Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard
– H. L. Mencken
I read this article by Matthew d’Ancona and had to laugh out loud.
David Cameron would be wrong to jettison his co-pilot. Nick Clegg’s only chance of recovery is to ignore the turbulence and carry on regardless […] Instead, Clegg has led his party in another direction: into office with an ideological rival, and the cockpit of compromise, U-turns, and grinding policy formation. To say it has not been easy is a laughable understatement, and the price – so far – has been immense. But it was the right call.
Hahahaha… political rivals, sure… but ‘ideological’ rivals? Oh give me a break. Tories, LibDems, Labour, oh and SNP… ie. all of Britain’s main parties are utterly committed to the regulatory welfare state and their ‘idealogical rivalry’ amounts to arguing over the length of their minister’s ties. The ‘co-pilot’ is staring straight ahead as the aircraft in on ‘finals’ for a CFIT.
I particularly loved this…
“The best help we can give the Lib Dems is not a shopping list of policies,” says one senior Cameroon, “but to help them through their adolescence as a party of government – to help them navigate this crisis.”
It is not that the LibDems are ‘adolescent’ but rather that the entire political establishment appear to be intellectually ‘senile’ as the disconnect between objective reality and acceptable political reality grows apace (and largely unremarked by that essential priesthood of media truthsayers).
It hardly matters which of these lumps are in office. All the policies being bandied about are akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and not only does *no* major political party have the will to implement a radical reduction in state expenditure and a massive reduction in the red tape that limit the scope for new market entrants in industry after industry, they all lack the will to even seriously discuss such notions.
When someone suggests a budget that has the state appropriating 20% less of the national wealth overall next financial year and the same the year after that, and allowing banks to simply go bust if they screw the pooch on an epic scale, well then and only then are they are getting serious… but until that happens, let the various party loyalists blather on about Dave and Nick as if it actually matters.
The Ponzi scheme has reached the ‘end game’ phase and the antics of the clowns in Westminster and their supporters are as important as a tinker’s damn. Britain and much of the western world have got the leaders they voted for and the ones they deserve. Drink wine, watch films, play games, meet friends, but only pay attention to politics for the entertainment value. It is not like politics is actually going to have much impact on where the economy is heading.
A very sad state of affairs, well analysed and well reported by Perry.
However, I’d just say that 20% cuts per annum are so strong that the backlash might be worse than the benefit. How about 5% spending cuts per annum in real terms?
And it is, IMHO, true that the western democracies, the first world, whatever you call it, are driving for a crash. It will be, again IMHO, a finance-led crash, but there is the risk of a military-led crash – by escalating current conflicts as a diversion.
Also, superstates (such as the EU) and global statism (such as the UN) are, as with much corporate merger and takeover, concealment tactics much more than they are solutions.
Beware: be aware.
Best regards
Shame about the AV vote; it would have been a modest nudge-like thing in the right direction (even if delay and more extensive changes, but not party lists, would have been better).
Still, as Perry and Mencken write:
Still, I don’t know another system of government that, in practice, would do it better: just a few more nudges within the same overall framework.
Best regards
Nigel Sedgwick,
Shame about the AV vote; it would have been a modest nudge-like thing in the right direction (even if delay and more extensive changes, but not party lists, would have been better).
We have 1 seat in the UK parliament (excl NI) from a party created since WW2. If any other market worked like that, we’d be looking at whether there’s a cartel in operation.
That’s why the 2 parties were so dead against it. Like any other market where you have a cartel, the existing operators will compete with each other, but when the cartel is threatened, will set aside their differences and do what is necessary to retain the cartel.
Do providers work harder with more competitors or not? Do they try to find how to please their customers better or not? We all know the answers to these questions.
It’s why they mostly shrugged off the expenses scandal. In a competitive market, a company that knowingly ripped-off all their customers would have found themselves losing a large percentage of their customers. But they know that people who don’t want the Tories back will vote Labour regardless and vice versa.
@Tim Almond. I’d appreciate clarification of your point, particularly WRT my comment, if you think that helpful having read the following.
Currently, though I am sure we are pretty much on the same side on this issue, you seem to be either (i) telling me something I already know; or (ii) recommending I be more direct in expressing my opinion.
We are surely somewhat familiar with each other, over the years within the Samizdata commentariat; however, I’ll add links (some to other links) for my more complete view. On some of these, search for my name is probably also necessary: 1, 2 and 3. One comment was copied to Orphans for Liberty at May 5, 2011 at 10:09 am.
There have also been a few independent MPs over the years since WW2, including Martin Bell.
My ‘gentle’ approach is most likely down to my respect for the 68:32 vote of No to AV. If we don’t respect the democracy we have, flawed though it might be, IMHO we are lost.
Best regards
Please bookmark this point, pending decision from Smite Control.
Best regards
Mencken is an endless font of pithy quotes:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
“All government, of course, is against liberty.”
“The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.”
“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.”
With the current campaigning over AV, it is obvious most people have lost the plot about representational democracy, in that you vote for the person who will represent you in parliament ((c) de Montfort 1265).
Today’s political system is becoming entirely geared towards political parties and electing a government, not each representative, we are so brainwashed into this idea that it is rarely questioned, even when most matters concerning the dire state of British politics make it blatant that the problem is about political affiliation, not the voting system.
Libertarians need to address this issue as a priority before moving onward, a parliament comprised of unaffiliated individuals free from party whip control would be more liberal and more inclined to value individualism in the voting population, it would be anti-statist by nature.
Today’s motley crew of MPs are nothing more than carpetbaggers leeching the partisan system, they can’t think outside a “group” and depend on state enterprises to justify their existence, it is no surprise elections end with “meet the new boss same as the old boss”.
Laid quotes Mencken:
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
I actually disagree with the underlying thought here. I agree entirely that democracy given full reign is generally a bad thing, but that is because democracy is largely about powerless ineffective voting. What I mean by that is that everyone knows their vote makes basically no real difference, and consequently there is little benefit to making an accurate assessment of the various sides of the issues, news junkies notwithstanding. Voting becomes more of a tribal identity rather than a decision on the issues themselves. That is why seemingly unrelated things get bundled together. Why do people who favor gun control also favor abortion? The link isn’t real obvious, in fact, by some regards they are ethically opposite points of view. On the right, why do some favor government interference in marriage but not in business? (Please excuse the American examples — I’m sure your lot are pretty similar.)
The why is that we can afford the luxury of tribalism in our politics because ultimately our vote doesn’t really make much actual difference. Consequently, being ignorant of the issues is rational ignorance.
However, I often talk of the ultimate democracy of the pocketbook. People think carefully and much less tribally about what the spend actual money on. Because when they spend their own money they actually have to make hard choices of “this verses that” or factor in the oft ignored reality of opportunity cost. Or to put it another way, when their is a direct link between choices and consequences that is measurable, predictable and rational, people make better choices.
That isn’t to say people don’t make dumb purchasing decisions, but when people spend their own money they pay a great deal more attention to reality rather than demagogic ideology.
To put it another way, I don’t think the “masses” are all that ignorant of things that matter and of thing that they control. It is only in the realm of politics, where their control verges on zero, that they are, correctly, rationally ignorant.
I remember during the 2000 close election in Florida, where the election judges couldn’t count the vote within a margin of error of less than a few hundred votes. Bill Clinton declared that this proved how important it was to vote. Ironic, because it actually proved exactly the opposite — your vote is absorbed in the statistical noise.
Just so as we are clear — I still think you should vote. It is one of the few tools we have left to block extreme forms of tyranny.
We have AV (Preferential voting) in Australia. It doesn’t result in better government. The existence proof is Canberra right now.
Yes, well put, and I fear you are absolutely correct.
Having a somewhat conspiratorial view of things (born very simply from observation, watching people do things that will obviously achieve the opposite of what they claim to want to achieve while retaining a credible deniability of same to the credible), I also fear what leviathan truly seeks to achieve.
These people are not stupid, they are tough and realistic.
So what is their game? And how do they intend to play it out?
A thoughtful comment, Fraser, and I mostly agree with you. But how does that make Mencken wrong? If an individual vote necessarily counts for almost nothing, and therefore “being ignorant of the issues is rational ignorance”, Mencken’s point still stands: a universal franchise implicitly assumes that the various strands of individual ignorance will essentially cancel out each other, resulting in a “wise” result. A pretty ludicrous assumption when you state it that baldly.
Laird, I didn’t mean to imply that Mencken was wrong, in fact I worded it carefully not to say that. My concern was that the idea of the ignorant masses is not one I agree with. The masses are moderately smart when they have to make real decisions with direct measurable consequences rather than fake ones like voting.
So I think he is right in a strictly narrow context, but my concern is that it be taken the next step and say that the unwashed masses are too stupid to run their own lives and the economy. It is the first step toward suggesting the educated elite need to run the economy. (An implication that Mencken would hardly agree with of course.)
The system in Britain is better than the system in North Korea or Russia or China or a great many other places, for sure. But it is also the system that got us into our current mess and a great deal of other messes, such as the economic and moral catastrophes of widespread nationalisation and theft on an epic scale in the 1960’s and 70’s for example… so no, I do not have a great deal of respect for the democracy we have.
Whilst it’s easy to criticise any and all current arrangements, can anyone offer a better scheme? What would you prefer in its’ place, perry?
Well yes… for a start, a system prominently featuring constitutionally limited government via a real constitution rather than a fictional one.
Fraser, I don’t think you’ve followed that thought to its logical conclusion. “My concern was that the idea of the ignorant masses is not one I agree with.” On the contrary, you do agree with it; you’ve already conceded their ignorance and said that it is “rational”. “The masses are moderately smart when they have to make real decisions with direct measurable consequences.” Well, not exactly: it’s the individuals who make up “the masses” that are smart; nothing is more stupid than a blind herd. And their “smartness” is limited to their individual interests, not those of the collective. Anyway, I’m reasonably sure that you understand that “ignorance” and “lack of intelligence” are far from the same thing, so that second sentence is actually a non sequitur.
So your points are that (1) people attempt to inform themselves and make reasonably intelligent decisions when their own interests are at stake, and (2) the political process is such that no one individual’s vote matters much, so willful ignorance is a rational response to the “false choice” presented by elections. Both are fair points. But with a universal franchise, and millions of voters, #2 is inevitable, and nothing can be done to change it. Therefore, it is not possible that the bulk of the electorate will ever become informed enough to vote knowledgably (it’s, as you say, reduced to “tribalism”). Furthermore, I would posit a corollary to #2: to the extent people do become somewhat informed, in most cases it is merely to the extent that they realize they can vote in their own short-term interests (i.e., for the politician who promises them more benefits, stolen from others). In other words, to a kleptocracy (as we have today).
So where does that lead us? I agree with you that it’s not that “the unwashed masses are too stupid to run their own lives and the economy”. “Stupidity” doesn’t enter into it, but maybe ignorance does. No one needs someone else to run his life, and certainly no one should “run” the economy; it will take care of itself quite nicely, thank you very much, as long as the heavy hand of government is kept away. But maybe the solution is not a universal franchise: with a properly limited government, why should the inevitably and rationally ignorant masses have a vote at all? What are they voting on, if not corrupt rent-seeking politicians?
The solution is simple, no representation without taxation. The current system was never envisaged to cope with a near 50/50 split between taxpayers and tax consumers.
Perry, I’m confused by the title of this piece. I get the Swift ref, but ‘Litter’? Is that a SpellCheckErr?
Laid says:
>What are they voting on, if not corrupt rent-seeking politicians?
I actually think a bunch of aristocratic, slave holders had some pretty good ideas two hundred and some years ago. Sure have voting, but on a very limited set of, enumerated functions. Second, split the functions of government up vertically and horizontally, and rely on competition between each to keep the other in check.
Here in the US the unlimited expansion of the meaning of the commerce clause and the general welfare clause have all but destroyed the first, and the massive centralization of power by way of the 16th and 17th Amendment have defanged the second. (Sorry to be so American centered, but it is where I live. I’m pretty out of touch with British politics since John Major, and Maggie was, as politicians go, a bit of a high point.)
Unless you advocate anarcho-capitalism, there are some legitimate functions of government, and voting on them seems a good idea. Even better, lets have additional jurisdictions with more significant powers, but keep them in check by allowing people to vote with their feet.
To be honest, the US Constitution did a pretty good job, and it took 150 years and the stain of slavery to destroy it. British history is different. For most of British history it has been one of improving liberty. The downturn has been a fairly recent phenomenon.
And I might add that in all of western civilization, the march of liberty on the social side of the equation has been pretty relentless, it is really only on the economic side that things have turned sour. I’d remind us all that had you protested the First of Second World War in the way that people have protested the latest actions in the Middle East you would probably have ended up in jail. And Alan Turing a hero of that war, and a brilliant man all around, was threatened with jail, chemically castrated, and driven to suicide for his homosexuality, not in the 1650s but in the 1950s. We should celebrate the victories of liberty as well as bemoan its failures.
You’re absolutely right, Fraser, the authors of the constitution did a terrific job. The only flaw in their plan was that the constitution’s only defence is a bunch of heathens swearing on the Bible to defend it.
Yes, Perry, that would do for a start. I would also want counties and shires to become cantons, with only a few functions for Parliament in London. And I would also like time-share government- if you choose to be a citizen, then for two weeks you might be part of a local militia, and for another two weeks, your militia would be the local government, whilst others were guarding you; and repeat next year, etc. Get rid of politicians, and we could all vote on all laws.
Any other ideas out there? Now is the time to speak up!
It is foolish to waste effort on tinkering with secondary issues such as electoral methods when the cause of our problems – throughout the whole of the west – lies in the principles of action automatised in the culture regarding the moral relationship between one individual and another. What is one individual morally obliged to do in general WRT another?
That cause is in turn predicated on the similarly-automatised methods dominant in the culture by which those moral principles are judged and the standards of value on which they are based. How does one know that one should do or not do such and such? Politics is not a primary but is utterly derivative from epistemology and ethics. Fix those in the culture and good politics follows as a matter of course – ie, once a good standard of value is in place and reason is the method of choice for determining particulars, the great bulk of people will formulate and vote for reasonable laws and politicians accordingly. Until then, arguing about PV vs FPTP or the merits and demerits of democracy is mere deckchair antics.
JJM
John McVey: if you look at least at the modern history, I think you will see that, for the most part, it has been politics that has been shaping culture, and consequently morals and ethics, and not the other way around.
That’s a hell of a statement Alisa!
Yes, Frankfurt School type activity.
But that, in turn, is based on the humanist view that the only way is for mankind to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.
And here we are.
As opposed to what? Magic? 🙂
Nick, you disagree?
Yes, well, faith in God has been successfully equated with intellectual suicide. Insanity. Brain death. Whatever.
Those Frankfurt school guys, and friends, have been very effective.
The sensible and the silly have been established. And the silly believe in things like God.
But it does seem to me that as the edges of the scientifically measurable are probed the honest have to admit to a leap of faith as the basis for their existence, whatever they believe.
The Ponzi scheme has reached the ‘end game’ phase and the antics of the clowns in Westminster and their supporters are as important as a tinker’s damn. Britain and much of the western world have got the leaders they voted for and the ones they deserve. Drink wine, watch films, play games, meet friends, but only pay attention to politics for the entertainment value. It is not like politics is actually going to have much impact on where the economy is heading.
So very, very true.
I quote from the chapter entitled, ‘Their Brothers’ Keepers, Atlas Shrugged:’
“The calendar was run by a mechanism locked in a room behind the screen, unrolling the same film year after year, projecting the dates in steady rotation, in changeless rhythm, never moving but on the stroke of midnight. The speed of Dagny’s turn gave her time to see a phenomenon as unexpected as if a planet had reversed its orbit in the sky: she saw the words “September 2” moving upward and vanishing past the edge of the screen.
Then, written across the enormous page, stopping time, as a last message to the world and to the world’s motor which was New York, she saw the lines of a sharp, intransigent handwriting:
Brother, you asked for it! Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’Anconia
She did not know which shock was greater: the sight of the message or the sound of Rearden’s laughter—Rearden, standing on his feet, in full sight and hearing of the room behind him, laughing above their moans of panic, laughing in greeting, in salute, in acceptance of the gift he had tried to reject, in release, in triumph, in surrender.”
@Perry de Havilland, regarding a written constitution:
Bernard Crick (In Defence of Politics) mentions an old Whig saying, “No constitution is better than the character of the men who work it.”
It comes down to moral restraints, which, I’m embarrassed to say, seem to be closely associated with religion.
@John McVey and Alisa:
I claim that the enlightenment knocked the intellectual supports out from underneath Christianity, and Socialism got sucked into Pascal’s “God-shaped hole” in the psyches of at least the intellectuals. The intellectuals then proceeded to wreck the political culture of the West.
Keith Windschuttle has a nice review of The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments by Gertrude Himmelfarb.
What we need is a new religion.
@Laird, regarding “#2: to the extent people do become somewhat informed, in most cases it is merely to the extent that they realize they can vote in their own short-term interests (i.e., for the politician who promises them more benefits, stolen from others)”
On the contrary. Voting for one’s tribe is no more rational than voting altruistically. Bryan Caplan has a nice book on this called The Myth of the Rational Voter. It’s worse than “rational ignorance.” The rational thing to do is to treat an election as an opportunity to indulge in self-deception. Caplan calls this “rational irrationality.” The question becomes, “How do people’s (quasi-religious) moral beliefs affect their fantasy lives?” My review here.
Peter, you missed my point. “Tribalism” was Fraser’s word, not mine, and the point of my “corollary to #2” was not that people who become “somewhat informed” vote “tribally”, but rather that they vote for the politician who promises them the most goodies, i.e., for short-term personal gain.
But you gave me a wonderful opportunity to quote Mencken again: “An election is an advance auction of stolen goods.”
Alisa,
Yes and no. I think some developments in Britain at least are pretty much entirely social/ultural. The almost complete elimination of racism in Britain over the last few decades is an example of a cultural shift which had little to do with the passing of laws and much more to do with people just mixing more.
An example: racism was rife in English football in the early ’80s. Black players were frequently pelted with bananas and such. It is now virtually unknown due to there being many more black players. It’s very difficult for the supporters of club x to do that sort of thing or even feel that sort of thing when they’re 3-0 up following a hat-trick from a black player.
Agreed Nick… the real reason racism now make a person look like a total half-wit is how common intermarriage has become.
An afternoon walk in Battersea Park is all it takes to see the sheer number of mixed race couples… indeed about half the non-white people I saw there last weekend were with white partners and that has nothing to do with government policies or laws.
@Laird: ‘the point of my “corollary to #2” was not that people who become “somewhat informed” vote “tribally”, but rather that they vote for the politician who promises them the most goodies, i.e., for short-term personal gain.’
This is an even clearer statement of the claim that Caplan wrote his book in order to refute, the “self-interested voter hypothesis” (SIVH). The way I see it, the voter’s incentives look like this:
E = S * Ps + W * Pw + I * Pi
E = expected benefit
S = narrow self-interest (SIVH)
W = the joy of being on the winning side
I = self-image (posturing and fantasy)
Ps = the probability that my vote will tip the outcome of the election
Pw = the probability that my side will win
Pi = the probability that I will flatter myself
Ps ~ 0.000001 . Pw ~ 0.5 . Pi ~ 1 .
The problem is what Caplan calls “decisiveness.” The probability of a major election coming down to my vote is astronomically small. I would like to vote myself goodies, but mostly I just indulge in fantasy.
As Jamie Whyte put it (emphasis mine),
“Modern politics is just as you should expect it to be when votes are cast by ignorant people taking advantage of a low-cost source of emotional gratification.”
You can’t predict my voting behavior unless you know something about my fantasy life. Do I like to fantasize about being a great philantropist (Dennis Mueller suggests this in Public Choice II), or do I like to pretend that my tribe is more deserving than those Untermenschen on the other side of the railroad tracks?
Caplan’s view of democracy is considerably darker than the standard “rational ignorance” public choice view.
Can someone point me toward a simple explanation of the differences between US and British political parties? Do things like “Operation Chaos” also happen in the UK?
Peter, that’s quite an amusing formula (although you left out the parenthesis; how am I supposed to know the order of operations?). However, it’s just another illustration of the fantasy so often indulged in by non-scientists (economists are the prime offenders) that psychological matters can be quantified. It adds a false veneer of mathematical certainty to a social construct in an effort to make the subject matter appear scientific. (Also, it’s impossible to quantify S, W or I, or to know Pw with any certainty.)
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Caplan and I don’t agree in the end . The essence of my previous comments is that I question the value of a universal franchise. I suspect (although you haven’t said so, and I haven’t read his book) that Caplan winds up in the same place.
Nick, my specific point was mostly about the welfare state on one end, and personal responsibility on the other. However, there is a wider context to this, and that is that both cultural and political changes are largely driven by the elites, and for as far back as at least I can see, cultural and political elites have been the same people. That is, obviously, not to say that all those changes have necessarily been bad – and the ‘r’ word is a good example of a good change.
Multiplication/division precedes addition/subtraction – or did I misunderstand you?
Fair point, Alisa. But parentheses do prevent confusion.
No room for confusion, Laird: you only use parentheses when you want to use a different order of precedence.
They are all waiting for economic recovery.
But that depends on really getting to grips with two things…..
The credit bubble financial system.
And.
Wild government spending.
Do not fear – I am not going to go into one of my rants about the credit bubble financial system. I am just going to say that nothing constructive is being done about it.
“But they are dealing with government spending”.
So the entire establishment say – indeed I reguarly get “You Gov” stuff sent to me asking me my opinion on the massive cuts (will they help or hurt the economy in the short and long run).
And the media is obsessed with this question also – what will be the effect of the massive cuts, in the short term, the mid and long term.
Perrry and the rest of you know what is comming next….
THERE ARE NO MASSIVE CUTS – NOT OVERALL
Not when one looks out the departments that haveing their budgets increased – not just the departments that really are having their budgets cut.
Indeed I will make a prediction (one I have often made before) their will be no large scale overall cut in govenrment spending this year compared to last year – indeed I strongly suspect that overall government spending will increase.
So the entire basis of the British political discussion (and the basis on which external observers are judgeing the “British experiment”) is false.
OK, Alisa, so my little parenthetical bon mot fell flat. Wouldn’t be the first time. But the rest of the comment stands.
@Laird: Nobody here is claiming that psychological matters can be quantified. The point is that the self-interested voter hypothesis fails. Democracy is a quasi-religious phenomenon.
And yes, you’re right: Caplan does end up in a similar place regarding the franchise. He specifically says that “get out the vote” schemes are misguided.
Of course it does, Laird, I was just being pedantical – you know what it’s like:-)
Bravo, sir, a splendid piece! 🙂