Thinking About Democracy
Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted, I've been caught up in things, but one of the subjects I keep coming up across recently is the idea that democracy is somehow a sacred concept. Many libertarians believe in consensus politics, and I tend to differ from them on this particular front, so I figured I could do a post about it.
First of all, to clarify, I'm in no way saying that democracy is a bad concept, or even not the best system of government, what I'm going to propose is that the way in which we have made the concept of a 'democratic society' so sacred is dangerous to the concept of liberty and individual freedom.
I fully expect this blog post to be controversial, because democracy is a very touchy subject for many people, and has been enshrined in our language as an inherently 'good' thing, but I'm hoping to show that it isn't automatically the case.
I'm pretty sure most people hear the word 'democratic' and instantly link it to a positive concept. It's the will of everybody, it always produces the best outcomes, etc etc. The reality is that democracy produces the best outcome for the majority, but at the cost of a worse outcome for a minority.
Let's say there are ten of us in a bar. Typically we would all buy our own beers at £3 each. If democracy were perfect, it would be legitimate for any nine of us to choose one person to buy all of the beers, this produces a great outcome for nine of us (£0 cost) and a significant negative outcome for the one chosen individual (£30 cost).
Typically, this is where a defender of democracy will stand up and say 'Oh, but that one guy has the right to go to another bar,' but this is a red herring. The ability to flee a system alone does not make it a fair or just system.
Although I've made an economic argument, there are of course serious negative social ramifications of a democratic society. Imagine we have a village full of fundamentalist Christians. Do you believe that their majority gives them a right of dictatorship over the Muslim, Sikh and nontheist children in the village?
Should the schools all be forced to hang the cross in the classrooms and sing the Lord's Prayer before lessons, just because the majority want them to? Tyranny by a majority is still tyranny.
Should that village really be able to outlaw sex outside of marriage, homosexuality and blasphemy? Should they be allowed to demolish a Mosque because 60% of them don't like it? These are the extremities of democracy.
Another argument the defenders like to use is that a village or a pub is an arbitrary boundary being used to make a point, but the same issues apply to any arbitrary boundary (state lines included). One only needs to look at tax laws to see that the majority of us tend to support the oppression of other people.
But what's the answer? I'm obviously not calling for dictatorship or aristocracy as tyranny by minority is as bad or worse than tyranny by majority; quite possibly the answer would be a far more powerful British Bill of Rights or Constitution, enshrining the people's rights as untouchable by government. An ideal version would contain at least the following:
- The right to free speech, without the horrible get-out clauses in the ECHR, preventing the majority from censoring expression they don't like..
- The right to free association, preventing the majority from forcing the minority to abide by authoritarian segregationist policies.
- The right to self-determination (and self destruction), preventing the majority from banning concepts which they find immoral, such as drug use.
- A maximum of one transparent tax, levied at a single rate with a possible rebate (as in the FairTax) to prevent the state choosing winners and losers through the tax system, preventing the majority from imposing ideological taxes onto the minority.
- The end of state provision of health and education, with state only allowed to provide access to private sector health and education (without prejudice to provider) to those unable to afford it, preventing the majority from imposing ideological services (and the bill) onto the minority - millionaires don't need free healthcare.
- The guarantee of British sovereignty and withdrawing powers from the EU, although this would probably have the support of the majority, so it's more of a limitation of the democratically elected government.
- All new laws to be challenged by the Bill of Rights before entering the statute books, not after they've had somebody arrested and their life turned upside-down.
As Thomas Jefferson once said, “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
Enjoy this article?
License
Calendar
Recent Comments
- Luzdeiny on Are Travellers Not Natural Libertarians?
- Mike Hawes on Why an Annual Land Value Tax is an AWFUL Idea
- Henry Law on Why an Annual Land Value Tax is an AWFUL Idea
- Paul Lockett on Why an Annual Land Value Tax is an AWFUL Idea
- Fraggle on Why an Annual Land Value Tax is an AWFUL Idea
July 27th, 2011 - 19:18
Read my blog post today: I have come to the conclusion that it precisely the democratic state that must be broken — dismantled and abolished.
http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/07/kevin-carsons-response-to-my-critique/
August 6th, 2011 - 16:25
“…with state only allowed to provide access to private sector health and education to those unable to afford it…”
I understand that it’s a step up from what we have now, but by saying that your saying that the free market can’t take care of the poor, which it can. the fraternal societies of the late 19th/early 20th century prove that people can band together and take care of themselves, providing not only healthcare and charity, but a sense of community and belonging. By making this redundant you make the poor dependent on the state and smash social ties in communities, which ends up perpetuating the problem the welfare state was designed to cure.
However all in all great post, I hope you start posting more often!
August 10th, 2011 - 01:41
I’m not saying that it can’t, I’m saying that I’m not 100% sure that it will do so immediately. Medical treatments, for example, in the 19th century, were nowhere near as expensive as they are today. There’s just no way you could have anything close to universal cover immediately for everybody, even if the market would eventually adapt and be able to provide that service.
August 11th, 2011 - 13:24
Without government tampering the price of medical treatments would be far cheaper. After all, I can’t think of one industry which has Higher prices today (adjusted for inflation) than 100 years ago. 100 years ago cars where a toy for the rich, and they pretty crap too. Today they are better, safer, faster and cheaper. The same is true for computers, mobile phones and most other products.
I don’t see any reason to believe why – absent interventions in the market place – medicine should be anymore unaffordable today than it was then, if anything it should be cheaper.
Your right that we won’t see fraternal societies popping up immediately, but we won’t see them appear at all if the government establishes medical care for people under a certain income.
October 25th, 2011 - 22:53
I’m a Christian and I don’t want to see Christian laws forced on others (many Christians seem to think Christian laws makes a Christian country) – I’d rather practically everyone was a Christian but non-Christians could live their life as they see fit, than have a slim majority as Christian and the rest subjected to the beliefs (or rather outward practices) of the Christians.
I find it odd that Christians often try to make out that without Christianity we wouldn’t have democracy as, whether or not this is true, democracy isn’t a particularly Biblical thing. With regards to the state, the Bible is silent, other than that you should submit to the state. In terms of the Church, the governance was always supposed to be through the Judges, which were people chosen by God that were shown to be of integrity that were there to settle disputes, etc. when needed, rather than to micro manage people’s lives (that’s my understanding anyway). However the people wanted a King like the other nations, so God gave in and let them have one, which kind of went a bit tits up. Fast forward to the Church and you end up with a similar structure with the Church in each city told to appoint elders, again of integrity and known to be in good standing, who again would settle matters and generally oversee things, but without necessarily getting stuck into micro-managing people. Again, however, it seems the Church wants to chuck that out and either have a very top-down structure with Priests and ministers that decree what happens, or on the other hand a system where everything is voted on and the majority wins. The first limits accountability whilst the second prevents people of proven integrity and insight making the best decisions about things which matter to the whole group or that are of particular importance and immediacy.
Quite how you apply this to the state I don’t know, because how would you choose to appoint when everyone would have a different criteria about what makes a decent person to be on the council that is formed? Perhaps elections for these posts are allowable (as happens now), but once these people are elected it is then up to them rather than the people to make the decisions (on the proviso that they keep the state small and out of people’s lives as far as possible). For this reason I don’t like referenda, and it leads to the situation where I want us to withdraw from the EU but I don’t want us to do it via a referendum. I want the elected representatives to see that it’s not best for the people of this country. Very frustrating when they don’t!
For me, it boils down to government being as local as possible and as non-interventionist as possible. Then the representatives will be accountable to the people, representative of the people’s best interests, and will not be unnecessarily interfering in the lives of others.
January 22nd, 2012 - 19:35
You are correct that the concept of democracy seems relatively unchallenged in the West (you could argue that we are quite possibly ‘brainwashed’).
However I would consider your ‘ideal scenario’ as rather right wing, but then I would argue that fundamentalist Libertarianism is very right wing anyway. History has shown us that when people live together there are winners and losers, and people don’t always tend to treat each other very well. We have progressed as a civilisation away from tribal structures and towards cultures and states. Rolling back the institutions which have achieved this progress seems regressive.
There is no such thing as maximum freedom for everybody. Freedom for the Pike is death for the Minnow. The freedom of you to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. One group’s freedom will always infringe upon the freedoms of another. To believe that allowing people maximum freedom to do what they wish is will create a better society is a rather Capitalist view of the world, and no one wants to return to the victorian-era workhouses.
Democracy isn’t perfect, but it ensures that if a group are oppressed, then they can only be oppressed by a majority through a formal, transparent voting structure. It is up to the other highly-developed modern institutions such as the Courts to ensure that no group of people can be oppressed, democratically or otherwise. In your vision, where do such ethical institutions fit in? How do you prevent a small group of people accumulating all of the land and rent in order to subjugate everyone else to their will via necessity? (We all have to earn a wage and have a roof over our heads).