On 2013-11-28 09:56, I wrote:
Because of this problem, power tends to slide from the hands of elected officials into the hands of a permanent and unelected elite, which is the situation we now have in America.
In the short term this alleviates the problems of democracy, but in the longer term, which is to say now, discipline within the permanent unelected elite breaks down, and they all steal from each other and the public, they succumb to the tragedy of the commons, which is the situation we now have.
Oligarchy suffers from the problem of tragedy of the commons, which problem often winds up being solved by military dictatorship. Thus democracy tends to wind up in the rule of one man, either directly, as in the election of Napoleon the third, or by way of oligarchy, as with Napoleon the first.