Some might know the tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen. The story is about how betrayers sell new clothes to a vain Emperor. As the betrayers insist, the specific qualities of the clothes are such that they could only be seen by the cleverest and bravest people.
Today, the times of Emperors and Kings are almost gone, rather the nation became the sovereign in democracies. Hence, some know the term “Leviathan” used by Thomas Hobbes referring to the biblical-mythological lake monster: A polity in the form of a state as a super organism whose almighty is invincible.
But the old clothes of Leviathan often seem like a tight suffocating corset of a relation web made by lobbies. That is why the relatively new Pirate Party in Europe demands politics be made more transparent. They claim to tie a new dress for Leviathan. Thus, a new web of relations and power emerges, but in contradiction to other parties, it should show sympathies and antipathies more transparently.
Before the Pirates also other parties appeared more or less successful with the same desire to make politics more different and better. The common purpose is to care for the welfare of Leviathan. In principle the whole political dispute turns out to be how and under which framework to reach this goal.
Obviously, the Pirates want to give the population a share to define this aim. Other parties, however, often leave this, figuratively spoken with Adam Smith, to the invisible hand of the market.
In my view, the popularity of the Pirates is based on the feeling expressed by a growing number of people that this invisible hand prevents them from participating in the common wealth. But this relates to the participation in the achievements generated by the whole society rather than to defining the welfare itself. Hence, it is for example comprehensible, why the Pirates demand for an Unconditional Basic Income: to enable an almost bureaucratic-free economic participation for all.
However, only a minority is interested in the wealth of Leviathan. The majority is rather engaged in dealing with their own well-being. As long as Leviathan does not prevent them from doing so, the wealth of this only abstractly imagined being is indifferent for them. Eventually they elected, in a representative democracy, deputies who should care about Leviathan.
The new clothes, designed by the Pirates, are not really an attempted fraud. Further they are an offer for the cleverest in the state to participate in finding solutions for existing problems. As long as the new relation web of the Pirates has no negative impact on the decision making process, it could help to cure Leviathan.
