Even Worse Than Democracy
By Anthony Gregory • Friday May 18, 2012 4:28 PM PDT • 13 Comments
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H. L. Mencken
Mass democracy and individual liberty do not mix, despite the propaganda. Surely, if a majority can vote against the rights of the minority, the libertarian case against democracy becomes clear enough. This is why so many who favor democracy embed within its definition the concept of certain basic civil liberties of the minority protected against mob rule. Thus 60% of the population voting to exterminate a small minority would be considered “anti-democratic.” Yet if 60% vote merely to loot the minority, it would be considered undemocratic to stand in the way. Who it is who decides which rights are up for majority vote and which are not is always a difficult question to resolve.
In practice, you cannot have true majority rule for everything. The reason is obvious. Everyone would be voting all the time on all matters, no matter how trivial. So who decides what is being voted on? A democratic system cannot help but result in a power elite in practice. Mass democracy must be filtered through some sort of legal and political structure—and what results is essentially a ruling oligarchy.
Nor is the idea of a “republic” as being distinct from a “democracy” nearly as meaningful as is often assumed. Many will protest that the United States is not a democracy. It is a republic—or, it should be. The two words share much in etymology and meaning. A republic is a “state in which supreme power rests in the people.” That’s essentially what a democracy is.
Indeed, the fundamental difference between “representative democracy,” in which the “will of the people” is expressed through and tempered by a structure of delegates, legislators, electors and the like, on the one hand, and a “representative republic,” on the other, seems rather elusive to me. In either case we are conceding that “the public” are not to be trusted too much.
Of course many respond that the answer to the dangers of democracy is a Constitution. But , in the long run, outside marginal instances, a Constitution can limit state power only so long as the people are already predisposed to wanting to see power limited in any event. Where a paper Constitution is necessary it will prove to be insufficient. Where it is effective it will be a redundancy. We can assume that panels of wise and benevolent politicians and judges will keep the public’s thirst for oppression in check. Then once again, we are back to the assumption that something resembling a rule by a few truly is preferable to rule by the mob—straying further from the whole point of democracy.
As troubling as the implicit reliance on oligarchs and committees to “refine” the will of the people might be, what is even worse is the foundational ethical principle in democracy—that the people are the government or, to put it more modestly, that the government is some kind of expression of the people’s will.
Different critics of democracy have raised many objections, based on game theory, natural rights, public choice, time preference, the fact that we can never expect the voters to be quite as noble and vigilant, enlightened and jealous of their own rights, as we would all hope. Yet to me the most compelling case against democracy is the very notion that the state, an inherently coercive and collectivistic monopoly, be somehow associated with the best interests of the greater society. Under monarchy, autocracy, and naked dictatorship, we at least know one thing: the ruling class does not serve its subjects; it parasitically lives off them. In democracy, the idea becomes popular that those with the power of life and death over others are exercising this power on behalf of the common man. All states require a public ideology that either tolerates or supports the state’s existence and depredations on freedom. Democracy, like no other system, dupes the masses into believing that the state really is on their side. It creates the perfect storm for a deep if somewhat temperate oppression, as the state becomes increasingly active and meddlesome, and instead of cowering in fear or resenting the state for ripping them off, subjects become complacent or even celebratory at the sight of their rights and responsibilities co-opted in the name of the good of all. After all, if we are the state, who can complain? To badmouth a state’s treatment of prisoners, taxpayers, or foreign victims of war too vociferously becomes taboo, because “in a democracy, the government is us!” The Divine Right of Kings has nothing on this rationalization for oppression, this masquerading of institutional evil as the greatest public good.
But surely the state is responsive to the people! Consider a couple pieces of evidence to the contrary. About 3/4 of Americans—including over 2/3 of Republicans!—want the federal government’s raids of medical marijuana clinics to end. These raids, inaugurated by Clinton, stepped up by Bush, and vastly expanded by Obama, are thoroughly unpopular. Even a vast majority of law-and-order conservatives want to see the federal government stop its waste of resources cracking down on sick users of this relatively harmless controlled substance. Yet the raids persist and the administration laughs at those who would suggest drug law reform.
Or consider the centerpiece of the president’s foreign policy: The Afghanistan war. It is now about as unpopular as the Vietnam war was in the 1970s. Only about one out of four Americans supports the war effort. Not only does the war persist in spite of this; the administration is planning on a significant U.S. presence there through 2024.
At various other times, we see other government programs survive despite being unpopular—bailouts, health care subsidies, and foreign aid. The system is set up so the American people might hate what the government does but, believing that it is in the end speaking on behalf of “the people,” they tolerate its excesses and even atrocities because they believe in the system’s overall legitimacy. The ideology of democracy combined with the structure of the democratic state thus produces results even worse than democracy in a pure form would in many isolated cases.
All in all, however, the people mostly favor most of what government does where it most matters. Most Americans say they resent the federal government, but when particular spending programs are brought up in polls, almost all of them receive majority approval. What’s more, the majority of Americans at times favor all sorts of policies that are even worse than what the power elite want, for our rulers are aware that some policies, even popular ones, would be so disastrous to the economy that they would kill the goose that lays the golden egg. I’m thinking of protectionism and anti-immigration sentiment, in particular—policy areas where the ruling class is statist, but knows that the full-blown controls over society supported by the majority would be too harmful to their tax base.
I suppose we can take some solace in the fact that while in many cases we live under something worse than democracy, in what is likely many more cases, true democracy would be far worse than what we have.
Tags: Civil Society, Morality, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, The State, Uncategorized 
I believe that the men who wrote the Constitution and developed our government (which was remarkably libertarian) erred greatly. As Anthony Gregory noted, democracies and republics are not conducive to liberty or libertarianism. Much of the Constitution has been ignored or deliberately violated in favor of a more powerful and more intrusive national government. (The kind of government most people prefer.)
I believe that a successful libertarian government would be a benevolent dictatorship with limited powers. A supermajority (70-80%) vote of citizens could oust a bad dictator. Such a government cannot replace the existing government on any nation. It could only come about if a group of libertarians forms a new nation (small island, underwater colony, or space colony). That’s a pleasant fantasy, but I won’t live to see it enacted.
DoctorT | May 18, 2012 | Reply
Democracy is 3 wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. Or, democracy is 60 lazy, stupid, dishonest people deciding what to do with the fruits of 40 hard working, intelligent, honest people.
We have freedom of religion, and under freedom of religion people with wildly divergent beliefs live side by side in peace. So that works. It works because most people believe that each individual has the right to follow their own conscience in regard to religion. If enough people could be convinced to extend that way of freedom to all areas of our lives (a la panarchy), we could all have a much better chance to live peaceful and free.
shemsky | May 19, 2012 | Reply
What a lazy article.
The definition of democracy as ‘the mob rules’ fails to take into account the hundreds of types of different forms of democracy that exist. That’s what happens when people have the ability to take control of their lives, their personal freedom, and help organize and run their communities in a democratic fashion.
The only people I see who use the term democracy negatively are people too stupid or too lazy to actually do investigative research into the potential of decentralized and democratic systems.
Brandon | May 21, 2012 | Reply
Replacing a tyrant with mass democracy will only produce a new form of Tyranny.
plasticmoney888 | May 21, 2012 | Reply
The problem is solved by selecting representatives by lottery from the entire adult population of citizens much as we select jurors. This is the ONLY way to obtain a true system of representation. Also this has the benefit of elimination of political parties. We most likely would have to set a minimum educational standard and being of “age” (21). Other than this, selection would be by lottery. In much the same way as we operate state lotteries today. We could still have elections for President and such, restricting the lottery to the legislature.
Jerome Bigge | May 21, 2012 | Reply
The problem is that the present US Constitution is seriously flawed in many respects. First, majority (or plurality)elections promote winner-take-all power struggles instead of reasoned compromise. Why compromise when the possibility of winning is always in view. Is it possible to construct a constitution that effectively distributes political power equally to all citizens? For one solution see my constitution at http://www.thegoodgovernmentproject.org. Any comments or suggestions?
Fred Hewitt | May 21, 2012 | Reply
“Where a paper Constitution is necessary it will prove to be insufficient. Where it is effective it will be a redundancy.”
Hear, hear. It’s time to slap ourselves in the face and admit that history has conclusively proven that the concept of a constitutional republic is a FAILED EXPERIMENT, and for precisely the reason quoted above.
Apologists for representative government always blame the victim for not being “eternally vigilant,” ignoring the fact that people who have actual lives to live and bread to earn can never simultaneously pay enough attention to government to compete with bureaucrats who are being paid with tax money to devote their FULL attention to finding ways to circumvent the controls we have placed on them.
Even when the Republic was brand new, not even all the “eternal vigilance” exercised by our freshly-minted citizens was sufficient to defeat the blatantly unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts. Instead, these Acts practically had to die of old age.
The entire concept of representative, limited government is that you can delegate the work to someone else and largely forget it. That works as well for government as it does for self-defense, which is to say, not much at all.
Sheeple will bleat about how impossible it would be under anarchy to protect the property you personally own and the lives you are personally responsible for against the predations of evil people. Yet they foolishly believe in some mystical “division of labor” that makes it easier for each citizen to protect the aggregated lives and property of every occupant of the country, and their fantasy furthermore pretends this somehow will take MUCH less effort.
At least under anarchy there are definite boundaries to what you are charged to protect, and a man can only pay attention to as much as he can see, after all.
Henry Bowman | May 21, 2012 | Reply
“Apologists for representative government always blame the victim for not being “eternally vigilant”....
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! You’ve taken the very words from my mouth. I’ve said as much for so many years. The victim is constantly chided for the criminal actions of a select few. As though we have all the time and resources to fight back an enemy who uses our stolen money with which to further enslave us. It’s like the old saying about insanity and constantly doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. Henry, you’re a fellow brother!
David | May 21, 2012 | Reply
The partisans of mobocracy need to explain how to establish an electoral democracy democratically. But how would they do so? Does not holding a plebiscite to determine if such a democracy should be established presuppose the existence of a democracy? In fact, holding the referendum would presuppose the existence of a government with authority to circumscribe a specific territory throughout which the plebiscite would be held, authority to fix the choices to be offered to voters, authority to determine who is eligible to vote, and authority to impose the results on all the inhabitants.
And what if a majority say no? Since there is not yet supposed to be a democracy in existence in that territory, how could the result have any validity? Perhaps Brandon would care to answer these questions with a thoughtful explanation, if not also a description of one of his “decentralized...democratic systems”, whatever that means.
Paul T. | May 22, 2012 | Reply
The one thing that is not mentioned in this article is the source of authority for each form of government.
Under a democracy, the source of its authority is derived from “Direct Self Expression”. In other words, 51% rule over the other 49%.
The law may or may not protect innocent life, liberty or property. The laws will change drastically based on either opinion or sentiments of the people. A direct democracy, of course, is a danger to liberty and they always die violent deaths. Federalist #10 will explain this better.
A Republic on the other hand is a government that operated under “Rule of Law”. The United States Republic was set up so that it’s authority is “Derived from the Bible”. The laws protect innocent life, liberty and property of all individuals equally. The government is limited as to how much power they have.
I know some of you are going to bring up the slavery issue, but slavery was not an original concept in the Americas. It was brought by the English. The founders had to appeal to the democrat slave owners to abolish slavery under the Constitution. They would not budge so they had to make a compromise.
Anyways – The Constitution was a very well written document. Some will argue that it is not fit, or does not apply in today’s society.
The founders studied every form of government that has existed for the past 6000 years. They took the good and debated on how to make a government that would work best for the people. They didn’t just dream this document up without any historical reference.
These were well learned men.
The men in power today wish to take the government so that they can control every aspect of our lives. These people are known as “Progressives”. They want to progress beyond the “Constitution” because the “Constitution” keeps them from having ultimate control of the people. They have subverted the “Constitution” by creating administrative agencies that have legislative and judicial authority outside of the “Constitution”. Look at all the three-letter agencies and look at all they laws they create. Why can’t congress repeal some of those laws? They can but they won’t because most of congress consist of lawyers and they have been brainwashed into progressive way of thinking.
States have been trying to fight but not without threats from the feds.
It is our own ignorance of history, the Constitution and the purpose of the laws that has gotten us to the point where we are at today.
There is no difference between Democrats or Republicans anymore. They just want us to think they are two separate parties. Ask yourself one question. Why are there never third party candidates at debates even though they are on the ballot? Could it be that democrats and republicans are working together to keep out third parties?
Ask some of the old timers about the “League of Women Voters”.
I won’t bore you with anymore propaganda to get you thinking.
Nicodemus | May 23, 2012 | Reply