Abstract
One of democracy's fatal flaws is its speciesism.
Introduction
As we saw in our thought experiment on the Sea-People’s Citizen Assembly Scenario, democracy can work perfectly well yet still deliver genocide, ecocide and other undesirable ends.
What is Speciesism?
Philosopher Peter Singer, who specialises in subjects like animal ethics, writes in Animal Liberation Now (2023 version) pp4–5:
Speciesism, in its primary and most important form, is a prejudice or bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species, on the basis of species alone.
Secondary speciesism occurs when, for example, humans favour dogs over pigs.
Singer believes that speciesism (a type of bigotry), is inculcated into small children in Western society (otherwise p245 Children have a natural love of animals
), partly to encourage them to consume meat knowing that it is animal flesh.
Conclusion
These undesirable (and unjust) ends are due to an essential flaw in democracy, that as a political system it only takes account of the expressed views (or will) of humans, or a subgroup of humans. This is not a flaw of biocracy, a political system which opposes the speciesist orientation.
More flaws of democracy will be explored later.
Democracy's flaws: Speciesism: Democracy 0 – Biocracy 2 by Sleeping Dog is licensed under CC BY 4.0
