Has any govt. ever bothered about the majority?
History has seen various forms of govt. with the vast majority of the world which had trade contacts following a more or less similar form of govt. during the same time. Initially, there would have been the tribal rule where a tribal chief would have been the ultimate authority on everything to do with the people who he ruled over. And this position of tribal chief was largely hereditary with the son of the chief becoming the next chief even if he was a spoilt brat of the first order. And as things became larger in scale and more organized, it became a monarchy which again ran purely on the whims and fancies of the king. In both forms of govt. my guess is that initially, the first generation ruler would have maybe been chosen on consensus and would have probably ruled well, but as time and generations passed a dogmatic rule would have ensued which did not take into account the interests of the majority and dissent against unfairness or injustice would have been crushed by an organized gang run by the ruler. Lucky people would have been able to flee from this ruler to a more merciful and just ruler if they could ever get to know of the existence of such a ruler considering that no decent source of information existed then and no decent transport existed either.
And then the French revolution happened which brought democracy to most parts of the western world and democracy was established in a considerable part of the eastern world after the world wars. Even after democracy was established, there was considerable resentment of govt. giving in to special interest groups of those days like rich traders and merchants and industrialists of the industrial revolution who brought in huge money to the powers that were ruling. Though the western world was democratic, they did not seem to think that the rest of the world deserved it and instead ruled over their colonies in the same monarchical manner that they were ruled. The greed for more colonies led to two world wars. And democracy got established in a decent portion of the eastern world after the second world war.
Everything seemed pretty decent in the western world after the second world war till recently. Now, it looks like democracy seems to plagued with giving in to the noises and threats made by special interest groups and the press which was supposed to be a check on democracy from going haywire has also caved in to the pressure to appease special interest groups(women, gays and now recently muslims). There are special programs to spend money on each of these groups irrespective of whether it serves any purpose or not and laws getting passed all the time to appease each of these groups. And there does not seem to be any way to get govt's to stop wasting taxpayer money on unncessary things which do nothing but make life difficult for the silent majority and appease the SIG's.
My feeling is that govt. wants to spend money just to ensure that the people involved in the whole implementation of the programs get money and the people in the govt. who sanction money to get spent for such programs also make money by getting a portion of it from the people who get the money for implementation. I think the whole reason for this problem is that citizens are not like consumers who can easily switch from one product to another with minimal switching cost. A government is a monopoly for 5 years which gets taxes without much effort from citizens and the more citizens earn, the more the taxes the govt. gets though the effort of the government in ensuring that the person earns more is actually minimal. If govt. had to struggle to get taxes for each purpose just like companies have to struggle to get the money of the consumers, then that might act as a check to ensure that money is not wasted on unnecessary things and only important things involve money being spent on them.
Currently, the money contributed by the vast majority gets them very little benefit and a disproportionate share of the benefits goes to special interest groups. But unforunately, the vast majority is not able to make noises or cause trouble like the SIG's due to the fact that they are too busy trying to survive and that they are also to a large extent afraid of persecution and want some stability in life unlike most SIG's which are generally filled up with lunatics and hence they dont care even about dying and causing grief and sorrow to their families or the SIG's are politically powerful and hence have no fear of being persecuted for causing trouble.
Ne ideas on how to make sure the govt. spends money only on necessary things and not on nonsense which satisfies SIG's? In fact, my feeling is that if that is achieved, most SIG's would fade into oblivion because the reason for their existing is not genuine concern, but to get their hands on the tax money sanctioned to appease them.