that after serving the public by being willing to give even your life, you have now become (or been shown to be) at least somewhat altruistic. A soldier, by his nature, is not offering his life for his own clan of soldiers; he is offering it for his country. And, if he is willing to give his life, then he is also willing to give his vote in an altruistic manner.
This argument has flaws, and as embodied in the book it has even more flaws. As you mention, we don't really get much story, but it is made clear that the outbreak of the war is relatively recent, and until the war broke out, the vast majority of the volunteers were doing community service -- not military service. Which makes RAH's argument fail for all these people.
In Expanded Universe (Heinlein's 1980 collection of assorted stories and essays) he spells out in more detail his argument in ST, and suggests some variations. Voting only for those who can do calculus, voting only for women, etc. And he makes it clear that his main point* is this: Rights must go with responsibilities. If everyone gets a franchise for free, they treat it as a joke. He also makes the point that I think I have quoted before: The main weakness of a democracy is the people are not accountable. In 1917, Czar Nikolai II realized he had horribly mis-ruled Russia. In the late 1970s, the American people did not realize that they had mis-ruled America through bad voting. They never do.
* This is his main point in 1980; whether he is merely explaining, or actually revising, his 1960 argument is beyond the scope of this post!
The people are held responsible for their voting--bad leaders is the punishment. (Alas, we're all punished, but that's the system.)
In any case, I don't see how you can have any objective measure of whether the people have voted well or not. If you could, then just have the person making the objective call choose your leaders to begin with.
My general point is that there is simply no group, no matter what they're background, that can reliably be called on to vote in any way except their own interest, thus allowing as many people to vote (okay, I'll allow certain restrictions, but they're not great) is, for all its flaws, better than allowing any subset.
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