Democracy or small government. Choose one.
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If that’s the limited choice, it would be for small government.
False choice.
A sustainable democracy has to be relatively limited in scope, simply because it is so difficult to get involved people to agree on much. Protect the country, police the streets, provide a hand-up to those who have been knocked down. That is about it.
The intrusive nanny states we see today may call themselves “democracies”, but they are not. Anybody who wants to be a politician is, by definition, not representative of the millions of his peers who do not want to be involved in politics. This co-opting of democracy has been possible only because of an unprecedented rapid increase in living standards made possible by cheap fossil fuels — we can afford the burgeoning overhead. As the ear of cheap fossil fuels draws to a close, so will the era of the undemocratic “democracy”.
Of course, what will replace the nanny state is completely up for grabs. Could be smaller, more focused democracies. Could be Stalinist killing machines. Interesting times!
If I were offered only these two choices, then it would have to be small government, because I could always reach an official in power if I disapproved of his/her non-democratic ways. Whereas, in a large democracy, the chabce of being near any politician to make your voice heard is low, and you risk being classified as a number in an amorphous mass.
I vote for the guy promising small government. And if he doesn’t deliver, I’ll vote for a different fellow promising the same thing.
So we chose between a form of government and a size? I will choose small government. There never was a democracy that didn’t evolve into tyranny.
I have some idea of what a small government looks like, as I grew up with a fairly decent example, although certainly far from ideal.
Give me an example of a real world democracy and I’ll try to decide.
I vote for small government. A representative republic. With a twist from long ago: Every name on the ballot has to have an additional choice, other than just elect or reject. Ostracism. A plurality of votes results in banishment from the country, and from political activity, for at least ten years (do I hear twenty?).
I have no idea if Ostracism actually accomplished anything in ancient Athens, but it sure would be fun.
Tony, you’re off to Elba . . .
Small government. Democracy is for people who want to gain economic power using political means.
Assuming the choice is between a large democratic government and a small non-democratic one, so long as the small government is really small (and not just small compared to today’s) and can be kept small (which seems to be the really difficult bit) then small government wins hands down.
Simply because with small government protecting property rights and defending against aggression then markets will function freely and a free market is the most democratic of institutions as well as all its other benefits.
I vote for small government.
Why? Well, in a small government, most of the time, almost all of the time I have instant “democracy” of my own – I vote where I spend my money and who provides my services – it has a kind of personal democracy built in – hyperdemocracy, if you will. In the case of “Democracy”, it is highly likely to become Statist and/or Tyranny of the Majority, so my say will count for zero, rendering the pretense of “Democracy” irrelevant.
Constitutionally-limited (small government) democracy.
Without accountability, why would a small government stay small? The two really have to go hand in hand. With big government there is highly restricted democracy because too many depend on the state for a living. Without democracy there would never be the prospect of small government.
CFM,
Elba? Bad idea. You know what happened after that don’t you? Sorry, Tony it’s straight off to St Helena.
Apart from that I think this is a silly question. Not up to your usual standards Thaddeus.
If it were a sufficiently small and limited government, preferably absolutely bound in what it could do and bound by and within law – Then small Government has got to beat a large democracy, as you would practically have far more actual freedom under the former, by being able to decide things for yourself and arrange them to suit your needs.
Small government, as long as it can be kept small by some effective means (constitutional, or otherwise?)
Is a consensus emerging here?
How small can a government be before it can be considered not an authoritarian oppressive regime?
I would still have to vote for some form of democracy, if only for the checks and balances that prevent the Tony Blairs of this world from embarking on their crusades of civil rights genocide.
If most people do not support strictly limiting government it is not going to remain small.
A classic example is the old consitutional republic that was the United States.
Most of things that the F.D.R. Administration did were unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court went along with some of them (such as the stealing of privately owned gold and the voiding of private contracts – both upheld in two judgements in 1935).
After the election returns of 1936 (F.D.R. won 60% to 40%) resistance declined ever more.
In short although the United States was a Constitutional Republic NOT a democracy – the fact that the people had supported a man who had used the Constitution to wipe his backside on meant that resistance was doomed.
Whatever the bits of paper say – if the people do not understand and support them, they will not work to limit government.
Sorta depends on what you mean by ‘democracy,’ does it not? For the ordinary man it means voting for politicians, but that’s not the real essence.
If you’re referring to the real meaning, then it’s an easy choice in favour of small government because there can be popular elections to choose government office-holders without it being a democracy.
If, otoh, you mean what the ordinary man has in mind (which I doubt, but could be possible), and hence suggesting a choice between a potentially large democratic government and a small unelected government, then actually I must cast my lot with democracy as I’d under that have a better chance to get the nature of government improved through a social change less likely to end in bloodshed.
JJM
You could say, Paul, that without the constitution things would have been even worse. I mean, consider the unemployment rates – there was a good chance Roosevelt would turn into a Mussolini and, fair’s fair, he didn’t.
Strictly speaking, of course, this is an unfalisifiable hypothesis because no matter how bad things get you can always imagine them being worse.
Anyway, as Popper said, the important question in government is not ‘who rules?’ but ‘how do we get rid of bad rulers without bloodshed’. I think democracy is more or less the best answer to that question we’ve got yet, not perfect, but not bad either. Small government, on the other hand, is (part of) the answer to the question ‘what should government do?’.
So, I’m going to buck the trend and plump for democracy, or, better, representative government – it wouldn’t have to include universal suffrage. A non-representative small government that decides it wants to be a big government instead can’t be opposed, but we always have the chance of voting in a small government under democracy. This is only a heuristic thing, though. I’d rather live under Blair than Pinochet, but I’d rather live under Pinochet than Allende.
Gabriel: snap!
*takes the pile of cards*
Small government, I suppose, though I think it’s kind of a crap shoot. A small government run by a handful of unelected people can get bigger, but so can a democracy. And if you don’t like what’s going on, at least the handful of unelected leaders are fewer people to convince than the majority of the populace.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that a culture that values liberty is more important than government structure. If the people don’t value liberty, chances are there won’t be any, and vice versa. See Paul’s examples, for instance.
the only way to get people to except a small state goverment is to convince them its the right way to live.
a small govt that didn’t have the consent of the people wouldn’t stay small for long as it would need more and more state security and more and more repessive laws to keep the dissenting members of the population in check.
so democracy
Small government because it is assumed that whatever methodology it takes on it can be overthrown more easily. And it is (perhaps) accepted that any government will move outside its size and purpose, and that is when it should be brought down. As Jefferson said, revolution is inevitable. Doesn’t mean a bloodbath in the streets, and it may be LESS bloody if the scale is limited in the first place; revolutions can be relatively peaceful (I see anti-prohibition as a form of revolution from bad law, and granted that was a Federal level fuck up).
Also, if there is a network of smaller governments within, say the US, then there is likely to be a choice to choose from, and if the one you are subjected to does not suffice, you can find one that does, without having to journey half way around the globe. The US used to be somewhat like this. Now with the overarcing Federal level, the only option is to leave the whole mess behind.
In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that without the Constitution things would have been worse. The Supreme Court actually put up quite a bit of resistance to the New Deal at first (being 1933-1937). Among other things, it struck down the Railroad Retirement Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act and even the New Deal’s flagship – the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Supreme Court came in line only after FDR went public with his brazenly unconstitutional court-packing scheme. Even though he ultimately didn’t succeed, most historians credit the floor debates on court-packing in the Senate with having scared some New Deal support into the Court (and also, of course, FDR got to appoint some judges of his own in the usual manner after 1937).
But on the whole, I think it’s pretty clear that Constitutional protection saved the US from outright national socialism (which isn’t to say, of course, that those protections weren’t seriously eroded by the disastrous Roosevelt regime; we are still dealing with the consequences of such erosion today, and we – obviously – haven’t been able to completely halt or reverse the trend toward statism. Serious damage was done, no question about it.).
In a perfect world I would go for a small state, because fundimentally what I want is to be free from coercion and this requires that there be as few forces around (like the state) out to coerce me as possible.
In this world I would go for a democratic state, because it fails in a way that is easier to recover from than a non-democratic state.
This also shows why open borders are important as they give the easiest way to improve the polity that you are living under. Just convert your wealth to a transportable form and move to a better one.
Now with the overarcing Federal level, the only option is to leave the whole mess behind.
And even that isn’t a whole lot, given the other countries out there. “Do you want a really big government or a really big government?” isn’t much of a choice.
I agree with what Joshua and others have said.
On the National Industrial Recovery Act I seem to remember that it was all nine justices. And they did not void the Act on the grounds that it applied interstate commerce powers to economic activity within a State (as the simple history works say) – the judgement was more radical than that.
The Court declared that the National Recovery Administration was acting like a legislature – making up endless regulations with the force of law (using the N.I.R.A. as a vague “enabling law”).
In this the Court (“liberals” as well as “conservatives”) showed an understanding of the warnings of such men as the English ex Chief Justice Hewitt (see his “The New Despotism” 1929) against “delegated leglislation” i.e. a Congress or Parliament acting as a blank cheque writer for the arbitrary power of executive agencies.
It was this that led F.D.R. to make his response that the Court had a “horse and buggy” view of leglislation – i.e. that they wanted elected people in Congress to actually vote on things that had the force of law (not to just give administrators the power to do whatever they felt like). This is why F.D.R. and co worked so hard to get the judgment de facto reversed (yes the Chief Justice did cave in after the court packing threat – but it was the result of the election of 1936 that really knocked the stuffing out of constitutional forces, World War II then ended it).
For this is the inner truth of the “democratic revolution” of the 1930’s it was not democratic at all.
In “modern” nations (the U.S. the U.K. and so on) most things with the force of law are never voted by anyone.
They are not voted on by the people (so they are not direct democracies) and they are not voted on by the politicians (so they are not representative democracies).
“But the modern state can not operate if the politicians have to vote on the regulations”
Quite true – which is why there is no choice between a strictly limited government and democracy.
Because if government is not strictly limited democracy breaks down – which it has.
Most of the vast web of regulations (that have the force of law) were not read, debated or voted on by any ordinary person or politician (local, State or Federal).
The modern mega government means that democracy can not operate.
Still I continued to believe that only if the majority understanding what is going on is there much hope for freedom.
Take the example of an absulute monarchy – why should such a monarch reduce his own powers over society? “Because it will increase the long term value of his kingdom” – real Kings (Hans Herman Hoppe to the contrary) do not tend to think like this.
And besides which if every time a King tried to deregulate or cut government spending the people rioted (because they have been taught that price controls and …… and “public services” spending are good) how far would he get?
Of course knowledge is not enough – the people must also have SPIRIT.
For example, people talk about how President Bush has led to New Hampshire being lost – but really it was lost years ago.
It was lost NOT when the judges declared that a State property tax be imposed (without anyone voting for it) to fund yet more government education spending.
The State of New Hampshire was lost – when the people did nothing about this, when they meekly obeyed.
Even with government schools most of the people knew about the history of resistance to unelected powers-that-be but they failed to show any resistance.
Their forefathers would have taken the men in robes and covered them in tar and feathers.
But the modern people showed they had no spirit. It was not the democracy that let them down – they let themselves down.
So they do not deserve freedom, because they refuse to stand up and fight for it.
“That is mob rule” call it what you like, but that is the only way that freedom can be preserved. For large numbers of people to care – and to show by direct action that they care.
For example, the mass of people who went to Nashville a few years ago (at the request of talk radio) to prevent a general income tax being brought (in violation of their promises) in by the (Republican) Governor and the State Legisluature.
A little example would be the pathetic submission of the people in the little village in New York State.
The Federal Court has told them that not only can not kick out vagrants (sorry “day labor” people) from their village, but that they must pay these invaders of their village half a million Dollars in legal fees.
Once upon a time (even in Northern States like New York), the people (not some local police – most villages and towns of this size did not have any) would have asked the invaders to go. And if they refused to go they would have taken their firearms and shot them down like the rats they are (and shot their lawyers as well).
“But that is terrible, people can take the law into their own hands”.
That is the real attitude of the establishment. Democracy is wonderful – as long as the people do what the elite tell them to do.
That is why the question in the post is a false choice. For modern nations are not democracies, the people (neither local communities or nationally) have no say on most things.
Being peaceful is wonderful and I fully support it. But people should only be peaceful when they are left alone – not when they are taxed without their consent, or when invaders come to their town.
“What about Americans in Iraq” – I have not heard that Americans or British people are hanging about in local parks , supposedly, seeking to be hired as day labor. Nor are they claiming various benefits to be financed by local taxpayers.
Small government without a doubt. My problem with democracy has always been that the lazy and greedy have always used democracy to enrich themselves and impoverish others. Its also a means that they settle old scores.
Some interesting, thoughtful, comments and observations by Paul Marks.
Paul,
Which is precisely the attitude of a recent Eurocratic wonk who on hearing the news that France(!) and Holland had told Brussells precisely where to stuff the EU constitution in a referendum stated that they’d just keep on holding referenda until it does go through…
You’re very right about “spirit” though. I am full of piss and vinegar but I wonder about the rest of my countrymen. If we had the cojones the people responsible for the ID card bill would end-up waiting in an NHS queue (not sitting down) to be sorted out via a deeply unpleasant proctological procedure.
I’d lay-off the illegals though. I have no probs with immigrants if they play the game. It’s not their fault. It’s the fault of a truly fucked-up immigration system in both the US & the UK. I know. I have first hand experience on both sides of the ‘lantic. If only I’d turned up with a beard and death threats from the Egyptian government and a nice line in driving Israel into the sea…
Assuming (following the comments of Alice and others) the choice is between genuine democracy and small government, I think it’s a false dichotomy. As “not the Alex above” said, without the eye of the electorate on it a small government is unlikely to stay small. (Although I am sympathetic to the idea that if a government is small enough there are other ways to keep it in check.)
Therefore, I take it the choice is “democracy” or small government, and of course there’s no contest.
For anyone who doubts the difference between “democracy” and democracy, I give you the winning candidate for the neigbouring constituency to mine in the recent Scottish Parliamentary elections. She’s now receiving a six figure annual sum from the taxpayer. If she gets kicked out next time, a hefty lump sum will be hers in compensation, as will an index-linked pension. She may turn out to be an excellent MSP, but all she has to do to qualify for the loot is turn up occasionally and vote once in a while. All this largesse on the say-so of around 15% of her constituents.
Of course, that kind of cash shouldn’t be up for grabs: as Andrew Ian Dodge says, it’s the lazy and greedy enriching themselves. But at least we could make them sweat a bit (perhaps with the happy side effect of weeding out the laziest in the process). “Implied consent” just isn’t good enough. If a candidate can’t stir enough of the electorate to get up off its backside and cast a positive vote, then that should be that. When does this system cease to be democratic? When someone’s elected by 10% of the population? 5%? 1%?
I can’t say that I’m full of that particular mixture, no…
I agree that big governments become less democratic as a result of their size. As for the people rising up and taking matters into their own hands – I fail to see how that’s an improvement. Those who see the manifest wickedness in ID cards could violently overthrow those seeking to impose them, but then those who see the manifest wickedness in vaccinations might overthrow those seeking to impose them, and indeed other groups with equally righteous ideals would also want their swing of the pickaxe handle.
If the question were re-phrased:
Would you prefer to live in a stable communist country, or an unstable anarchist country? I should certainly choose the former. Life under institutionalised thuggery is preferable to life under whichever thug happens to have the most henchmen this year.
Hear hear Paul, It doesn’t matter what kind of government we have if the majority of people don’t give a damn.
The usual failure mode of constitutional republics is (as Paul showed with his US example) democratic republicanism, for which the usual failure mode is (again, in keeping with Paul’s observations) national socialism. Fascism.
In the USA, we are not democratic. The Republicrats and the Demicans have successfully pulled the ladder up after themselves by installing institutional preventions to any others being elected.
Our situation now is that we are being bribed with our own money to vote for the representatives of one or the other of two general groups competing to be the ‘rods in the bundle’ of a fascist government.
Constitutionalism only works when its principles and values are understood by the constituents. Even back when I was in school, much attention was paid to freedom of speech, and none to property rights. Of course, my teachers were without any exceptions members of that organization that is the heart and soul of the left political machinery, the various affiliates that make up the national teacher’s union network. They have purchased, with hard cash, most of the statewide offices for the last two cycles in Wisconsin. I assume it is similar nationally.
At the same time, over on the right, mega corporations use the same general method to gain legal protections in the form of market regulation, work-place regulation, employee benefits regulation, competition limiting regulations, tax-code structure, etc protections to help them remain safe from free market competition.
Our health care payment system alone can almost defeat small business in the search for quality employees. Virtually every small business employee or owner that I know has to have at least one family member employed by medium to large businesses, units of government, or receiving government entitlements just to receive health care coverage.
For a false choice — this question has raised some really interesting discussion!
It is tempting to say, given Sam Duncan’s comment, that the real key to reforming the global mess of elitist politicians practising what they ironically call “public servce” would be to reform their financing system. Witholding/PAYE was the beginning of the end of limited government type democracy. If every taxpayer had to write a check to the government every month, we would have a much more involved electorate!
But why would elected politicians today vote to reform a system which is enriching them financially & emotionally? Political systems rot internally, and then are destroyed by a push from outside. (See, e.g., Roman Empire). Let’s hope that, when the current system inevitably collapses, the world is blessed with a few people like the Founding Fathers of the US. And let’s hope that people remember enough history to push things off in the right direction.
But no matter how good that new system may be, it too will eventually be corrupted and will fail. The tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of patriots, or something like that.
Democracy.
People should have the type of government they want,and the ability to change.it.
If the voters don’t want small government that might disappoint a lot of readers here, here but that’s only a disappointment.
If voters can’t have the government they want then the idea of governing by consent has been removed; that’s far wore worse.
O.K. Kevyn the people should be able to vote for what they want……..
In 1980 the voters of the United States voted for getting rid of the Department of Education and the Department of Energy (a clear part of the Reagan platform) – these departments are still there.
I will not bother talking about the Federal Department of Education, people who support that are not worth taking to, but the sort of job the regulations enforced by the Department of Energy do can be seen by the number of refineries that have been built in the United States over the last thirty years – none at all.
More recently the people of the United States voted (SIX TIMES – 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004) for a Republican House of Representatives to reduce goverment spending.
Government spending continued to go up (especially since 2000) so the people voted (November 2006) for the Democrats on the promise that they would get government spending under control.
No surprse that “ear marks” and so on are continuing to grow.
What was that you were saying about “democracy”?
On the immigration point: If a local community can not keep vagrants (illegal immigrants or not) out of their town, then “local democracy” is just as much a lie as national democracy is.
I can assure that things are at least as bad in the United Kingdom as in the United States.
I apologize for my word blindness.
I meant to type “I can assure you that things in the United Kingdom are at least as bad as in the United States”.
They are indeed.
For example, almost all the meetings I have attended as a Kettering council member have been about this or that “policy” – none of these policies were voted for by local people or by elected councilors, and none can be changed by local people or local councilors.
As for national government:
The German government admits that 84% of new regulations are due to European Union demands – the British government refuses to say (in spite of questions from both members of the House of Lords and members of the House of Commons).
I repeat, what was that you were saying about “democracy”?
Small government.
Democracy = slow motion mob rule.
If voters can’t have the government they want then the idea of governing by consent has been removed; that’s far wore worse.
I live in a country of millions and millions of people. Even if it were a pure democracy, how is that particularly consensual for any one individual? My chances of having my say matter are not meaningfully any better than they would be if the country were ruled by a handful of people.
And even if you say that individuals don’t matter and it’s all about the consent of the collective (which I think is a mistake — collectives can’t give consent), when you’re dealing with the number of people in the typical nation state, an outvoted minority is still a lot of people who are potentially getting very screwed over. If 100 million people want X and 90 million people want Y, how precisely have those 90 million people consented to X?
The only thing that would make these situations consensual — and frankly, having a set of rules thrust on you at birth and not much variety in the way of alternatives isn’t exactly the height of consent here — is the opportunity to leave (or making things opt-in). And being able to do that is something you can get with a small government ruled by a few people, and something you might not in a pure democracy.
small government.
for the reason that large governments are inimical to democracy.
it should be clear by now that as governments grow larger, they serve increasingly the sole interests of persons in government. as the size of the government increases, its incentive to abide by the wishes of the people it represents decreases.
wish i had more time to comment on this very interesting question, but, ahem, i work for the government.
incidentally, given my line of work, i’m actually saving all you poor proles money by NOT working and instead choosing to post this.
but, alas, if i stop too long, my employer’ll stop giving me the money it forcibly extracts from you guys in exchange for my giving more of that same money to people who didn’t earn it.
sigh. choices.
Democracy. A small government that is not democratic will not stay small very long. A large and intrusive government subject to democratic oversight can be corrected.
Severl commentors have made this — or a similar — assertion. I don’ think I buy it. Granted, there are examples of non-democratic governments that have expanded to enormous size, such as most if not all communist governments. But large government is essential to communism. Where is the evidence that non-democratic forms of government that aren’t designed to be big from the outset also inevitably grow into large governments? Surely, there must be examples of governments that aren’t especially large, at least in contemporary terms. (Monaco, perhaps?)
On the other hand, the evidence does seem to suggest that popular government axiomatically grows to a fairly large size. It’s the “bread and circuses” principle.
Another advantage of small governments- it’s easier to find the borders for a better life. In a way, Zimbabwe is a pure Democracy- nothing can stop the will of the people, as interpreted by their agent, Mugabe, from being carried out. If the borders weren’t so far away, more Zimbabweans would have left already. If we interpret ‘small’ to mean ‘in land area’, then a smaller government would mean more people alive now.
As a principle: small government without a doubt.
In practice: let’s talk.
Small government. Democracy – or, at least, the present incarnations thereof – give way too much legitimacy to the state.