Stop the votes and get on board with the glorious Elizabeth Farrelly revolution

Winston Churchill on November 11, 1947:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time …

Step aside, Winnie. Elizabeth Farrelly in The Sydney Morning Herald, March 2:

Why, despite two centuries of democracy, are we still in this angrifying ­feudal pickle? Because, in a word, elections. Elections are democracy’s worst and most dangerous aspect, an own goal exacerbated by the fact that this is counterintuitive. We think the election is the small guy’s secret weapon, our big win against tyranny, our chance to put the dopes and dunderheads out with the garbage and start over. Wrong. Elections are deeply ­undemocratic … absent a miracle, they’ll be democracy’s downfall.

Farrelly continues:

The election, as a device, both promotes the worst candidates and ­incentivises their worst behaviour … There’s much to recommend banning elections altogether and replacing them with randomly selected citizen juries that encourage collective wisdom and discourage self-interest.

Kindred spirit. Russell Brand in the New Statesman on October 24, 2013:

I have never voted. Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites … Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that’s not on the ballot. Is utopian revolution possible?

Brand interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on the BBC the following day:

Brand: I think there needs to be a centralised administrative system but built on …

Paxman: A government?

Brand: Yes, well, maybe call it something else. Call them like the Admin Bods so they don’t get ahead of ­themselves.

Paxman: And how would they be ­chosen?

Brand: Jeremy, don’t ask me to sit here in an interview with you, in a bloody hotel room and devise a global, utopian system.

Brand during that same interview:

I think the very concept of profit should be hugely reduced. David Cameron said profit isn’t a dirty word, I say profit is a filthy word.

Daniel Katz in Junkee on October 28, 2013:

Is “profit” really a dirty word? I can tell you one person who doesn’t think so: Russell Brand. That’s Hollywood star Russell Brand, worth an estimated $15 million. He has gone from a dirt poor drug addict to an exceedingly wealthy man, and he did it through accumulating profit. “Profit is bad” is one of those strange things that a lot of people say, but no one really believes — or, at least, people aren’t against making profit themselves, but they tend to complain when other people do it. There are, no doubt, a lot of people who would argue that an actor like Russell Brand is disgustingly overpaid. Brand might say he agrees, but clearly he doesn’t agree all that much, seeing as he just spent $2.2 million on a new bachelor pad rather than giving it away to people on lower incomes.

Back to the Farrelly revolution:

We are, after all, mostly chimp DNA. Status drives almost everything we primates do. Walk into any room and your first, split-second act is to categorise everyone there into “above” or “below” you.