Paul Thomas: Has our democracy become too big a burden to these tycoons?

Is there someone in your life for whom you have trouble choosing a Christmas present?

For instance, someone who professes not to need or want anything, but would be mightily offended if you took them at their word? Or someone who demands flair and inventiveness from gift-givers and packs a sad if they get a book token or toiletries?

Your troubles are over. For a minimum of $250 you can get them a ticket to a champagne lunch at which multi-millionaire Alan Gibbs will outline what he would do if he was dictator for a year.

The event will take place next February at Gibbs' 404ha Kaipara Harbour farm (modestly named The Farm), home to 22 giant sculptures. According to Owen McShane, director of a think-tank that stands to benefit from the fundraiser, the sculptures are priceless and The Farm is comparable to the Tate or Guggenheim. Neither of these claims bears close scrutiny.

My immediate reaction was to wonder why Gibbs, who's reportedly worth $450 million and cruises the seas on his 194-foot yacht Senses, so dislikes our democracy that he fantasises about suspending it for a year.

Traditionally it has been the dispossessed and downtrodden who yearn to overthrow the system.

The fact that Gibbs will be joined in this exercise by Don Brash and Sir Roger Douglas suggests the manifesto which emerges will be more of the free market, small government, devil-take-the-hindmost stuff of which the Ayn Rand, libertarian right is so enamoured.

(The trio are directors of the Centre of Resource Management Studies. The other beneficiary, the Centre for Political Research, is headed by a former Act MP.)

Both outfits seem to regard global warming as a left-wing conspiracy. The Dominion Post described them as independent, presumably in the sense of being privately funded as opposed to non-ideological.

Again, when I remember the New Zealand of my youth and early adulthood, the monochrome, strike-ridden, regulation-bound Romania of the South Pacific, I can't help thinking that this tendency has done pretty well out of democracy in recent times.

The union movement borders on irrelevance, the Labour Party has abandoned any pretence of being socialist, the money markets are a law unto themselves, the accumulation of vast wealth and attendant conspicuous consumption are not merely accepted but admired, and you could sail an ocean-going yacht through the gap between the rich and the plodding, PAYE-taxed middle class.

But it's obviously not enough. The path to a free enterprise nirvana is being blocked by an ignorant, nervous nellie electorate which doesn't know what's good for it and time-serving politicians who mortgage our children's future by bribing their way into office.

It's time for the man on a white horse or, in this case, in an amphibious car. No doubt our would-be saviours envisage a benign dictatorship, but that's a contradiction in terms.

Dictatorship is the absence of legal restraint and opposition and those things can't be wished away, especially in a disparate and contentious society like ours. They have to be suppressed.

Perhaps this all stems from the Right's current obsession: closing the gap with Australia. I fear this is wishful thinking. Australia has two things we lack: vast mineral resources - hence the term the Lucky Country - and a big enough population to generate significant competition, one of the keys to a high-wage economy.

Journalists here are paid less than their Australian counterparts because there's so little competition: whereas Sydney and Melbourne have four daily newspapers, our main centres are one-paper towns. This, incidentally, is also why our media assets are so sought-after by overseas investors - despite preaching the virtues of competition, capitalists actually adore monopolies. They prefer betting on sure things.

In 1987-88 I worked on the Auckland Sun, the only daily newspaper launched in New Zealand since the 1920s. It was owned by the Brierley Boys, as thrusting a bunch of entrepreneurs who threw together a prospectus over a splendid lunch.

They pulled the plug after 333 days, at which point many of the journalists had to move to Australia.

I don't begrudge Gibbs his wealth, and have no reason to believe he's not a generous, public-spirited person. However, I'm sceptical of entrepreneurs' and tycoons' ability to see the big picture and greater good.

That's why the sensible ones stay out of politics and those that enter are seldom successful. That's why, in their Walter Mitty moments, they dream of sweeping away the gridlock and compromise of democracy.

But while the Chinese Communist Party would doubtless disagree, history shows that little good comes of dictatorships.