Democracy Doesn’t Work

A friend of mine recently complained about the way government was creeping into and controlling every phase of her life.

“As government expands, my individual freedoms contract.” She complained.

Government is expanding, but not as a result of some nefarious plan by a liberal cabal to steal the rights of their freedom-loving subjects. It’s the subjects themselves who are demanding the growth of big government.

It is the nature of a democracy to be responsive to its citizens. After all, if the majority of those citizens, or the majority of those who vote, are displeased, the rascals who currently run the government will be thrown out and replaced with wise men and women who will give the people what they want.

The current crop of rascals, therefore, have a strong motivation to listen to every howl and tantrum from the masses. Unfortunately, we are not a single mass. We are a group of masses each with its own special interests.

We join AARP and demand larger social security payments then go to a Tea Party and rage against higher taxes. First, its off to a Parent Teacher’s meeting to protest the school’s plan to eliminate the marching band (accompanied by a threat to throw out any member of the school board who considers such a thing), then its off to the ballot box to vote against the county commissioner who raised the property taxes that go to support the school.

Often it isn’t a single individual acting in such a hypocritical fashion. Perhaps a group of concerned parents will come together to support a school program. Those parents will understand that taxes will have to be raised if that program is to be saved. They will campaign hard for their pet project and win the support of schoolboard members who don’t want to be thrown out of office. But a second group of patriots are simultaneously working hard to reduce the county’s tax rate. They will go to meetings of their own and argue, quite reasonably, that high taxes are suppressing the growth of business in the region. Local government leaders will, of course, bow to perceived public opinion.

At every level of democratic government, one interest will campaign hard for their right to swing their arms while an opposite group will fight to protect their noses. All the while, elected officials will balance between the two parties, trying to please both, but antagonizing everyone.

It boils down to one simple principle. Everybody wants something and no one wants to pay for it. Politicians thought they could please us by borrowing the money but we caught on to that trick and are now complaining that they are morgaging our children’s future.

There is another, sadder solution to which politicians can resort – change the public’s mind about what they like or dislike. Millions now go into ad campaigns aimed, not at improving the situation, but at making the public think that things are getting better. The party out of power, meanwhile, will spend its millions trying to convince voters that everything is horrible right now, but will improve as soon as they get into office.

They raise these millions by quietly promising government windfalls to big corporations. Unfortunately, most politicians are honest and they will try mightily to keep every promise they make. They WILL give the voter every goodie he wants, plus more that he didn’t even think about wanting. They WILL reduce government interference in individual lives by reducing oversight on how these goodies are distributed and consumed. They
WILL reduce taxes so each voter won’t pay out as much as he gets in. They will, quietly, also give the captains of industry the contracts they sought when they financed the campaigns on both sides. And finally, they WILL do all of this and balance the budget just like the public wanted. Or at least they will try until their time in office is up and disgusted voters throw them out.

It is obvious that democracy won’t work. A government that responds to the desires of the majority soon finds that voters are demanding and, in mass, are irrational. But what can be done? Throughout history, many different types of government have been tried and all have failed.

Sometimes benevolent and wise kings have attended to the needs of their subjects without giving in to their frivolous wants. They leave a strong, happy kingdom to an heir who is or, more likely, is not so able of a ruler. Finally, discontented subjects have overthrown or stripped of power almost every king. Dictatorships rarely last longer than the lifespan of one man. Although theocracies seem to work in countries where only one religion is practiced they have fallen out of fashion in more religiously diverse countries. Some anarchists and libertarians advocate the disolution of all government.

They are right up to a point – no government really works well. Government is a group effort and human beings are inherently selfish creatures who might understand in their minds the value of contributing to, say, the building of a sewer system, but in their greedy little hearts they want very much to take their money and spend it on something more fun – like a stereo system.

But we live in groups and groups must have government. We could perhaps radically reduce our population until each surviving person could live alone in perfect liberty. This is the only way to achieve perfect freedom, but most people would reject that solution as well.

Once in place, democracies tend to survive because people would rather govern themselves no matter how imperfectly. It is maddening to have to share that power of self government with other groups whose interests are dissimilar, even opposite of our own. Most people have had fantasies of the “perfect” world that would follow expelling “those people” from our political landscape.

Since no better, or at least no more desirable, government has been invented yet, we will have to suffer each other’s foolish wants until we collapse under the burden of it.

I wonder what comes after that.